“God wants you to be free.” Pastor Neely’s mission to support survivors of domestic violence.
Pastor Michael Neely, himself a survivor of domestic abuse, offers compassionate support to individuals struggling with the complex decision of whether to remain in abusive relationships influenced by deeply held religious beliefs. Drawing from his personal experience and pastoral leadership, he actively advocates for transforming how faith communities address domestic violence—challenging traditional attitudes and promoting more effective, survivor-centered responses within churches. His work seeks to bridge the gap between faith and safety, empowering survivors to reclaim their autonomy while fostering nonviolent, healing communities.
Transcript of interview:
Pastor Michael Neely: Well, you know, it’s interesting because, in order to even free myself, because even though I filed the papers, I was still wrestling with the whole theology, right? So I began to do an in-depth study myself. I began to research scriptures in a way that I had not researched this particular subject matter.
And I finally came to the conclusion, okay, these folk have been wrong all these years. There’s no way that God condones violence, expects somebody to stay abused. Suffering in an abusive relationship does not bring God any glory. There’s nothing redemptive about that. So I had pretty much mapped out what I now know to be a solid theological position on abuse, marriage, divorce, and so forth and so forth.
So one night I’m teaching Bible study. It’s about 100 to 150 people in attendance. And midway through the Bible study, this lady raises her hand because there was an open Bible study where you can ask questions. And this lady says, could you explain to us what the Bible says about abuse, marriage, divorce and what you think and how you think God feels about it?
And I’m telling you, man. You would think a bright light came on because even folk that were kind of slumped down in their pews all of a sudden rose up to the edge, like what is he going to say? Right? So I walked them through a step-by-step process how God hates abuse. And God doesn’t want any woman to stay in an abusive relationship. I said, God wants you free. We ended the Bible study that night. The next day I came into my office at nine o’clock, believe it or not, by 10:30, I had received 18 phone calls from 18 different women who were sitting in that Bible study, and 14 of them were sitting next to the man that was abusing them.
That blew my mind. I said, “Wow!” So it’s not just an isolated incident with me, especially being a man. This is an epidemic in the church and the faith community that has been swept under the rug. Matter of fact, there was two things that stood out to me that night. There was one lady that called me and told me about her abusive husband. And I used to hear stories about her being mean and cantankerous and nobody wanted to be around her. I now understand that her silence and meanness was because she was being abused, not because she was a mean person. There was one lady in particular who told me her story, they’re so horrific. And I said to her, “How long has this been going on?” She said,”for 17 years.” I said, “Well, let me ask you this question. Have you ever talked to any church leaders, clergy, pastors, about your situation?” She says, “Yes. I’ve been in four different churches and they all told me the same thing. Stay and pray.” She said, “You are the first pastor that said, God wants me free.”
And I said to her, “Well, should you ever decide to leave your husband, I will help you in any way I can.” Now, this was on a Wednesday morning when I talked to her. So that Thursday morning when I came into my office, she called me and she said, “I’m leaving my husband tomorrow. Can you be at my house at 10 o’clock?” And when she told me who her husband was, I almost dropped the phone because I knew him. I knew him very well. He was a people person. Gregarious personality, likable. It stunned me, but I believed her. So that next day, that Friday I had on my jeans and sneakers, because she did mention they were going to move. She’s not going to take everything just enough so she can survive and so forth and so forth. So when I got there, she had a couple of her nephews with her. She had her daughter sitting around the corner from the church just in case he left. She was a smart woman. I didn’t know anything about a safety plan, but she had a safety plan and so I was helping her nephews move and she walked up to me and said, “Pastor, I don’t want you to help with the physical stuff.” I said, “Well, what do you want me to do?” She said, “Did you bring your Bible with you?” I said,”Yes, I did.” She said, “Could you go get it?” I went to my car, I grabbed my Bible. I came back and I said, “What do you want me to do?” She says, “I feel like the Hebrew children who are leaving Egypt and the terror of Pharaoh; and Moses stood at the Red Sea and held up his staff until the people crossed over to freedom. The only thing that’s going to make me feel safe is if you’re standing on this front porch holding up your Bible until we are finished.” I look back on that moment now I can still see it as if it was yesterday, and I realize now what an empowering, monumental moment that was for her. But for me as well, it shifted my entire ministry.
And so I stood there for an hour. Now Moses had Aaron to help hold his arms up. I didn’t have anybody, so I switched arms every five, 10 minutes, you know, and I’m standing there; and the whole time I’m standing there, it was a sacred moment. It is the best way I can explain it.
And so when we finished packing up everything, there’s two cars. They’re all loaded up. And so I get in my car, I’m the third car. I hugged her, bid her farewell. We drove down the street about a half a block. Then she was in the middle car, it stopped. She was on the passenger side and she got out. And so I stopped and I got out of my car and I said, “Are you okay?” Now I’m 6’4” and she was about 5’2”, maybe 5’3”, and she looked up at me with tears streaming down her face and she said, “Please tell me one more time that God wants me free.” And I looked at her with tears coming down my face, and I said, “God wants you free. As a matter of fact, I believe that He and the angels are having a party right now because of what is taking place here today.” She hugged me. I never saw her again. Never saw her again. But she got in the car, the window was rolled down, and I could hear her screaming out of the window. “I’m free! I’m free! I’m free!”
I’ll never forget it. I could still hear her voice to this day. And so when I got back to my office, I closed my door and I said, “OK, Lord, this is a issue. This is a real problem. And I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know where to start. But I believe You are calling me to this ministry to help set the captives free.” Flash forward a couple of weeks later. I’m at a meeting with a group called Pastors on Patrol, and they would bring different organizations in to do presentations to see if we wanted to get involved. And so there were some representatives there from an organization called The Spring of Tampa Bay, one of the largest domestic violence organizations here in the Tampa Bay area, perhaps even in Florida. And, they have a shelter and they do great work, and they were talking about their work. And then at the end of the presentation, the lady stood up and said, “But I want to be honest with you all, I am hesitant. I’m hesitant to get involved with pastors and clergy again.” And I raised my hand and I said, “Why?” She said, “Because in the past when we have allowed clergy and pastors and churches to come in and minister to the women who are women of faith, we found ourselves beating our heads against the wall because while we were trying to get the women out, unbeknownst to us, they were trying to convince the women to stay. And so when we found that out, we cut off ties with clergy.” She said, “So if that’s your position, then we really cannot use you.” I stood up and I said, “That is not my position. I want to work with you all. When can I start?” I was the only one that volunteered and there were about 15 pastors in that room. I was the only one that volunteered. And so I started working with The Spring, and they were part of a committee of a group of leaders to bring to the Tampa Bay area, an organization called the Family Justice Center, which the Family Justice Center is connected with the International Alliance of Hope, there are 150 in the United States right now. But this, at this particular time we received one of the 15 original Family Justice Centers,started by a gentleman out of San Diego by the name of Casey Gwinn. And basically in layman’s terms, the Family Justice Center is an organization where you have, it becomes a one-stop shop for victims of domestic violence. It gathers together every domestic violence organization from different walks of life, puts them under one roof with their collaboration with wraparound services so that a victim can walk through the doors and never have to go anywhere else. She can get everything she needs under one roof. It makes sense. It was a great organization. So I got involved, became a board member of the Family Justice Center, helped develop the interfaith chaplaincy program there, and that’s where the real work really began. And I’ve been an advocate ever since.
Stephanie: What do you say to somebody who comes to you in this situation?
Pastor Neely: Yeah, that, that’s an excellent question. And, I don’t have a formula per se, but I’ll tell you what I’ve done based upon some of the things that I’ve encountered. During the six years that the Family Justice Center was in Tampa, we had 14,000 people come through our doors, predominantly women. I counseled hundreds of women of faith. I actually counseled the wives of six pastors because unfortunately there are pastors who are abusers, and some of them are wolves in sheep’s clothing. One particular lady, and anybody that listens can Google her. Her story is public. You’d have to dig a little bit deeper now because it’s been quite, it’s been over a decade. But, her name was Kimberly Alexander and she made an appointment with me and she came into the Family Justice Center, 80 pounds soaking wet, big dark shades on, and she tells me her story and I minister to her. She came back the next week. She never took off her glasses and she never raised her head when I was talking and when she was talking. So about the fifth week she comes in and for the first time she took her glasses off. She had gained a little weight and she says, “I need to tell you something. The first appointment I made with you, before I came here, I went to the Skyway Bridge.” Now the Skyway Bridge in Florida unfortunately is also known where a lot of folk have gone to commit suicide, they jump off the bridge. And she went, she said, “I went to that bridge. I’m sitting in the car,” she said, “I went to that bridge to take my life. And I heard God say, ‘Don’t you do it!’ And I told God, I said, ‘Well, I’m going to go see this…’ “And she said, “I said it indignantly, ‘I’m going to go see this pastor. And if he didn’t have anything to say to me, that makes sense, I’m going to come back to this bridge, and I’m jumping off.’ ” And then she looks at me, she says, “I want you to know you saved my life.”
And so I think for, for, for women of faith or just people of faith who have been wounded by the church and who have been given bad advice and bad theology, that has played a major role in them remaining in abusive relationships and unfortunately taking the lives of many. I know some here in Tampa who died unfortunately at the hands of their abusers, and they were all told to stay and pray. But for those that have survived and made it out, I think part of it is recognizing, “That was not God. That was a particular church with bad theology, that was not God.” I think that’s a huge, huge step in the right direction. Then, I think, filtering what people tell you, the advice they give you through the lenses of the character of God. In other words, what does it say about God if He tells me to stay and be beaten? What does that say about God’s character? And that’s not the kind of God that I want to serve. That kind of God is sadistic. There’s something wrong with Him.
And so one of the things that I’m doing, and I’ve been doing, and now I’m seeing a lot of momentum, is, I’m developing a nonprofit called Sacred Rising. And it’s going to be a training institute for the faith community, to teach them about the nuances and intricacies of domestic violence, how to counsel, help them see their past failures and the way they’ve taught certain passages about submission, why submitting and divorce and remarriage and so forth and so forth. And for the first time, I would say in the 22 years that I’ve been trying to do this, I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
One of the things that happened here in Florida was Department of Children and Families; I partnered with them to develop a faith-based curriculum. And all the churches that went through the training, they were given a certificate, a designation on the Department of Children and Family’s website that said, you are a safe space for victims of domestic violence.
My church was the first church to receive that designation. In other words, let survivors know that you can go to this particular church. There will be no judgment. There will be welcome, love, unconditional. There will be a theology that says you made the right decision. There’ll be a theology that says captives should be free, and that you are more than a conqueror, that God sees you, that God understands you. And we welcome you with open arms and we’ll walk with you through your healing journey. So I would say to those to just be careful and do your homework before you get involved in another faith community and just ask them point blank what they think about abuse and remarriage and divorce and how do they feel about it. It’ll give you a gauge for what kind of place that you are getting ready to get involved in. That’s some practical things that I encourage people to do. Ask the hard questions.
Stephanie: So my guess is that somebody out there that’s listening needs to hear this. What do you have to say to them?
Pastor Neely: I would say, first of all, that it’s not your fault. Nothing that you’ve said or did gives the person a reason to abuse you. So that’s huge. And for them to realize that it’s not their fault, that’s the first step to freedom is realizing it’s not your fault. Secondly, be very, very careful. If you’re thinking about leaving, faithfully and privately contact an organization. Somebody in your city, your state, that knows about safety planning. And you need to do that in a way that doesn’t give the perpetrator access, maybe through a fictitious email, your girlfriend’s telephone, email mocks, things of that nature. You know, because there are all kind of spies online now. Be careful because when you leave, the violence will escalate. The most dangerous time for a person to leave an abusive relationship is when they get ready to leave. So be careful with that. Get sound advice. Be very, very careful and please understand that there is life after abuse. It’s going to take some time. You may have to leave a city, leave a state, leave some friends that you love, care about, but there is life after abuse and you cannot put a price on your emotional and mental and spiritual wellbeing. And for my people of faith, I would say that God sees you. He sees you. He has not abandoned you. He loves you and He wants you out as we all do.