Collegedale church launches support group for domestic violence survivors

The half-dozen women quietly sitting in a semicircle range in age from 20somethings to senior adults. They include black, white, stay-at-home moms and career women.

Some are hesitant to look up and make eye contact; others wear their newly regained independence with pride -- shoulders back, heads up, decisive handshakes.

Despite the disparity in ages and backgrounds, they share a strong bond: They are all survivors of domestic and/or physical abuse.

As they slowly open up to discussion, they reveal nightmares they've withstood -- lives threatened with guns, controlling and manipulative spouses, even the need to disappear into shelters with closed social services files to prevent being tracked down by their abuser.

Now they are beginning the healing process, attending the inaugural meeting of a new support group for women who have experienced spousal or relational abuse. The group is an outreach of Collegedale Community Church's Safe Haven Ministry.

"We consider ourselves first responders in a way," says Felicia Phillips, founder of the support group and coordinator of the Safe Haven ministry. "We tell them God cares, the church cares, there is a way out, pray with them and direct them to Partnership for Families, Children and Adults for emergency assistance."

Each meeting opens with an introductory exercise to build trust and set the tone of a safe environment. Topics have been designed that range from discussing why leaving was so hard and building trust to learning assertive techniques and how to deal with authority figures. Each session closes with a "takeaway" idea for positive reinforcement, such as a thought or concept to focus on or practice in the coming week.

The participants, in turn, promise that anything said in the meeting remains completely confidential, to refrain from hurtful or inappropriate comments, and to maintain a nonjudgmental and supportive attitude toward other women in the group.

THE BIG QUESTION

The women's ministry was established by Collegedale Community Church Pastor Jerry Arnold, who has spoken on the topic of domestic violence and abuse three times from his pulpit. When he received a threatening phone call after the first sermon, he says: "I knew we'd hit something."

Arnold felt convinced of the need for a spousal abuse group after attending a regional conference of Adventist pastors. Seminar consultant Rene Drumm addressed pastors on the prevalence of domestic violence, recognizing the signs of abuse and ways in which the church could address the subject.

"As a man who was unfamiliar with domestic violence, the question to me was: 'If it's so bad, why don't they leave?' I went into the meeting very prejudiced toward that question," admits Arnold. "Rene made it very clear to us how women get trapped and don't feel they can leave. I left there thinking I would do anything I could to help these women who feel trapped."

Experts say a woman might stay in an abusive situation for several reasons: They don't have the money to leave and live on their own; they stay to protect children still living at home; the batterer promises to change; or they're just too embarrassed to discuss the abuse with an outsider -- especially revealing it to another man such as her family preacher.

"Frequently a pastor's response when a woman finally gets the courage to come to a pastor is disbelief," says Phillips. "Women are not taken seriously."

When LifeWay Research in Nashville conducted a survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors in 2013, results showed that the topic of domestic abuse is seldom addressed from the pulpit. Of the pastors surveyed, 42 percent said they rarely or never spoke to their congregations about domestic or sexual violence, and 29 percent of those said they did not believe domestic violence was a problem in their churches.

Upon returning from the eye-opening conference where Drumm spoke, Arnold gave his first sermon denouncing domestic violence three years ago on the Saturday before Super Bowl Sunday.

"I was told that, statistically, Super Bowl Sunday is a day of high incidences of alcohol-fueled domestic violence," he says.

A 2014 survey published in Journal of Family Psychology reported that, after analyzing 25,000 incidents of "partner maltreatment," the rates of domestic violence were highest on Saturdays and Sundays. Rates of domestic violence reached "highs" on New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Fourth of July and, yes, Super Bowl Sunday.

When he told his 1,600-member congregation that one out of four women suffered from domestic violence, "that got everyone's attention," Arnold says emphatically.

"Overall, the sermon got a positive reaction. I would say at least three, and as many as six women, came up and offered to be part of a group to help others. In that first sermon, I emphasized, 'You come to us and we are going to listen and believe you.' For women who had been or were in abusive situations, it rang a chord."

But the pastor also received a threatening call, blaming him for "trying to break families up." Rosa Ashley, Collegedale Community Church secretary, says the call was a voice mail left at 3 a.m. following the first sermon.

"When I listened to that guy, it was eerie," she recalls. "If I had any hair on my back, it was standing up. Nothing happened, but I kept a stun gun handy by my desk for days in case someone walked into the office."

Arnold says he has continued to speak out against abuse since that first sermon. This year's Super Bowl sermon addressed verbal abuse.

"Last month, there was a tremendous sense of conviction from God that all of us need to clean up what we say. It's hard to make a presentation on verbal abuse if it doesn't cut across the board. We all are guilty of of it," says the pastor.

SAFE HAVEN MINISTRY FORMS

After the launch of his Super Bowl sermon, Arnold's next step was to enlist Phillips, who coordinates women's ministries for the church.

"He wanted to start a group to be the eyes and ears within the church to perceive where there might be a problem and have a program ready to help women in abusive situations," says Phillips.

Safe Haven was given a budget to finance training for Phillips and a handpicked group of women and also to purchase needed materials and books.

Phillips says the ministry established a crisis hotline -- notifying women in the church of its number by placing notices inside stall doors in the women's restrooms. Each notice had removable slips of paper imprinted with the hotline's phone number that could easily be slipped into a woman's purse.

"We referred a couple of women to the Partnership for Families, Children and Adults. But in three years, we got extremely few calls," says Phillips. "So we continued to look for an effective way to help women in the community."

She hopes the launch of the nondenominational support group accomplishes that.

"It's been said that it takes an average of seven to 10 times being abused before a victim actually leaves. We want people who have gotten out of relationships and are at the point of needing help in healing," says Phillips. "We feel it's a privilege to serve God's girls."

Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.