Taylor Swift is making headlines this summer for boosting the economy with her sold-out stadiums, causing literal seismic shifts in her Seattle concert, and drawing high-profile fans like the Obamas, Alyssa Milano, and Emma Stone.
As much as my daughter, a die-hard “Swiftie,” wanted tickets to the concert at Levi’s Stadium, just minutes from our house, it was just not in our budget to fork out $900- $10,000 per ticket times two. However, we did enjoy seeing photos and videos of friends with their blinged-out outfits and sparkly nails shouting out every word to Taylor Swift’s Grammy-winning songs.
My daughter has a theory that everyone has an “inner Swiftie,” and has worked on our whole family this summer trying to find that one song that will win each of us over to the other side. We spent a long car ride from the airport to our resort in Cancún in June with her trying to enchant her two brothers with Swift’s songs- to no avail. Don’t worry. She’s tenacious, and has not given up on unleashing their “inner Swiftie.” Although the direct song route didn’t work on me, it was my daughter’s keen understanding of how much I love good documentaries that was her winning strategy to bring me over to the Swiftie Side.
Watching how Taylor treated her creative team, the way she processed her trauma with predatory men, gave language to countless women and girls who have been silenced by powerful, narcissistic abusers and rejected a transactional style of leadership for a transformational one was the way Taylor (via my relationally intelligent daughter) won me over. As Taylor came to Santa Clara, she was named honorary mayor, the city was nicknamed “Swiftie Clara,” and Taylor donated large amounts of money to our local Second Harvest food bank while making headlines for boosting our economy with sold-out Santa Clara hotels as she has done in city after city on her Eras tour. Taylor made headlines again as she was leaving Santa Clara for giving her 50 truck drivers a $100,000 bonus- a life-changing amount from their employer whose generosity stands in contrast to Silicon Valley’s toxic masculinity bro club that includes both tech CEOs like Elon Musk, and megachurch pastors like the two who teamed up to abuse me and many others on staff with financial abuse, labor abuse, psychological abuse, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse with rampant abuse of power.
The irony is not lost on me that just miles from this stadium where pink sequins sparkle in the lights that typically illuminate men’s hands grabbing to tackle each others’ bodies on the 49ers team sits Echo church, the megachurch started by Andy Wood, Filipe Santos, and their college friend they later betrayed and erased. The irony is not lost on me that just a short drive from those stadium seats where girls scream lyrics from the top of their lungs completely seen, untamed, and unleashed is Taylor Swift, who was once bullied and manterrupted as a 19-year-old while receiving an award on stage at the VMAs. Who also had to face a famous powerful DJ in court when she sued him for groping and won. Who continues to raise her voice with lyrics of transformation, rejection of the tone police, and dance moves that are metaphors for a woman who is wildly generous and free. For all the talk from the Echo church stage where on staff I was coached to ask congregants to be generous to the church programs, the lead pastor setting our salaries at the megachurch was paying a campus worship leader $500 a month (yes, in the costly BAY AREA) while spending $10,000 for one megachurch pastor to speak for under an hour on just one weeknight.
At that very stadium listening to a woman sing songs about the darkness and the freedom she has found are no doubt some congregants of Echo church who have no idea that even though Echo church has women pastors, there have been many women who have been trapped, tamed and tone-policed by the very two lead pastors who have crafted personas of heroes fighting on behalf of women pastors for years now.
I was once one of those women pastors. I was duped by Andy Wood’s narrative that he was fighting the Southern Baptist Convention on behalf of women pastors when he was recruiting me to come on staff in 2019 while I was living and working in Singapore. I had zero desire to be a pastor, and even less desire to fight the SBC on this. However, as I have told in long form on my podcast series Our Story, I felt compelled to take this role in spite of it not being a personal desire.
It took about a year of grooming before I began to be psychologically, emotionally, verbally, and spiritually abused in Andy Wood’s office one-on-one after I asked a question in a leadership team meeting. I was warned by Filipe Santos that I ‘had a tone,’ and that women need to learn to talk in ways that men can listen, while I was being mobbed by both of these men who flanked me on both sides 4 days before Christmas in Andy’s office. I was coerced to make myself small, forced to tame my God-given gifts, and I felt trapped.
“I was coerced to make myself small, forced to tame my God-given gifts, and I felt trapped.”
I was trapped because even when I woke up to the gaslighting and realized I was being abused, it was 2020. We were locked down in Santa Clara County (even though Andy kept breaking those rules and demanding we come indoors, watch him record his sermon in person, and sing), as he was saying, “None of this ‘I don’t feel comfortable’ stuff.” There was no culture of consent, no safety for the woman on our staff who was pregnant after many miscarriages and couldn’t risk getting COVID, the flu, or anything that could risk her baby.
I had just moved here from Singapore after working in Asia for 20 years and growing up in South America. Leaving to find another job (Bay Area cost of living necessitates dual-income households) felt impossible with lockdowns, 3 teens in online school, no vaccine yet, and leaving a staff where I had seen many be discredited by Andy and shunned for doing so. I was also so overworked due to my own manager leaving this toxic church staff work environment for somewhere else. I was doing what felt like two peoples’ jobs again. I was developing Complex PTSD from the trauma of ongoing abuse and betrayal and had become silenced, unquestioning, and trapped.
There are some books I read, experts in clergy abuse from whom I sought wisdom, and others I spoke with that helped reverse the gaslighting, shine a light on a path, and help set me free. I walked through hell to get where I am, but like Taylor and other women whom toxic men have tried to keep under their thumb, I will “never, ever, ever” let men treat me that way ever again whether a megachurch pastor or manager. I am free. It cost me too much to get here, and I am moving forward- untamed, with an occasional, 100% warranted tone.