The Bully Pulpit
Why Whistleblowing as a Former Woman Pastor in a Southern Baptist Church Has Nuance
My experience of being a unicorn- that is a woman given the title of “Pastor” at a Southern Baptist church, is fraught, and not just because the SBC ousted Saddleback Church last June over having woman pastors on staff. Some would say I was blessed to work under the leadership of a celebrity pastor who portrayed himself as “fighting for women” against the Southern Baptist Convention. Shouldn’t this be something for which I am grateful? After all, many women have been striving for years to be given the title of “Pastor,” in a denomination that has been asking women to work without the title and the open doors that come with it.
While I worked as a pastor under the leadership of Saddleback’s lead pastor Andy Wood, he positioned himself as someone taking on the SBC over the issue of women pastors as he pastored Echo.church in San Jose, CA where I was recruited by him to be the second woman pastor on staff at this megachurch. I went on the record about my story of psychological, spiritual, and verbal abuse at the hands of Andy Wood almost two years ago when it was announced he would succeed Rick Warren as the lead pastor of Saddleback church, despite many stories of former staff having been abused and fired with NDAs tied to severance and medical insurance for over more than a decade under his leadership.
My experience at Echo.church on stage was well crafted with flashy, splashy smiles and “contagious joy,” a church value that we were trained to display. However, my experience with Andy behind the curtain during the last half of 2020 was anything but joy. Bullying, unfortunately, does not end at high school graduation. Words and actions in the workplace that are meant to intimidate, coerce, belittle, humiliate, and overpower someone at work can have long-term health effects that take years from which to recover. Andy has been a workplace bully for years, a bully with a pulpit. The thing about bullies is, they tend to form a gang whether on the playground or the church grounds.
There is an additional layer involved when the bully is in a position of power over the one being bullied and thus has the ability to terminate that individual’s employment and to give them a negative job reference, hindering their ability to provide food for their family. Basic human needs are under threat when a subordinate is bullied by a boss, and this makes the bullying that much more traumatic for the victim-survivor. If you add on top of that workplace authority a position of spiritual leadership, the amount of power in the hands of a pastor over his or her staff is immense. A pastor can not only deprive a staff member of income, but also ruin their reputation and affect their ability to stay in their own religious community. If that staff member has a spouse and/or kids, the stakes are even higher, and the ability to use coercive control to intimidate and silence is even greater.
A study on workplace bullying at the University of Copenhagen showed that 8% to 13% of the 80,000 survey respondents from Denmark and Sweden who’d said they’d been bullied were 1.59 times more likely than the other volunteers to go on to develop a cardiac-related illness, such as heart disease or stroke. This study showed that the incidence of heart-related problems was increased by 59% in the bullied compared with the non-bullied.
Individuals who endure workplace bullying suffer health consequences that persist for months and even years. As the saying goes, the body does keep the score. Despite the absence of physical or sexual contact in the abuse, the harm is still felt physically. Some survivors of workplace bullying develop Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). Unlike PTSD, which often results from a single traumatic event, CPTSD arises from experiencing numerous abusive or traumatic interactions over time, leading to a complex form of post-traumatic stress that affects both the brain and body. “In contrast to a single traumatic event, prolonged, repeated trauma can occur only where the victim is in a state of captivity, under the control of the perpetrator. The psychological impact of subordination to coercive control has many common features, whether it occurs within the public sphere of politics or within the private sphere of sexual and domestic relations.”
The Question
I asked a question in a Strategic Leadership Team meeting at Echo.church, after lead pastor Andy Wood had just come with his first initial idea of opening the campuses back up in the socially-distanced days of the summer of 2020 in Santa Clara County, California. He used a metaphor of driving two cars. He explained that one car was the online ministries our staff were leading- such as the Facebook Lives with campuses, the online Alpha groups, the prayer and worship nights over Zoom, online pastoral care calls and the team meetings for campuses and Echo Compassion teams we were leading. The other car was going to be the in-person outdoor services where we would take everything inside the campus outside to have services outdoors each Sunday. The first car was to continue full speed ahead, and we would also add another car to drive simultaneously at full speed.
I asked my question, after Andy’s proposed strategy. “How is it possible to drive two cars?” Then, the black eyes sent a dark jolt of anger pointed directly at me. That was the moment everything changed. My body felt an intense fear I’d never felt before. I went from being safe to very, very unsafe. I had a target on my back.
After the driving two cars question at the SLT meeting, I was told that Andy asked my boss, “What was Lori trying to do in there?” to which my boss replied, “Just ask a question.” Others in the meeting had the same question in their minds, as they told me later. My question was the one spoken out loud, while many on staff had the same question looming over their own foreheads. I just happened to be the unlucky one who asked it. I happened to be the unlucky one who asked it of a man who cannot be questioned, especially by a woman.
Over the next several months in the fall of 2020, I was later summoned into multiple closed-door, one-on-one meetings in Andy’s office in which he bullied me, intimidated me, threw his weight around, called me names, used coercive control, gaslit me, and peppered me with questions. He asked rapid fire questions such as, “What do you believe about abortion?” “What do you believe about Critical Race Theory?” “Do you aspire to be a campus pastor?” (I was an associate campus pastor.)
I wasn’t told what the point of these meetings were, and they were characterized by secrecy and fear-based power. In the Echo.church culture, it was in the air and even at times said out loud, “No one says ‘no’ to Pastor Andy.” The culture of consent just was not there. This was a breeding ground for abuse on the church grounds.
I never felt free to say “no” to a meeting, as this was the lead and founding pastor of the church, who wielded his power in subtle —and less subtle— ways behind the closed doors of his office. The attrition rate on staff was high, and Andy seemed to make it hard on people who didn’t toe the line. There was a palpable, occasionally even spoken, fear by certain staff that if Andy didn’t like you, he would get rid of you or make you so miserable you would quit.
I was later told by Filipe, the Executive Pastor and high school best buddy of Andy, that Andy had a history of being angry at people on staff, and until he stopped being angry, Andy struggled to be around them. Filipe would have to supervise those particular people to keep them away from Andy for a while, at times for an entire year. Filipe mentioned my friend, Vivian, the CFO, as being one of those people in the past. According to Filipe, that person Andy was angry at was now me, and he offered to move me into a different role (that of Outreach Pastor, since we all knew Andy didn’t care for outreach), and it would allow me to be away from him. That felt like the best move, especially considering the alternative of those coercive, intimidating inquisitions I had been enduring in the Andy’s office one-on-one.
Echoes of Doubt: The Psychological Impact of Workplace Gaslighting
One of the tactics of abuse used to control victim-survivors is referred to as gaslighting. This is essentially “psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.” Gaslighting is a tactic designed to make victim-survivors doubt their own reasoning, self-awareness, or even sanity. The term originates from the 1944 film "Gaslight," set in London, where an abusive husband named Gregory manipulates his wife Paula into believing she is insane by dimming the gaslights at night, causing pictures to disappear, and denying these actions, thereby making her question her own reality. While gaslighting is not exclusively a male-to-female behavior, patriarchal societies and theological frameworks that prioritize men and diminish women's voices—such as hierarchical complementarianism—provide fertile ground for this form of abuse. In environments where women are often unheard and unlikely to be believed, men’s voices are given more authority. Even on issues related to women, men seem to speak for them. Under these conditions, women may even begin to doubt their own thoughts, which is the ultimate aim of gaslighting: to coerce the victim into questioning her own perspective and accepting the perpetrator’s version of reality.
When a pastor deliberately distorts reality to make a subordinate question their perceptions or feelings, this behavior is known as gaslighting. This manipulation can be perpetrated by anyone in a position of power—such as a pastor, spouse, boss, family member, doctor, therapist, or teacher. The effectiveness of gaslighting is amplified by power imbalances, especially when multiple imbalances coexist, such as those between a man and a woman, a pastor and a congregant, or a boss and an employee who controls access to income and benefits.
Gaslighting fosters self-doubt and compels the victim-survivor to trust the perpetrator’s version of events over their own. This manipulation is crucial in both the grooming process and the abuse itself, as making the victim doubt her own perceptions is essential for the abuser to control the narrative and prevent her from speaking out. If she doesn't believe herself, how can she expect others to? In a society rife with stereotypes of "hysterical" or "crazy" women, gaslighting by a man against a woman becomes an especially potent tool, metaphorically likening the woman to a witch being burned at the stake, with cultural narratives fanning the flames.
Under the Guise of Good: When Male Pastors Feign Egalitarianism but Abuse Women
If you have ever heard one of those heartbreaking stories about the wife who is experiencing domestic violence by her husband who happens to be a cop, it often goes like this. The woman calls the police to report intimate partner violence, and the cops show up, see her husband, high five their buddy and leave thinking “he’s such a good guy.” Meanwhile, her story isn’t heard.
One of the key strategies of those who abuse is to position themselves as pillars of society. Harvey Weinstein did this with being the CEO of one of the most successful media companies in the world, allowing him to rub shoulders with world leaders, wealthy individuals, and movers and shakers in Hollywood and beyond. Pastors who abuse employ similar tactics. Building an empire of a megachurch and getting the attention of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the US with 13 million members, are just two ways to be seen as a pillar of society. Add onto that a persona of “fighting for” women to be able to be pastors against this large denomination, and quickly people start to see you as hero of women. What woman wouldn’t be so blessed to have an Andy Wood fighting for them?
Of all the women I have spoken to that worked for Andy Wood, I know of 5 personally that started having panic attacks around him. I know of multiple that have had to do EMDR therapy for years of trauma and nightmares about the one-on-one meetings they had with him. I have known more than one that had panic attacks in church parking lots of other churches after their experiences with him, and multiple who years later still cannot even drive past Echo.church because of the fear he put inside our bodies with his bullying, intimidation, name-calling, power by fear, and coercive control. Our bodies and brains don’t feel blessed after working for this Baptist pastor.
So, when the issue of whether the Southern Baptists affirming women as pastors comes up for it’s second vote in 14 days at the SBC Convention in Indianapolis, and the Law amendment is debated on whether an SBC church that allows women to preach or to hold jobs with the title “pastor” may remain affiliated with the SBC, keep this in mind. Not everyone “fighting for women pastors” is actually fighting for women.
Behind the scenes, Andy Wood wasn’t fighting for me. He was fighting me, and many other women before and after me. It’s time to look behind the curtain, and take the capes off these supposed heroes to reveal the truth about who they really are. Men like Andy use women as a means to an end. He has used women for years to accomplish his goals of money, power and fame while abusing and silencing women with NDAs.
The SBC is not a safe place for women. Even among those speaking for women to be “allowed to be pastors,” (as if women needed men to allow them to use their God-given gifts), there are those that are using women as tokens, as “trophy pastors,” to give themselves a do-gooder persona, a microphone and a larger stage. They thrive off of the adoring congregants who say, “What a good guy.” He is fighting for women after all. What a hero.
Last June, at the SBC Convention in New Orleans, did my former friend Stacie Wood stand up and speak about being a woman pastor at Saddleback where she is often described as a better preacher than Andy himself? No. Rick Warren did. Did a woman get up to give a long, red-faced speech fighting for the cause either for or against women pastors? No, only two men got to be hysterical in their speeches- Al Mohler and Rick Warren. To sum it up, on the issue of whether women could be pastors, women didn’t even get the microphone to speak from Saddleback to defend themselves. Two men did. That, my friends, should tell you all you need to know. This is about men in power, seeking to keep their power and platform. This is not about women. Women are not centered here. Men are speaking for women.
I recognized this because when I was a pastor on staff under the leadership of Andy Wood, every single time I was on stage, I was only allowed to speak the words in the script I was given to memorize ahead of time. Even my voice wasn’t my voice. At Echo.church, Andy would often gather staff for meetings to “get our language right.” Speaking my words for myself was unwelcome and unsafe. No one in the congregation would have known this. As the therapist who has treated many of us Echo Survivors has told us again and again, “It’s designed for you not to see it.” Silencing, NDAS, spin, and a well-crafted persona on stage are all part of the smoke and mirrors of the fight for women pastors at Saddleback church.
I tell my story in six episodes on my podcast A World of Difference. If you want to know what it was like to work as a unicorn- a woman with the title of “Pastor” in an SBC megachurch, by a man who was seen as a hero for women pastors, fighting a battle “for” us as he took the stage and microphone with a wake of NDAs to silence the women whistleblowers.
To those at Saddleback that he has terminated this year and given NDAs, it was never supposed to be this way. They were supposed to listen to the many Echo Survivors who spoke into the “investigation,” that ultimately was spin for image management. If our stories had been heard and believed, you would have been spared. No amount of signatures on our petition to get Echo.church to release the NDAs has mattered. The SBC way, including that of Echo.church and Saddleback, has been that “survivors just have to be ignored.”
Women are not psychologically safe in the space of the Southern Baptists around this issue of women being pastors. If you are a woman with a leadership gift, a pastoral gift, or you are egalitarian in your theology, please do not be fooled by the men who are leading the charge of “fighting for women pastors.” I fell for that once with Andy Wood. I wish someone had told me what he was really like- a man who demands loyalty, is an empire-builder, and will use anyone and step on anyone to get to the top. That is why I tell my story, in spite of many attempts to silence me. I didn’t sign my NDA because my voice is not for sale.