Trophy Pastors

How Women are Being Used as a Tool of Distraction From Abuse in the SBC

Months ago, Saddleback church was disaffiliated by Southern Baptists for having women with the job title of “pastor,” and despite Rick Warren, Saddleback’s founding pastor giving an emotional and aggressive plea at the annual meeting yesterday, the SBC voted to not reinstate Saddleback church. Despite all the videos being released in the past few weeks by Rick Warren, retired pastor of Saddleback Church in California, appealing to the Southern Baptist Convention to affirm women pastors, one would be tempted to believe that this is all for women. As a woman who worked as a Southern Baptist pastor under the leadership of Andy Wood, Rick Warren’s personally chosen replacement last year, I don’t buy it. Here’s why.

There are many women and men with stories of psychological, emotional, verbal, spiritual, financial, and labor abuse at the hands of Andy Wood from well over 15 years of his ministry as lead pastor at Echo.church in San Jose, CA, and previously at Breakthrough Church in TX. Why haven’t we heard most of these stories? One of the prominent reasons why is there is an unsettling amount of NDAs. 

If a pastor or a church requiring NDAs from staff, especially when the NDA is tied to severance and medical insurance raises a red flag for you, you are not alone. In fact, in February of this year, the National Labor Relations Board of the US ruled that employers may not offer employees severance agreements that require employees to broadly waive their rights, including prohibiting them from making statements that could disparage the employer and from disclosing the terms of the agreement itself. However, it seems as though churches may be exempt. Therefore, we are holding pastors and the church in the US to a lower standard than we hold tech companies and other corporations. 

NDAs have been given to an unknown amount of staff from Echo.church, formerly known as South Bay Church, in San Jose over its 15-year history. I was one of them. The reason my story of clergy abuse is publicly known is that I didn’t sign the NDA tied to severance. Neither did my husband, Jason, who was also on staff as one of the pastors of this Southern Baptist megachurch. My story of bullying, belittling, intimidation, coercion, name-calling, gaslighting, silencing, filming/recording me secretly without my consent, and retaliation in the form of being fired for my husband reporting the abuse to the executive pastor is something I chose to go on the record about once Andy was hired at Saddleback last June to replace Rick Warren. Although there are many secrets behind the curtain of Echo.church and now Saddleback church, our story is not a secret. In fact, we told our story in long form in a 6-part series on the A World of Difference podcast. Other survivors spoke out before I did, and yet, the abuse was ignored due to bigger fights to fight, while the whistleblowers were being discredited internally such as telling Echo.church staff that the whistleblowers were greedy, unhealthy, or disgruntled. There were prayer meetings held to pray against the evil and alleged spiritual warfare of attacks on Andy Wood, which was a way of flipping the script on abuse survivors exposing the dark secrets with an image management strategy that evoked himpathy (empathy for the man who is abusing), diminished curiosity and rallied sycophants for the cause of defending the offender who was now seen as a victim.

The Southern Baptist Convention has been meeting in New Orleans June 13-14. Saddleback is one of the largest churches that has been in the SBC. Why would Saddleback want to be back in if the SBC rejects the theology that women can hold the title of pastor and has covered up abuse to the degree that the Department of Justice is now investigating the entire denomination? This is a question we all must ask.

Even though the recent data on numbers of those who identify as Southern Baptists has dwindled to numbers similar to the size in the mid-1970s, there is still a significant amount of money, power, and platform associated with the SBC. As one who was recruited by Andy Wood to become the second woman pastor at Echo.church, I began to realize I wasn’t making any major decisions, my voice wasn’t welcome, questioning Andy’s decision to open the campuses in the summer of 2020 wasn’t allowed, and we were trained to speak publicly with words in ways Andy would speak with smiles on our faces. Our voices were basically his. I realized I was a trophy pastor, brought in to give Andy a chance to “fight for” women pastors in the Southern Baptist arena while the other woman pastor and I just implemented his vision quietly. I learned that I was a product of faux egalitarianism. 

Some ask, “What was it like to be a woman pastor in the SBC?” I cannot speak for all women pastors in the SBC, but working under the leadership of Andy Wood was full of smoke and mirrors. When I asked a respectful question, I felt his anger for the first time toward me. I was summoned into his office one-on-one and peppered with questions, experienced discrimination, and retaliation in the form of changing me to a new role, and was ultimately mobbed in his office when he and Filipe Santos (now lead pastor) flanked me on both sides and tried to break me down in his office just days before Christmas.

Stepping into the limelight of the controversy of women pastors gives Andy Wood and Rick Warren (who was given at least 20 stories of abuse at the hands of Andy Wood) a powerful stage and position in a denomination that has for years covered up and used strategies of controversy over women pastors to distract from abuse. Andy Wood invited controversial friend and bullying pastor Mark Driscoll onto the stage of Echo.church just 2 months after my husband and I were fired for calling out Andy’s abuse of staff. This controversy over women pastors is a distraction from abuse covered up at Echo.church, Saddleback Church, and the SBC at large. Image management strategies that create spin and cover up by those at Echo.church who have written Open Letters are met with no action or response. Echo.church called on the staff to return evil with good by being silent. Silence is a high value. On staff, we were regularly told if we gossiped, we would be fired. The staff was told to block Echo.church whistleblowers on social media. NDAs are consistent with this value of silence and secrecy. What is hidden in the dark festers and grows. Abuse thrives in this environment like cancer that spreads in a body that seems otherwise healthy walking around.

The survivors of abuse at the hands of Andy Wood and Filipe Santos, have a petition that has over 1,600 signatures yet they have not released the many former staff from this silencing. If Andy Wood and Rick Warren have nothing to hide about how they have treated women and men behind the curtain, why wouldn’t they be fighting for those to be released? Why aren’t the women pastors at Saddleback the ones speaking to the convention?

I call on Echo.church and Filipe Santos to release the NDAs. I call on Southern Baptists to center around abuse survivors’ voices to make wrongs right and to center around women’s voices instead of men who have abused and covered up abuse. Survivors need allies, but not these two men who have abused and covered it up. Women need allies, but not these men who abuse and silence women with NDAs. Addressing the rampant abuse of power needs to be central in New Orleans at the SBC convention. It is for this reason, the lack of an appropriate response to the Houston Chronicle’s articles on abuse in the SBC years ago, that I myself chose to leave a denomination that wasn’t safe for me, my children, or my husband due to the coverups. I could not be complicit as a silent bystander anymore. 

There are dark secrets behind the curtain that need some open windows and sunshine- the best disinfectant. Clarity is kindness, and it’s the truth that sets us all free.