Mona's Story Part 3

This blog is for the silenced, the marginalized, and the victims of the many types of abuse that the leadership and members of Liberty Church in O'Fallon Missouri have inflicted on their members and any who opposed their love for control. These are the stories of the witnesses:

Mona's Story Part 3

"When I’ve researched abusive churches, one common idea presented is that the leadership did not set out to be abusive. I believe that to be the case with Liberty. I think David Vaughan and the people around him want(ed) to glorify God. I hope, with the history I’ve provided in parts one and two, show that David Vaughan – like everyone else – is gifted and flawed. He is good intentioned but reluctant to accept constructive criticism, an inspirational speaker and accomplished writer, but lacks training in counseling. He can be empathetic, but he can also be narcissistic.

I also think that the abuses that have happened at Liberty are not just because of one person. The structure of the church and theological and cultural influences have contributed as well. The strong patriarchal beliefs that developed over time became misogyny. The lack of oversight has allowed abuses to go unchecked.

To continue my story, the day that David was confronted at Christ Community Church was pretty much the end of that church. CCC did hold services for months afterwards, but dwindled in size and finally closed their doors. Those of us who sided with David met together at people’s homes and then in a rented facility. We became Liberty Christian Church. One thing that many of us felt was important in the church structure was to have a lead pastor as opposed to a plurality of elders and that was written into the bylaws.

Those early days were exhilarating. To me it seemed like all things spiritual took on a crystal clarity. We were united in our stance against the folks who had (seemingly) falsely accused David. We were obviously on the right side. Our time of worship was passionate and sweet. The music was amazing. The sermons were powerful. Many people shared scriptures and insights in the services. It was a fresh start and we were going to really get it right this time.

I became more extreme in my beliefs. Rah rah for homeschooling, large families, patriarchy, purity, bible memorization, conservative values, etc.

Early on, David asked me to be the secretary. By then we had a church treasurer, Dave Wilson. At the time Dave had a computer business and we were purchasing a computer from him. When I was at his shop, I asked him about the payment structure for my secretary position and he was completely shocked as he did not know anything about me being the church secretary. Awkward. Again. I guess it worked out because I was the office administrator at Liberty for seven years. I worked as an independent contractor.

At the same time, John and I were growing further apart. He had health issues and he was emotionally and verbally abusive. He would compare me to other women in the church asking why I didn’t keep as clean of a house as so and so. He’d often refuse to eat the meals I prepared if they weren’t to his liking. On the rare occasions that we were intimate he looked at me with disgust and loathing. He complained about our lack of sex (to me and to others in the church) but rarely showed me any kindness and almost never attempted to initiate anything. We fought often, never seeming to resolve anything. It was as if we pulled argument #37 out of the card file to replay. Then argument #24, etc. He was became increasingly harsh with our children and I was pushing back (code phrase: being unsubmissive).

John was miserable with himself and finally confessed to being unfaithful to me. It had gone on while I was pregnant with Jimmy.

I reluctantly share these very personal details because I feel they are important in this story. I am a private person so this is hard. Also, as much as John and I had our differences, I feel that his side should also be heard. It would be great if he would share his story as well. It takes two to build a good marriage and it takes two to destroy it. I was far from perfect.

When John confessed I was devastated. He actually confessed to Marty Kinsey first. Marty brought in his wife, Tami, and David and Diane and they arranged for childcare for our kids so John could privately tell me. This was on a Saturday when I had “Sunday” school duty at church that night. It was horrible.

So John met with David and other men in the church for counseling and prayer. David and I had one “session” when we discussed this when I picked him up and drove him out to our place to meet with John. I expressed my outrage and he seemed surprised by my anger but also said it was healthy. After that, only Diane met with me. I expected us to have at least some joint sessions. I expected we would go through what had led up to the affair. I thought we would discuss tools to have healthy and productive conflict resolution. None of that ever happened. I don’t know what John’s sessions were like or what they discussed. I know that Diane had me read books on wifely submission and later asked me to teach about it at a woman’s conference. I also remember that I told her that now I had my biblical “out” of the marriage. According to Jesus, I had a legit reason to leave the marriage and I really really wanted to. But Diane put a damper on that thought by saying, “Have you talked to David about that?” The very strong implication was that I should stay in the marriage and I never did talk to David about it.

While going through this I did not talk to my family or other church members about the affair. I don’t think anyone told me I couldn’t talk, but we had had some very strong anti-gossip sermons and I felt I would be going against the leadership if I did. There were those who were concerned and pressed me for details, but I held firm. John’s mother finally guessed it and asked me directly and I told her it was true. Wow was John ever angry with me for letting that out – but his actions were actually what told her. Having to attempt process my pain without being able to talk about it was awful. I felt so wretched and alone and isolated.

So I sort of shoved the problems from my mind and went on with my life. I tried to forgive him. I think in time I did. It was a mistake and he was truly sorry. We did grow closer again for a while but the affair was always between us. John’s health problems got worse and he went on full time disability and was always at home. He was bitter and angry and depressed and on lots of painkillers and became very difficult to be around. I started taking my kids with me when I worked at Liberty so that they could be away from him. If I didn’t have them with me, I would come home to complaints about how they disrespected John and how he was disciplining them for it. If I questioned or wanted to hear their side of the story he would become enraged because I wasn’t submitting to him.

John and I went to the church for counseling instead of going to professionals because we didn’t want to seek ungodly secular counseling. From my past experience with “counseling” I had an unwavering trust in David to fix things. I share responsibility in the fact that going to the church only – and not seeking impartial professional counseling – contributed to the demise of our marriage.

Our house had some leaks and we found out we needed to replace the roof – an expense that we couldn’t afford. I think Liberty paid for tiles and a bunch of men from Liberty came out and replaced our roof. That was kind and generous.

While I was the Office Administrator at Liberty, I sometimes had occasion to observe things. One time I was asked to photocopy a large amount of material on wifely submission from Bill Gothard. In the late 70s I had attended one of his Basic Youth Conflicts seminars and always had an uneasy feeling about his teachings. He extracted “life principles” from the scriptures and was pretty dogmatic that they must be followed. Very legalistic and repressive. In recent years Gothard has had sexual harassment allegations filed against him. Google him if you are interested. I was actually pretty surprised we were using Gothard materials – to me they seemed to go beyond the bible and I thought David Vaughan had more sense than that. I was also bothered that I was asked to photocopy copyrighted material. These materials were for the wife of an abusive alcoholic husband. I hope she will one day share her story.

Liberty decided to start an adjunct to homeschooling for high school aged students. Thus Liberty Classical School was born. I had a lot of thoughts and ideas about this at the beginning which I had emailed to David Vaughan. So he asked me to serve on the board for the school. I accepted. As a board, we sometimes met in area restaurants as we ordered a meal. I observed David’s old flirtatiousness with the waitresses.

During one of our board meetings, David told me they needed to find a man to replace me on the board as a woman shouldn’t be serving on the school board. I think I resigned soon after that meeting.

My son Jimmy was on a little league baseball team with some church members’ kids. David’s son, Ethan, was one of them. One of the mothers of a teammate was an attractive, curvy, long-legged woman who usually wore very short shorts. When David was there without Diane, he and this woman had long conversations, went to the concession stand together, sat on the bleachers together. When Diane was with David, he barely acknowledged this woman. I make no accusation here, I am just reporting what I observed. No embracing. I never heard the conversations. It just felt a little off and didn’t seem an entirely appropriate example to be set by a pastor in a church where purity was preached.

I had a close relationship with the wife of one of the families in the church. Her husband had a wandering eye and also beat her. When they met with Liberty leadership, she was told she just needed to stop provoking her husband. I hope she will share her story.

John and I served on the worship team. He played bass and I played violin and sang. I loved the music there. Contemporary and well done. It seemed that many were blessed by it. But we did have issues. One thing is that people often told me they could not hear my violin or my singing. I am self-absorbed enough for that to have bothered me. I was a busy person. I had better things to do than put in the time and expense and not be heard. We knew that sometimes the sound techs deliberately turned us down or off or ignored us.

The situation came to a head one evening when I was playing my new electric violin. I felt like the holy spirit was playing through me that evening and an old friend was visiting and I hoped she was touched. But when I asked her she just told me she couldn’t hear me. John and I decided to talk to the worship team leadership and the meeting quickly turned ugly. One of the members told John they just liked him there with them even if he couldn’t be heard. John got mad and was told he was off the worship team. He then got up to leave, saying to me, “Come on Mona, we’re done.” I knew, from our personal conversations, that there were things he really wanted expressed, and I knew he didn’t REALLY mean for me to leave the meeting. So I stayed, hoping to reason with them, but they refused to listen and I was told I needed to obey my husband. As we left, John muttered to me that sometimes Liberty took the submission stuff too far.

The next day I got an email telling me that since John was no longer on the worship team that I was no longer on the team as well.

John quit going soon after that. I held on for a while. It was hard. Especially when one of the wives from one of the newer families asked me if I were married. The way she said it, it seemed she was bothered to see a seemingly single mother serving in the church as the secretary.

Just like at CCC, when people left it was like they had never been there. But this time, since our kids were in various things together – like homeschool choir or classes at the Pillar – I kept a little better in contact. And I heard stories. Hopefully some of those people will share their stories.

I knew when they did church discipline on Linda Kintz that it was completely bogus. What a whack mess of things. How far were they going to take this patriarchy bs?

I received so many calls from in the church office from folks trying to reach David repeatedly. A lot of complaints they wanted addressed. I always brought them up to David, and I think he grew weary of me being the messenger. He usually wanted everything to be discussed with the men of the church, but when I followed up it usually hadn’t been discussed and the calls often remained unanswered. I never knew when David might be in the office and he even went out of town without letting me know. A lot of my calls and emails to him were also unanswered.

I gradually stopped going to Liberty and began to half-heartedly look for a new church. I still worked there and gave violin lessons there. It was still a place I could bring my kids while I worked. But the joy was gone for me.

One day, David set up a time for me to meet with him later in the week. It was an unusual request and I felt pretty apprehensive. When I went to his office he was there with the interim (?) assistant pastor, David Volz. I had a little pocket pc and I recorded the meeting. They told me they were letting me go. The rationale was that they wanted to groom Mike Bond as a pastor and could not afford to have an office admin and a pastor intern on staff so they were firing me. Mike would take over as office administrator while he studied and trained to be a pastor. David told me that they couldn’t keep me because I was a woman and a woman can’t be a pastor. They wanted me to stay on for another month to finish a policy manual project I had been working on, but I packed up my office the next day and was out of there. David told me the women of the church wanted to hold a luncheon in my honor. I told him it was a nice gesture but no thanks. This was in the spring of 2003.

Now I was unemployed with a disabled husband. I had to find another job and I knew finding a job with the flexibility I had enjoyed at Liberty was nearly impossible. And the exit from Liberty was not swift and clean. John left first. Then I did. But my kids were still in Liberty Classical School and Teens For Christ. For a few years they continued to go to camp at El Shaddai Ranch. At these camps Kim Ward told my daughter Mary not to hug her brother Matthew. Diane Vaughan discouraged the younger girls from holding hands or linking arms as that behavior would lead to lesbianism. I already didn’t agree with making girls wear huge dark tee shirts when they swam as I felt it was ridiculous and added extra weight, making swimming harder.

I was appalled that my daughters were rebuked for just being who they were – girls. That they were shamed for being kind and affectionate with each other.

I feel I’m beginning to ramble. Many many “little” things do add up. As the years wore on I became increasingly agnostic. And full disclosure here, I was – after 11 years of no sex – eventually unfaithful to John. I reconnected with my highschool sweetheart, Dan, to whom I had once been engaged. After the first episode, I immediately went to a lawyer and filed for divorce. I had tried to leave John about five years prior to this – going so far as to put a deposit down on an apartment – but backed out when his mother passed away. I just couldn’t do it to him when he was already in so much pain. We had been living very separate lives for years. Dan and I have now been married nearly 5 years and are very happy. Dan loves me for who I am and admires that I am strong and make up my own mind on things. Wow. I love him so much.

I also drifted away from church – even though I’ve continued to work for churches. I’m sort of an agnostic Christian now. I take the bible seriously but not necessarily literally and I’m pretty unsure about who or what God is – although I still believe there is a god. I honestly don’t have a grudge anymore, but I feel the practices at Liberty are harmful to families and that to not speak out would be to silently give assent to them. I wish everyone there the best. I hope everyone involved can find healing and wholeness.

Thanks for reading and considering my story."

Do you have a story to tell? Has Liberty Church hurt you? Email your story to petertkintz@gmail.com and I will have it posted!