Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Anna Vaughn: ‘Caught in the Crossfire’ - Responding to Spiritual Abuse

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Anna Vaughn: ‘Caught in the Crossfire’ - Responding to Spiritual Abuse · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  Most strong leaders start out with good intentions and really want to help people.
• 0:04
  But in some cases, they take their authority too far and begin patterns of abuse highlighted by manipulation and control, power trips.
• 0:14
  The ends justify the means to accomplish some big goal, supposedly for God.
• 0:19
  But what is spiritual abuse?
• 0:22
  And how can we expose it and help others who might be going through it?
• 0:26
  We're going to speak with author Anna Vaughn about this next.
• 0:33
  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events, defending biblical Christianity.
• 0:43
  No topic, off limits.
• 0:46
  And now, here's your host, David Firazo.
• 0:50
  Friends, thank you so much for tuning in watching, listening, sharing the podcast, praise God.
• 0:56
  We're getting out there.
• 0:58
  I want to give you the websites before I bring Anna in and introduce her stirred up ministries.com.
• 1:05
  I love being stirred up by God stirred up ministries.com.
• 1:09
  Also the book I'm holding in my hand here, caught in the crossfire.
• 1:13
  You can get that over on Amazon, Amazon.com, look up Anna Vaughn or caught in the crossfire.
• 1:21
  And also on her website, you can click on over to her podcast.
• 1:26
  It's called Wanted at the Table podcast with Anna.
• 1:30
  So bring her in right now.
• 1:31
  She's the founder of stirred up ministries.
• 1:33
  She travels and speaks, communicating the heart of the father.
• 1:37
  She's a past victim of spiritual abuse and helps others now recognize and identify the signs.
• 1:44
  This is very important because this is a bigger problem than I think we want to admit.
• 1:50
  She leads young adult and women's events and she and her husband Luke reside in Michigan, not too far from where we are here.
• 1:58
  Anna, welcome to World View Matters. Good to see you.
• 2:01
  Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
• 2:04
  I'm excited to talk about this book and this topic.
• 2:08
  But I want to, first of all, define, I think it's important for the terms to be understood by people, spiritual abuse.
• 2:15
  And you can add to anything that you want after I share this.
• 2:19
  It's any attempt to exert power and control over someone using religion, faith or beliefs.
• 2:27
  That can be spiritual abuse and it also spiritual abuse uses fear, intimidation or violence or something else to harm or control other people.
• 2:38
  Is there anything you want to add to that before we dive into this, Anna?
• 2:42
  I want to say too. It's a very isolating thing where you are using the Bible.
• 2:46
  So you're taking scriptures out of context and then you're isolating your victims as well by telling them that they can't share what's happening inside of your ministry, your church with the outside world.
• 2:57
  So anytime that you're being silenced, you feel fear that you're being isolated, intimidated.
• 3:02
  You are definitely experiencing spiritual abuse.
• 3:05
  Well, if you think about that, there's something wrong. That should be a red flag right off the top.
• 3:10
  If they don't want you to share anything about what's going on and we wish you'd be transparent as Christians, we shouldn't have anything to hide, right?
• 3:18
  You would think so what ends up happening is that you are told, especially when maybe you're a young Christian or just young in your faith, when you're being told that the outside world won't understand.
• 3:30
  They're going to try to come against what's happening here. We're reaching people, you know, the word of God is being spread, you're watching things that are miraculous happening people's lives.
• 3:40
  And so if the outside world doesn't understand what's happening, then they begin to convince you that, you know, that you're doing something radical for God that nobody else is doing.
• 3:51
  So Anna, I'm sure you're good at condensing this and bullet pointing your experience now.
• 3:57
  But what happened in your own life or ministry that brought about this book caught in the crossfire?
• 4:05
  Yeah, so I grew up in the church and my grandparents had missionaries in another home. I fell in love with God. I fell in love with ministry. I wanted to be a missionary.
• 4:13
  So right out of high school, I did a discipleship and leadership program that I absolutely loved. And then after that I found myself in full time ministry.
• 4:21
  I thought I'd hit the jackpot. I was ready to reach people to evangelize to disciple people that were under me.
• 4:29
  I was in a leadership position as well as being led. But very quickly started realizing I was in a place that was toxic. That was manipulative. I was working 60, 70 hours a week.
• 4:40
  I was told that I was working for God. I forgot. Not forgot, but I was basically told that everything that you had to do for God mattered more than just his love and his acceptance of just who you are.
• 4:53
  And so I was always told that my call was too big to sit on the headlines and not use it. And so I really got trapped into doing all these things for man.
• 5:02
  And I was having scripture twisted and I was being controlled and I was in a situation of fear and intimidation.
• 5:10
  And I was being told that my leader knew God more than I did and that he could hear God's voice better than I could. And so for the first time in my life, I started questioning everything that I'd ever believed started having fear, panic, anxiety.
• 5:25
  And so that was the turning point where I had to come to terms with what I was experiencing and what people behind below me were experiencing.
• 5:35
  It's sad, especially when you see others that are being affected by it too. And the anxiety, I can relate the anxiety that people go through in that situation.
• 5:48
  In your book, you have a lot of other people, Netty, Ella, Danny, Shiloh, David, other students, then there's Jonah.
• 5:59
  So I'm guessing you share your experience and then other people you read about their experience with spiritual abuse.
• 6:09
  The question that comes to my mind is how did you connect with them and how do they feel safe about approaching you and you writing about their stories?
• 6:17
  Yeah, so a lot of these people, I took like I split some of my stories, some of my other friends who'd walk through this ministry with me story up into multiple characters.
• 6:26
  And then some of these characters are stories from people that I've heard about.
• 6:31
  And so I actually went to a lot of people that I've done ministry with and I said would it be okay if I created a character based off of your experiences so that we can help other people recognize that what they're going through is not healthy.
• 6:43
  And it was crazy how many people were willing to share their story in this type of way because it felt safe, but all of them said the same thing of if I can help one person not walk through what I walked through that it's worth it for me.
• 6:56
  Oh my goodness, and that's the heart of God, I believe if we can just help one person and it ends up helping a lot of people like your book.
• 7:04
  I'm sure it's going to help a lot of people has already it came out earlier this year, correct or was it last year?
• 7:10
  Yes, it became out of the spring early, okay, so it's already helping people and you're already getting out there speaking.
• 7:17
  Thank you, I just really want to thank you for doing that because church issues can be messy because Christians at first of all pride is a big issue.
• 7:27
  We have a hard time admitting we're wrong and we can see pride in others, especially when there's sin involved or this type of what we're talking about specifically spiritual abuse.
• 7:37
  Let me ask you this once you recognized you started saying these are the signs you didn't know them at first because you're in the situation sometimes it can be hard to see, right?
• 7:48
  But once you recognize this, what happened to you eventually approach the person that was being abusive and controlling how did that work in your experience?
• 8:00
  Yeah, so I want to first say it took me two years to recognize that I was in spiritual abuse, so it takes a very long time.
• 8:07
  There's a lot of conditioning that goes along with this.
• 8:10
  You really truly believe that all the good outweighs the bad.
• 8:14
  I knew that I was in a toxic environment, but I believed that the good outweigh the bad and you almost get into this unhealthy, martyr mentality of like this is what it looks like to serve God.
• 8:25
  I'm willing to sacrifice my mental health and willing to sacrifice my time and my energy if that means that one person gets to encounter God.
• 8:34
  But what I was missing was that in a leadership position we should have everybody below us also be in countering God and feeling love and growing and that's not what was happening.
• 8:43
  We were really having to sacrifice so much to have the gospel spread, which was beautiful in that sense, but in the other sense of abuse and God don't go together.
• 8:54
  And so once I started recognizing it was actually I was in a it was in a prayer meeting and my dad my parents were there and my dad came up to me and he gave me a hug and he said I hear the Lord saying that if you never do any type of ministry for him again, he'll still love you.
• 9:11
  And that just shook me.
• 9:14
  I was like, oh my gosh, I remembered the character of God.
• 9:18
  I remembered what I had been raised in and I remembered that God's love covered all things and I started realizing I'm in a situation where I have a very broken leader who is choosing pride, who is choosing
• 9:31
  they can't come to terms with their own pain and their own fear and what they have walked through in life that they need to bring everyone down with them.
• 9:39
  And I'm going along with this when I know the truth, I know the truth of God's love and I know that it covers all things and I'm dragging these other people that I'm in leadership over down with me.
• 9:50
  And what began to happen was when I walked away from this ministry, I went through four years of inner healing, had no desire to write a book about it.
• 9:59
  I wasn't interested in calling out any type of ministry, but the Lord asked me to do it in a way that was loving and kind, but also in a way that could call out the details of what spiritual abuse looks like for those who didn't have that foundation.
• 10:15
  Because so many of the people that experience what I experience to walk away from the Lord all together, they said, if this is God, I want nothing to do with it.
• 10:23
  And my heart broke because I said, this is nothing to do with God, this has to do with broken people who are taking people down to start a building them up in ministry.
• 10:33
  So many things come to mind based on what you just shared, hurt people, hurt people.
• 10:40
  And we should never walk away from God if a human being, a sinful human being, disappoints you or hurts you or is not acting in a godly way.
• 10:51
  Well, you recognize the signs and as you said, it took two years. Why do you think, and I know you write about this, why do some people stay in it and they stay under the power of an abusive leader?
• 11:03
  Well, even when they know, as you mentioned, I love the word toxic, by the way, perfect, it can be a toxic environment. Why do you think so many people stay in that?
• 11:14
  Well, it takes a long time to recognize when I did finally see it, the Lord asked me to stay for another year.
• 11:21
  So because I had people under me, I really felt like I could see what was happening. I wasn't going to allow myself to be manipulated anymore.
• 11:29
  I felt like I could just kind of lay low and help those in this ministry that we're still a part of it.
• 11:35
  The big reason why people stay in church, they stay in ministries because it is their entire life, it is their community, it is their friendship.
• 11:42
  For me, it was my living situation, it was my job, it was my entire life, and it felt embarrassing to leave a place that I'd bought so hard to be in.
• 11:54
  I felt loved and cherished by those in the ministry that I really cared about.
• 11:58
  So while my leadership was toxic, there were so many amazing people in ministry that I just didn't want to lose.
• 12:04
  And so specific to our ministry, and this does happen in churches as well, those who had left prior to me or were asked to leave, we weren't allowed to speak to anymore.
• 12:14
  And so I couldn't imagine losing my community, losing my friendship, losing my life, and something I'd worked so hard to build until literally I was laying in bed one night,
• 12:25
  and the Lord had asked me to stay for a year, about a month before I was time to go.
• 12:29
  It was laying in bed, and I literally felt the grace lift off that season, and the Lord said, it's time to go.
• 12:35
  And I knew then, I knew that it was all going to be worth it, and when I left, and when everything came to a head, I did confront my leader, I shared what had happened.
• 12:45
  And I left, and everybody left with me, and the ministry ended up getting shut down because of it, and I know that's why God asked me to stay.
• 12:52
  Wow. So let's pack up just a little bit, when you confronted this spiritual abuse of person, how did they receive it, were they defensive, were they prideful, did they deny it, or were they, did they recognize any of the things you were saying as being true?
• 13:12
  I was massively gasoline, and so the entire conversation was how everything was my fault, that I wasn't submitted to leadership, I had heart issues, that I was seeing all of these things as false, I was the prideful one.
• 13:31
  And it was the first time I had just literally broke, and I started weeping, and my leader had never seen me cry, and so then the whole thing was flipped, and then I was told what an incredible person I was, and how hard I had worked.
• 13:46
  And that was what I saw, I was like, wow, this is what gas lighting looks like, like I had heard all of these terms, and I had had an incredible person come to me a few months earlier, who was just kind enough to point out manipulation and gas lighting and abuse.
• 14:01
  And so I'd heard all of these words, I didn't want to believe it about my leader, and so when I was finally solid, I was like, okay, this is what it is.
• 14:09
  And I had was secure enough in my own identity, and in my own foundation, I was able to listen to it, walk away from it, and then I finally went and told my parents what was happening to me.
• 14:18
  But I had had other people in ministry with me that the same scenario happened to them, and they ended up having a panic attack on the bathroom floor, because they believed what was being said.
• 14:30
  And what ends up happening is this leader is built up so big in your mind, okay, your pastors built up so big in your mind, they are everything, they hear from the Lord, they have all the right traits, their charismatic, their outgoing, their fun to be around.
• 14:44
  So for two years, you think that this is this person they're building you up, they're encouraging you, they're calling out your giftings, then you start operating in these giftings and callings, they become intimidated by this, they start operating in pride.
• 14:57
  They now their job is to tear you down to make you nothing, but they're already built up so big in your mind, so you believe them, oh, this must be who I am, I am failing, I am worthless.
• 15:07
  You forget all of these things that you know is your identity of what God says about you, because your leader becomes God in a lot of scenarios.
• 15:16
  You don't realize it at the time, you would say, of course I'm worshiping Jesus, of course, I'm submitted to Jesus, but this leader becomes so big in your mind, you hear their every word, you hang on to their every word, so then when they tell you that you are worthless and nothing, your whole identity just breaks.
• 15:32
  And you walk away from them and send you go, if that is Jesus, I want nothing to do with him.
• 15:37
  Wow, and by the way, friends, the book is called, caught in the crossfire, it's not a long book, I mean, what is it 160 pages or something like that is I Christmas is coming up, this might be a great book to get a lot of people.
• 15:54
  So tell us about the cover.
• 15:58
  Yeah, so when I started thinking about writing the book and the Lord asked me to share my story, I closed my eyes and this was the vision he gave me.
• 16:06
  There's the cross all the way up at the top, you can't get to it because there's so much fire in between you and the cross, you literally can't move it.
• 16:15
  It felt like for the four years of ministry, I was just burned along the way the entire time trying to get to Jesus, trying to get to the cross.
• 16:23
  And when I had that realization of the love of God that I was already enough that I didn't have to measure up or compare to anyone else that my calling was enough that I could hear the voice of God that he was pleased with me.
• 16:38
  Suddenly the fires removed and there's the cross, right, there's redemption, there's salvation, the reason why Jesus went to the cross not only was for our salvation, so that, but also that he could tear that veil into and you could go boldly into the throne room of grace and obtain mercy from God the Father in relationship with him.
• 16:56
  And so the back of the book is the fires been removed, the cross is there, what gets between us and Jesus is religion.
• 17:04
  It is man-made things that ever have nothing to do with God in his character, it's the Pharisees in the Bible, it's Saul and David, it is literally religion trying to stop us from the mercy and the grace that Jesus already obtained for you.
• 17:19
  And if you will just go to him and say, I'm not letting anything else stand in the way that fires and removed and there's the cross, there's my redemption, there's my mercy, not because I'm perfect, not because I have it all together, but because I understand what he did for me and that was more than enough.
• 17:38
  Wow, I'm just looking at the cover now that you're explaining it, that's pretty impactful, I know God must have definitely led you on this, so I know this is your first book, right?
• 17:48
  It's actually my fourth book.
• 17:50
  Your fourth book?
• 17:51
  Yes, when I was walking out.
• 17:54
  Tell us about the others.
• 17:55
  When I was walking out my other inner healing journey for the first four years, I actually wrote three books on the Trinity.
• 18:01
  And I, my healing journey involved walking out each part of healing through each part of the Trinity, so let chosen and valued.
• 18:11
  They're on my website as well, but I thought when the Lord told me like, you're going to write a book, I wrote my books, I thought I was done.
• 18:17
  And then the Lord said, now that you're healed, you're going to write about spiritual abuse from a place of healing and illness.
• 18:23
  Praise God.
• 18:24
  By the way, friends, just click on shop on her website, stirred up ministries.com.
• 18:29
  You can see the Trinity trilogy.
• 18:32
  I did see that.
• 18:33
  I had forgotten about that though.
• 18:34
  Anna, I do want to ask you for people.
• 18:36
  This is going to help a lot of people.
• 18:38
  I really believe that with all my heart.
• 18:41
  Tell us about some of the earliest warning signs that you noticed, but weren't exactly sure what they were of the spiritual abuse.
• 18:51
  So my, the earliest warning sign was actually before I even joined the ministry.
• 18:56
  I had been hired on.
• 18:57
  I had just had surgery and my recovery was taking a little bit longer than anticipated.
• 19:03
  And so I called my leader up and said, hey, I'm going to have to start a few weeks later than, then anticipated I had brain surgery.
• 19:10
  So it was kind of a big deal.
• 19:12
  And his response was, no, you need to start now.
• 19:15
  You have to start when we decided you were going to start and actually sent the person I was replacing to my home to train me in my recovery hospital bed inside my house.
• 19:28
  So the red flags were very early on the work schedule.
• 19:33
  The fact that money was going places that money should have never went.
• 19:38
  The people that were under me and myself paid to, well, I didn't pay to be there. They paid to be there.
• 19:43
  And then I was taking a salary that was ridiculously low salary when I agreed to it.
• 19:49
  But so money was being moved and taken places that it shouldn't have been.
• 19:54
  We all lived in a home together.
• 19:56
  And so there was lots of promises that were made with groceries and things like that that were never obtained.
• 20:02
  And so there was a lot of red flags beginning where we were just making sacrifices that we should have never been making that were just not even human.
• 20:11
  And so those were those, but also like those were the obvious ones, but also just the way that he would talk.
• 20:18
  The gaslighting was constant.
• 20:20
  It was the building up in the tearing of down.
• 20:23
  It was like, you know, both had to go together.
• 20:26
  So you could never get too big for your bridges.
• 20:29
  And so that kind of became the whole model of ministry.
• 20:34
  And so the red flags were there, but you people always ask, well, why did you stay the red flags were there?
• 20:41
  And it was because we were reaching people and I was watching the impact because there's not a single person that I have seen do ministry that's not anointed in their lane.
• 20:51
  They step out of their lane. They can really hurt a lot of people.
• 20:54
  And that's what was happening.
• 20:56
  Wow. So much, so much good information here.
• 21:00
  I believe that's why it's great to have you on.
• 21:02
  Before I get to the next question, how's your health now?
• 21:06
  Are you doing well? You said you had brain surgery. It's on very serious.
• 21:11
  Yeah, I'm doing very well. The Lord completely healed me through all of that.
• 21:16
  So it was it was incredible such that's a miracle story for another day, but it was maybe another book.
• 21:23
  Yes, exactly.
• 21:25
  Okay, so the next question.
• 21:28
  There is a passive aggressive element to spiritual abuse.
• 21:32
  What was that like for you or can you explain that?
• 21:36
  Yeah, so I had experienced that a lot with how that was done.
• 21:43
  I kind of grew up and maybe a little bit of understanding passive aggressive as maybe a form of communication.
• 21:49
  And so I don't think I found it as off or off putting it first until I was surrounded by people who did not grow up that way.
• 21:56
  And so being just direct and communicating needs desires and wants was never something that I experienced in ministry.
• 22:07
  And so it would always be this idea and this guessing game of this is probably what we should do.
• 22:12
  And then if you got it wrong, then you were taken out like you would get in trouble, right?
• 22:17
  And so that was where that fear aspect would come in.
• 22:20
  And I think that this is a massive play for spiritual abuse because if you don't directly tell anybody what you want, then when it goes wrong, you have them to blame, right?
• 22:30
  So in a person in a situation where there's some manipulator and they are in control, they always have to have a fall man.
• 22:38
  And so they can never directly communicate what they want or what they expect of you because if they do and it goes wrong, they won't have their fall man anymore.
• 22:46
  And so everything has to be communicated passive aggressively or in a way that's unclear and that you should just assume and you should just already know.
• 22:56
  Okay, before we run out of time, I've got to ask you because I know a lot of people have gone through something similar and unfortunately they have not been able to reconcile with their boss or the leader or the pastor, whoever it was.
• 23:14
  How can you can you tell us if you were able to reconcile, was there any repentance or admission on the other person's part?
• 23:23
  Yeah, so I've never received repentance from that leader very early on, the Lord gave me the scripture of Exodus 14, 14, hold your peace and I will fight for you.
• 23:35
  The Lord told me very early on, this is not your fight and you should never basically do not wait for repentance, but what he did tell me was you will walk in forgiveness because if you do not walk in forgiveness, this will directly affect you.
• 23:48
  So as soon as I left the ministry, the Lord asked me to tied to the ministry, which I thought was crazy, but I knew that was a step of forgiveness from my own heart. So I tied to the ministry.
• 23:58
  He asked me to send my first book to my leadership and just write simply in the book that I forgave them and I did that and then he also had me walk in repentance as well.
• 24:08
  I think it's too full that I needed repent for the anger and the bitterness I felt towards my leadership also towards those that I had hurt by following my leadership.
• 24:18
  When I knew what they were asking me to do was wrong, I did it anyway. And so it was too full for me of continuing to forgive them, but also not be a victim.
• 24:27
  The Lord said, I'm taking you from victim to victor, you will not stay here and you will not be subject to this, you will walk in repentance, you will walk in forgiveness and you will become a victor.
• 24:37
  You will not be the girl who walked in, you know, who had the spiritual abuse story that never got over it.
• 24:42
  You will use the story as an empowering place for people that no matter where you walked, no matter what you walked through, no matter the abuse you walked through.
• 24:50
  The Lord weeps with you, he wants to heal you, but when you get to that place of wholeness and healing, which you will, you are now a victor over that.
• 24:59
  And it is your job, no matter what's happened to you, it is your job to walk in forgiveness and repentance and that's our part and the Lord covers the rest.
• 25:08
  Amen. From victim to victor, I like that. I remember a pastor years ago that I knew would often say you can get bitter or you can get better.
• 25:18
  You know, so it's our choice how to respond in that moment and it's hard, but if we're doing the biblical thing, forgiveness, do not allow bitterness to take root and continue to love and be the bigger person, you end your book by saying you want people to separate Jesus from the abuse in ministry.
• 25:38
  So can you wrap us up with some final thoughts in the last couple minutes here, what that looks like? Absolutely.
• 25:45
  Relationship with Jesus is everything. And so you're going to experience leaders for the rest of your life, you're going to do it right and who are going to do it wrong because we're all humans and we are the only ones that God has to use.
• 25:57
  And so when we keep our eyes on Jesus and he is the ultimate where no matter what happens in church, no matter what happens in ministry, we're bold.
• 26:07
  We can live boldly where we can call things out that are wrong and we can come alongside side people and protect them when they go through hard situations, but ultimately we don't allow ourselves to get better.
• 26:17
  We don't allow ourselves to become church haters and we don't hate the body of Christ. I see that so many times with people who've been through hard situations.
• 26:26
  The answer is not leading church or just being down with the body of Christ. We have a job to steward the love of God and to bring it into people's lives and to discern the spirits correctly and to walk in kindness and forgiveness and love, but also to walk in boldness.
• 26:42
  So I would encourage you that as you become that victor in the body of Christ, in church, in your community, that you would allow Jesus to just come into every broken place and heal you and then to send you out into your calling and your passion and don't be afraid of well, what if it happens again, if it does the Lord will equip you to handle it, but you got to keep your eyes on him and he has to be everything, nothing else matters, but the relationship that you have with the Lord.
• 27:11
  What a powerful way to end this and a van. I hope you're out there speaking and writing. I hope you do another book. Your voice is important needed and God's given you a lot of wisdom in your young age. I can say that because I'm quite a bit older.
• 27:26
  But friends, you can pick up the book, caught in the crossfire on Amazon. I encourage you to get multiple copies. It is a very short book. We're just so thankful.
• 27:36
  An important topic and I'm so thankful that you wrote it. Sorry you had to go through it, but God is using this big time. So thanks again, Anna.
• 27:44
  Thank you so much.
• 27:46
  Thanks, friends. We're watching, listening and sharing. God bless you. And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
• 27:56
  You