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jesus gonna be here. he gonna be here soon.

let’s sweep this one under the rug. no voice too loud will be heard. i will shut you up. i will slap you in the face if you disobey. i will tell you to keep your mouth together. do not tell your story. it’s not really yours afterall. you have a problem with my authority? fuck you.

a church i grew up in all my life screwed me in ways you cannot expect me to explain and you to understand. so i won’t. sometimes i am an island. because the majority of those who know me now, no nothing about mega-churches or even churches in general. so i don’t bother explaining, i don’t bother telling them about the people that fill the walls. the elders, the staff, the volunteers. the people that were always my life.

the fake smiles in the hallways. the willow ADD. the rumors. the CEO.

a superchurch is run like a business. we are about numbers. how many bodies walk through the doors. how many souls we can reach. how far we can make it up the ladder. it’s not about what you know, it’s who you know.

it starts with a CEO. i will call mine, bill. bill is old. he started the company. had a plan, had a dream, had a reason. he says it, we do it. he moves, we move. we see him walking down the hall, we vaccuum the carpet in front of him so he doesn’t have to step on the filfth. don’t get me wrong. bill is a great business man. a great leader. one of the best. but like most great leaders who grow old, he has grown incapable of being wrong. he feels that he is the hands that move the place and that it would crumble without him. the problem is that when you are in the business of saving souls, you cannot put your hope in one man. but we do.

to say this superchurch is a cult, is not only incorrect, it is uneducated. the superchurch is a great business, with an insane budget, and unearthly demographic.

we are in the business of souls people!

beneath the CEO’s command are the elders, or leadership team, the partners. the people who take bill’s ideas, tweak them and see to it that they are delegated to an area leader. these people are the ones you would want to see if you had a request or concern. but unless it was vital it would not make it here. and you are not to decide what is vital. they do not have time for such things.

i got to meet these people once. two years ago. i was a lowly office girl. administrative assistant if you will. i was known by a wide variety of people, but i did not have much a voice. i did though, have six or seven people working for me doing what i couldn’t. these girls looked up to me, as if i knew anything. and then they were told how i let them down.

i got a call from bill’s office. it was his secretary. i had to meet, not with bill, but with his partners. i had done something bad, and the building was abuzz with the information. they needed the truth. little did i know that my problem with me, directly linked with one of the directors, and they needed my knowledge.

i thought they wanted the story. the rape story. the sob story. but no. they wanted the dirt on the party that i went to, before the party i went to, that sent me to the police, that split an office, that lead to the buzz in bill’s ear. they wanted me to spill- then they wanted me to shut up. and then they fired me. but told me to make it look like it was my decision. i had to tell my people that i was wrong. and in my weakness i did.

to this day, anyone who give two shits, will remember the story of the party with underage drinking that happened at a director’s house, where a twenty-year old got gang raped on new years eve. not true. but when it didn’t happen to you, who the fuck cares?

no version of the truth. the truth will set you free. i was not allowed to defend the truth. people already knew what they wanted. i was then used as an example. they swept me under the rug and held conferences about me:

“how underage drinking gets you raped.”

and if it couldn’t be worse, those who wanted favor of any kind with the building. with the man. would not defend my name. and my story was told to whoever the elders felt they should tell. and i will never know the names of the people given the information. because they never touched me. never showed concern. i was given a listing for alcoholics anonymous and was told to stay away from the building for a while. my face brought on too many questions. and whenever i come back to the place, i look around, i look to see my old friends, i look to see who says hi and who remembers me.

and in a place where i used to want to be known, to be, i now close my eyes and pray to the God i used to know, to grant me one more prayer.

make me invisible.