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My Story of Church Abuse
by Carlota AllenThe spiritual abuse that I have suffered at the hands of those charged with shepherding me has been brutal. I want my story made public so that I can warn others to avoid the church that harmed me. I also want people to learn to recognize spiritual abuse so they can flee it or fight it when they see it.
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I loved and poured myself into the life of New Covenant Community Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Joliet, Illinois, for eighteen years, from 2005 to 2023, only to have it all end in a web of lies and character assassinations.For the first several years, I was under the pastors’ spell. I thought anything they said was “gospel.” How wrong I was. The astronomer Johannes Kepler once likened scientific pursuit to “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” What I realized is that we at New Covenant Community Church were being taught to think the session’s thoughts after them, not God’s thoughts after him.One of my spiritual gifts is listening to and caring for other women. Women often approach me to tell me their stories. In time, I became aware of three different women in the congregation who were suffering abuse in their marriages.The first case was especially egregious. I’ll call the woman Cassie. Her husband was a drunk and was openly mean to her, yet
he remained a member in good standing and even held positions
of responsibility in the church. Associate Pastor Marcus Mininger, who also is a professor at Mid-America Reformed Seminary in Dyer, Indiana, did “counseling” with
Cassie, during which he instructed her to continue living with
an abusive drunk and “just be respectful to him.” Eventually, Cassie and I agreed to go together to meet with the session, and she even asked me, “How long will he [her husband] get away with his wickedness?” But then Cassie
panicked and met with the session alone. Later, the two associate pastors, Mininger and Alan Strange, also a professor at Mid America Reformed Seminary, met with me and accused me of being overbearing with Cassie rather than actually addressing the problem
of the abusive, alcohol dependent husband. The session insulted my God-given gift of being a listening ear to people and instead twisted it into a sin. Cassie, with Mininger observing, “repented” to me about discussing her husband’s drunkenness and abuse with me.
Mininger sat there nodding in approval of Cassie’s “repentance.” Nothing ever seemed to be done to provide Cassie with real help, despite the session’s pretense of appropriately handling the case. In truth, the church leadership only added to her burdens.I met a second, younger woman, whom I’ll call Sarah, who was also being abused by her husband, also a member in good standing. They were only at the church for about a year before they moved away, but I have remained in contact with Sarah. Once, Sarah’s husband even pinned her down, which I knew was outrageous and unacceptable. I tried to speak to
the session about her situation when I first learned of it; it turned out that they already knew, but they were doing nothing. The only thing they told Sarah was that she should
never discuss her husband’s abuse with anyone. “I’ll be praying for you,” Bruce Hollister, the head pastor at the time, told her.I then learned of a third woman also whose husband was both a member in good standing and an abuser. Hollister, who later retired from New Covenant and became the regional home missionary for the Presbytery of the Midwest, knew about the abuse in all three of these situations, but never held any of these men accountable for their reprehensible actions toward their wives. Instead, he merely looked on while these dear, suffering women remained in unsafe and unstable homes.I became even more acutely aware of the pastors’ and elders’ neglect of suffering women a few years ago, when I approached them with concerns of my own.One Wednesday evening after Bible study, I approached Associate Pastor Strange, and asked if I could speak to him for a few minutes re: an urgent family matter that was weighing heavily on me.He said, “Well, I’m kind of tired.”I practically had to drag him into a side room and beg for help. After reluctantly agreeing to hear what was on my mind, we discussed the matter that evening. There was an
additional meeting subsequent to that one, and it was obvious that my concerns required further monitoring and follow up. Appallingly, he never once inquired about the situation again. My husband and I were simply aghast at how disinterested the pastor/ session was about the well-being of its members.In 2020, the session’s failure to act in accord with righteousness became increasingly apparent to me. It burdened me terribly and induced me to reach out to several pastors in the Midwest Presbytery for counsel, which resulted in my writing a lengthy communication
to the session.In March 2022, I delivered two preliminary letters – one to Strange, and one to both Strange and Mininger. The next month, I wrote what I now call my “magnum opus,” a ten-page letter to the session wherein I laid out my concerns about their dismissiveness and mistreatment of women.In June 2022, they responded with an excoriating letter in which they asked me to “repent and repudiate” my criticisms and insisted I meet with them in person to discuss the letter, which I refused to do. It was unsafe and unwise to meet in
person with these abusive, calculating men. I determined all communication was to be kept to writing. Period.For the next 11 months, I continued to attend church, faithfully loving and serving the congregation. Yet I felt like I was constantly under a cloud. The session continued to pepper me with emails trying to coerce me to meet in person.In October 2022, I requested erasure from membership. The session did not respond to my request for four months. I continued attending worship every Sunday in a state of high anxiety. Finally, after four months, they officially denied my request. My husband pulled two
ruling elders, as well as Associate Pastor Mininger aside individually to express his frustration with how they had been shamefully treating me.In May 2023, the session sent me yet another email demanding my repentance. We attended our final worship service there on May 14, 2023, and were denied the right to say goodbye to those with whom we had had fellowship for 18 years.In July 2023, I received a certified letter from the session, stating that they would be citing me for sins at their session meeting that month. I then submitted a second request to
be removed from membership and left alone; they denied the request a second time. New Covenant engaged in illegal activity in their refusal to remove a member from its rolls. By law, organizations- including churches- are required to release individuals immediately
who request resignation from membership. The session denied my moral, civil, and religious freedoms not only once, but twice!By August 2023, the session had sent me two more certified pieces of mail- the first of which I tore up before reading, and the second for which I refused to sign. We hired a
lawyer who sent the session a letter instructing them to remove us from membership. The session finally relented and erased me, after illegally holding me captive on the rolls for many months. They also violated a key directive of our lawyer’s letter – that the session was to make no discrediting statements about me. I didn’t know until a couple of months later
that they had ignored my lawyer’s instructions and did, in fact, announce my erasure in what I now refer to as a “modified excommunication”: They made public accusations of wrongdoing about me to the congregation in an announcement after a worship service. What makes this extra painful is that my five adult children and the married ones’ spouses
are all still members of that church, so they heard lies about their mother in a public meeting. To add to the session’s deviousness, they took the further step of bringing my
adult children and their spouses into a room beforehand, to provide them with behind-the-scenes details re: my case, and to plant doubts in my children’s minds about
whether I am even a true believer in Christ.In the final years of our membership, I found myself constantly praying, “Lord, please
release the grip that the session has on me. I’m so scared of them; I’m in terror.” I didn’t realize His means of release would be to remove me from that church.There’s a commonly-used acronym, “DARVO,” which stands for “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.” The session used DARVO tactics against me. In their eyes, they were the victims, and I was the offender who needed to be attacked and silenced. What was my offense? Telling the truth and exposing evil. I called men out on their abject failure to show love and compassion to women, and they responded by making me look like the problem. That is not shepherding. It is abuse. In fact, a woman in the congregation once
complimented me, when speaking to Bruce Hollister, and shared with him how much I had ministered to her. His response? “Watch out for Carlota. She’s a meddler.”My final words are to Bruce Hollister, Alan Strange, and Marcus Mininger. You men do not possess the “authority” over people you foolishly and arrogantly believe you have. You delude yourselves. Bruce, you said to me in an email, "Your request for erasure is a grave misstep and can bring you only greater grief, and that for a long time to come." No, sir. Again, you delude yourself. In God's mercy, my departure from New Covenant was the very instrument he used to deliver me from your clutches, in order for me to enjoy the freedom in Christ that is mine. I have been learning of and resting increasingly in the Lord’s peace and serenity since my escape from your bondage and cruelty. A glorious journey of healing has begun, rather than the certain “grief” Bruce assured me I would suffer. Truly, I am closer than ever to my beloved Savior, Jesus Christ, who will never leave me nor forsake me.See the letter below from my attorney sent to New Covenant Community Church, instructing them to cease and desist communications with me and to remove me from membership

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