Filed: September 9, 2017
Defendants: Pastor Mike Meinema | Worship Pastor Tom Lowen | Southridge Community Church
Members of the jury, by the time I arrived at Southridge Community Church, I had already survived what most people will never face in a lifetime.
I had survived a father who strangled me into unconsciousness. A priest who abused me for two years while a village looked the other way. Fourteen years at Wellspring, where I was falsely accused, publicly removed, and then followed into my next ministry by the very leaders who had wronged me.
I arrived at Southridge not as a naive man with unrealistic expectations. I arrived as a man who had already been broken by the church, who knew exactly what betrayal looked like, and who chose – despite everything – to try one more time.
I served Southridge for nine years. Life groups. Coffee ministry. Setup. The worship team. Nine years of showing up, contributing, and investing in a community I wanted to believe in.
What Southridge gave me in return was the most devastating betrayal of them all – not because it was the worst thing ever done to me, but because it was the last thing. This is where my faith in the institutional church finally died. And the evidence will show exactly who killed it, how they did it, and why what followed nearly killed me too.
The jury needs to understand a structural fact before the specific events of this case can be properly evaluated.
Southridge's Worship Pastor, Tom Lowen, was Andrew Thompson's mentor.
The man who had publicly humiliated me at Wellspring, orchestrated my removal, and then followed me into subsequent ministry to close doors behind me – his spiritual mentor was now in a position of authority over my worship ministry at the church I had chosen as a refuge.
I did not know the full weight of that connection when I arrived. I know it now. And the jury should hold it as context for everything that follows – because the pattern that destroyed me at Wellspring did not stay at Wellspring. It walked through the door of Southridge wearing a different name tag.
In 2017, a woman named Chante Chevalier made an accusation against me at Southridge Community Church.
She accused me of sexual impropriety. Specifically – and the jury deserves the specific truth, not a vague reference to "another accusation" – she alleged that I had made unwanted sexual advances toward her. The implication of her accusation, as it circulated through leadership, was serious enough that I was removed from the worship team publicly, in front of the congregation, during a Sunday service.
I want to be absolutely clear about what happened and what did not happen.
I did not approach Chante Chevalier sexually. I did not make unwanted advances. I did not attempt to assault her in any form. None of it happened. The accusation was false.
Now here is what Pastor Mike Meinema knew before he acted:
Chante Chevalier had made the same kind of accusation at two other churches before arriving at Southridge. Two prior congregations. The same pattern. Leadership at Southridge was informed of this history before the decision to remove me was made.
Pastor Mike Meinema acted anyway.
Let that sit with the jury for a moment. A man with nine years of faithful service to this congregation. A woman with a documented pattern of making the same type of accusation at multiple churches. Leadership was told about that pattern. And they still chose to remove me publicly, without process, without confrontation, without investigation.
The question this court must ask is not only whether the accusation was false. It is why leadership chose to act on it when they had specific, prior information that should have elevated their standard of care significantly.
The answer, I believe, is the same answer this trial has returned in every case: the institution protected itself. A public accusation demands a visible response. Investigating it carefully, weighing the accuser's history, confronting the accused privately first – all of that takes longer, looks less decisive, and risks the appearance of institutional hesitation. Removing me immediately and publicly resolved the optics, regardless of the truth.
I paid for their optics with years of my life.
The jury should understand precisely what happened on that Sunday.
I was removed from the worship team in front of the entire congregation. Not called into an office beforehand. Not given any private indication that a concern had been raised. Not offered any opportunity to speak to the accusation before action was taken.
The removal was public. Deliberate. Visible to everyone who was present.
This matters for a reason that goes beyond my personal dignity. Under the scriptural standard that Southridge preached – Matthew 18:15 to 17 – a dispute between members of a congregation begins privately, between the individuals involved, before it ever becomes a community matter. That process was not followed. It was not partially followed. It was not even considered.
The method of removal was itself a violation of the standard Southridge claimed to hold. They did not just fail to protect me. They failed by their own stated values, publicly, in front of the people they were supposed to be leading.
And when the truth came out – when it became clear that Chante Chevalier's accusation was false, that she had done this before, that Pastor Mike had been informed of that history – there was no equivalent public correction.
I was removed in front of everyone. The apology, when it finally came, was private.
That is not justice. That is reputation management.
A public wound requires a public remedy. If you strip a man of his standing before a congregation, the only way to restore what you took is to stand before that same congregation, acknowledge what you did, explain that you were wrong, and give him back what belongs to him – in front of the same witnesses who watched you take it.
Pastor Mike Meinema was not willing to do that. He was not willing to stand before his congregation and say: we made a mistake, we acted without adequate process, we harmed someone who had served this church faithfully for nine years, and we are accountable for that.
His unwillingness to make a public apology is not a minor pastoral shortcoming. It is the clearest possible evidence that the public removal was never about truth. It was about control. And when the truth no longer supported the control, the institution chose to protect itself rather than restore the man it had damaged.
On the day of my removal, I did something I had never done before in my life.
I begged.
With two friends present as witnesses, I went to leadership and I told them plainly: my mental health is fragile. I have CPTSD. I have survived things that most people cannot imagine. What you are doing right now, the way you are doing it, will cause serious harm to me. I am asking you – I am begging you – for mercy.
I want the jury to understand what it cost me to say those words. I am not a man who asks for help easily. The entire architecture of my survival has been built on self-sufficiency, on not depending on people who have consistently proven themselves capable of causing harm. To stand in front of those two men and plead for compassion was not a small thing. It was everything I had left.
Their response: they doubled down.
Not a pause. Not a private conversation. Not even the basic human acknowledgment that what I had just told them was serious and deserved consideration.
They proceeded. And what followed was a full nervous breakdown – not a difficult week, not a period of struggle, but a complete psychological collapse that required professional trauma therapy and took years to move through.
That is the nature of CPTSD when a major trigger event occurs. It is not proportional to what an outside observer might consider the severity of the incident. A person with a broken leg does not heal faster because the fall that broke it was short. The injury is the injury. My nervous system had been in a state of hypervigilance since infancy, had absorbed decades of compounding trauma, and had been told – once again, by people who claimed to represent a God of healing – that it did not matter.
The collapse was not a surprise. It was a predictable consequence of a decision made by people who were warned and chose to proceed anyway.
In the aftermath of my removal, I called Worship Pastor Tom Lowen three times.
I was not calling to argue. I was not calling to threaten or demand. I was calling because I was in crisis and he was my pastor and I needed help.
His response, consistent across all three calls: "Fix yourself. Straighten up."
That is the complete record of pastoral care offered to a man in a documented mental health crisis by the worship pastor responsible for the situation that triggered it.
Fix yourself. Straighten up.
The jury should sit with the theology embedded in that instruction. This is a man who leads worship in a church that claims to represent a God who heals the broken, who binds up wounds, who does not break the bruised reed or snuff out the smoldering wick. That is not my poetic interpretation. That is Isaiah 42:3 – a passage that has been preached from evangelical pulpits for two centuries as evidence of God's gentleness toward the vulnerable.
Tom Lowen told a man in crisis to fix himself.
He did not offer to walk with me. He did not refer me to counseling resources. He did not acknowledge that his decision – or the process that produced it – had contributed to the state I was in. He simply told me to sort himself out and stop being a problem.
That is not pastoral care. It is abandonment dressed in authority.
I had been part of Southridge for nine years. Nine years of relationships, of shared Sunday mornings, of life groups and conversations and the ordinary accumulation of community. When I was publicly removed, not one person stood up.
I want to name Paul Glasbergen specifically, because he had told me directly that he loved me. When I reached out to him after my removal and asked for his help, his answer was this: "God isn't leading my heart to do that."
James 4:17 is unambiguous: if anyone knows the good they ought to do and does not do it, it is sin.
Paul Glasbergen knew the good he ought to do. He chose not to do it and attributed his inaction to God.
I want to be fair to the broader congregation. Most people who stay silent in these situations are not cruel. They are afraid – afraid of the social cost of challenging leadership, afraid of being the next person standing alone in front of a congregation with no one beside them. That fear is understandable. I have lived inside it.
But understandable is not the same as innocent. And nine years of community that evaporates the moment the institution turns against you is not community. It is a transaction in which loyalty flows in only one direction.
"Leadership acted in good faith to protect the congregation from a serious allegation."
Good faith requires proportional process. When leadership has been specifically informed that an accuser has made the same allegation at two prior churches, the standard of care required before acting is significantly higher – not lower. Acting immediately and publicly, with that prior knowledge in hand and no investigation conducted, is not good faith. It is negligence in the direction of the outcome that was most convenient for the institution.
"The apology that was offered should be sufficient."
The removal was public. The congregation witnessed it. The harm to my standing, my reputation, and my mental health was caused in front of witnesses. A private apology does not reach the people who witnessed the removal. It does not restore what was taken publicly. The only adequate response to a public act of harm is a public act of restoration. Anything less is not an apology. It is the management of liability.
"Don's mental health crisis, while regrettable, cannot be attributed solely to leadership's decision."
The causal chain is documented. I warned leadership explicitly, before they proceeded, that the action they were taking would cause serious harm to my mental health. I identified the specific vulnerability. I asked for mercy. They proceeded without modifying their approach in any way. The resulting nervous breakdown was a direct and foreseeable consequence of a decision made by people who had been warned. That is not a coincidence. That is accountability.
Members of the jury, I have now prosecuted four cases in this trial. In each one, the mechanism is the same: an institution that claims to represent divine love, confronted with the opportunity to demonstrate it, chooses its own protection instead.
At Cap Pelé, the church protected a predator and transferred him to my village.
At Wellspring, leadership protected its hierarchy and destroyed my ministry.
At Rice Road, new leadership allied itself with the very men who had already harmed me, lied to its congregation, and breached a legal contract with the man they had just betrayed.
At Christ Community, a pastor who had personally chosen me and watched me triple his attendance chose diplomatic comfort over the courage it would have taken to stand by me.
And now at Southridge, leadership protected its optics and acted on a false accusation from a woman with a documented pattern -- removing me publicly, refusing to restore me publicly, and abandoning me in the crisis their decision caused.
This was the last one. After Southridge, I did not go looking for another church. I was done. Not because my faith in God was finished, but because my willingness to hand that faith to an institution that had proven, again and again, that it would use it against me -- that was finished.
The nervous breakdown that followed Southridge took years to move through. It is not fully over. CPTSD does not resolve on a schedule, and a relapse of the magnitude I experienced does not simply correct itself when the circumstances improve. Some of what Southridge broke in me has not been repaired. I am telling the truth about that because this trial demands truth, and the truth is that the harm done here had a permanence that the other cases did not.
Southridge Community Church, Pastor Mike Meinema, and Worship Pastor Tom Lowen owe me a public apology. Not a private one. Not a carefully worded statement designed to minimize institutional exposure. A public acknowledgment, before the same congregation that watched them remove me, that they were wrong, that they acted without adequate process, that they ignored a prior pattern that should have given them pause, and that the harm they caused was real and serious and deserved better than fix yourself and straighten up.
They have not provided that. This trial is the record in its absence.
Pastor Mike Meinema: Guilty of acting on a false accusation without due process, in possession of prior information that should have elevated – not bypassed – the standard of investigation, and of refusing to make a public apology commensurate with the public harm he caused.
Worship Pastor Tom Lowen: Guilty of abandonment of pastoral duty toward a man in documented mental health crisis, and of offering counsel – fix yourself, straighten up – that was not only inadequate but harmful to someone he had been warned was fragile.
Southridge Community Church: Guilty of providing nine years of transactional community that evaporated at the first institutional inconvenience, of failing to protect a long-serving member against a false accusation with a documented prior pattern, and of choosing reputation management over the restoration of a man whose standing they had publicly destroyed.
I begged. For the first and only time in my life, I stood before men who claimed to represent a God of mercy and I begged them to show me some.
They did not.
That is the testimony of Southridge Community Church. Not what they preached. What they did, when it cost them something to do otherwise.
This court has heard it. Let the record show it. And let whoever reads it decide what kind of faith produces that result – and whether it deserves the name it carries.