This is the first in a series I’m doing on the stories behind the songs from my album, All Beginnings Are Hard. The album as a whole is a musical story of what it’s like to start over. Each song, written out of my own (often very painful) experiences, function as chapters in this story. This post, about track seven, is Chapter One: Prodigal. Many of these stories, including this one, I’ve never shared publicly before.

In 2016, I was a worship leader and a pastor at a small, evangelical church just outside of Washington D.C. It was my dream job – a startup church with tons of promise, in a great location, and a part of the exciting “young, restless, and reformed” church movement. It was a place I could build something I believed in and watch it grow as I did.

When I started working there a few years prior, I was 24, newly married, fresh out of college and a high-powered internship at a prominent denominational center. I was green, but I had an incredible resume already because I had been positioning myself for just this kind of opportunity my whole life. Like any young person, I was full of vibrancy and optimism.

But five years in, I was catatonic.

It’s not widely known how untenable the job of a worship leader is. They’re usually fired before anything becomes public. Many leave ministry altogether, most are miserable, and the ones that make a career of it seem to survive by hopping from church to church every couple years. I’ve never known a worship leader who wasn’t beat down by the job or the way their pastor treated them or both.

This is something I was not prepared for. Having grown up in a ministry family, I was familiar with the “worship wars” and the vicious complaints worship leaders consistently received from their congregations. But I always thought my pastor would be my colleague, my friend, and…you know, my pastor.

But, I too, became a statistic.

Over the course of five years, my pastor formed an abusive relationship with me characterized by bullying, manipulation, and complete spiritual and professional dependency. Despite promising to let me pursue my musical vision both within the church and without, he gradually reneged on his promise, forcing me to increase my minimum work hours well beyond normal for the same pay and to take on more and more administrative responsibility to the point that I was literally doing everything to run the church except make the decisions.

Worse, by attaching spiritual authority to his demands and guilt to any pushback, he gradually gained complete spiritual control over my life. The line between my work life and personal/family life became smaller and smaller until the point that he was controlling my relationship with my wife, the parts of the Bible I read for my devotions, the way I parented my children, how I spent every minute of my (very limited) time off, the media I consumed, the posts I wrote on social media, etc.

I remember the one time I ever did anything for myself during those years: I went to see my favorite band, Mutemath, who hadn’t toured in years. I had to give a chapter-and-verse defense for spending money and time on attending a “secular” concert and, afterwards, give a full account of every impure thought I had during the experience. The only reason he even knew about it was because I had to let him know that there was going to be an evening coming up that I would not be available for a meeting or a phone call or an event he wanted me to organize.

Despite all this, I chose to be there.

I didn’t see the abuse; I thought the problem was with me. I was taught that my pastor was God’s spokesman for me. He was going to “give an account someday for my soul” (yes, quoted verbatim), so I needed to follow what he said without question. But when the depression and the fainting spells and the narcolepsy and the inflammation and the sickness were so bad that I was at times literally catatonic, my pastor finally let me see a counselor.

After hitting rock bottom, I finally began to accept that something wasn’t right.

…

Years later, I was back home in Scranton, PA, trimming bushes. I was on the road to healing, but still often crippled by pain, grief, regret, and anger. I finished what I was doing and went inside to the piano and this song poured out:

When I told my pastor I needed to leave, he said I was in sin for coming to that conclusion, that I was selfish and discontent. He told me repeatedly that I just believed the grass was greener on the other side. I realized in that moment that all of it was a lie. He, my spiritual father, didn’t give a shit about me; what I was taught was wrong; and what I gave my life to, the church, was fundamentally broken.

I knew that when I left he would call me a prodigal (from the Prodigal Son parable in Luke 15:11-32) because he’d done so many times before of others who left. It was his permission slip to say whatever horrible thing he wanted to about them. But I knew it too was a lie. This was no home, there was no grace, and he would never welcome me back.

Fitting Prodigal Into the Album

I honestly never intended to share this song publicly. I thought it would always be just for me. But as I was working on my album, something felt missing. The story was incomplete. I went through my files to see if there was something I could use and stumbled on this song. I had honestly forgotten about it. I don’t consider myself a lyricist or a singer, and I don’t consider my album a singer/songwriter album, but as I listened years after I wrote it, I knew it had to be included. This is what the story was missing.

Finishing It

I went back and forth with this song over how to package it. I had several very different versions, but in the end, an unadorned piano and strings accompaniment felt to me like the right fit. I pulled out all the stops in my string-writing ability at the time. I just wanted it to be raw and honest, even down to my voice which I’m deeply insecure about.

We didn’t have much time to practice before we went to the studio to film and record, but the string players – Charles Gleason, Inga Liu, and Lourdes De la Peña – were incredible. What you see and hear in the recording is what we recorded that day. No overdubbing.

I’m Not Alone

I wish this story was mine alone, but as anyone who follows church news knows, I am far from alone. The church not only harbors bullies and abusers, it breeds them. This song is as much about a corrupt institution as it is a twisted individual.

And it’s for anyone who has endured a relationship of lies and manipulation. I’ve been fortunate enough to have gotten to the other side. You never fully heal, but you do get stronger, much wiser, and, thankfully, much much happier.

Here are some resources I can recommend that have helped me:

• ​Dan Allender’s podcast series on spiritual abuse​
• Books
  • A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards. This book was HUGE in my healing, recommended by a worship leader friend who went through something similar to me. It was as if Jesus was telling me the story of David.
  • The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by David Johnson and Jeff VanVonderen. An academic/scientific treatment of spiritual abuse. Super helpful in understanding what’s going on and how to heal from it. Given to me, ironically, by another pastor.
  • Educated by Tara Westover. Not really about this topic specifically but gave me an example of someone who processed their trauma healthfully and hope that I could heal too. It was a lifeline at the time I read it.
  • The Woman They Wanted by Shannon Harris. Shannon is a good friend of mine. Our church paths overlapped a bit. Even though this book came out long into my healing journey, it still helped me process things that I had not yet addressed. I think if it had come out a few years sooner, it would have been a godsend. And, yes, it’s good for men too.
• Therapy. For God’s sake, you have to see a therapist – a trauma therapist, not a Christian counselor who’s going to spiritualize everything.

If you have any resources that I could add to this list, please share them with all of us in the comments below.