Woman says Grace Community Church wrongfully disciplined her over marital separation
A woman has accused the John MacArthur-led Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, California, of disciplining her when she sought separation from her husband, who has reportedly been abusive to her.
Lorraine Zielinski had her name publicly announced in July during a Grace communion service as someone who has been put under church discipline concerning issues regarding the separation from her husband.
Last month, she said Grace approved her to undergo the fourth step of church discipline, which is "to be ostracized from the fellowship," according to Grace's website.
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In an email she sent Grace leaders in August that was forwarded to The Christian Post, Zielinski argued that "GCC has sadly defamed me and subjected me to church discipline in an inappropriate way."
She claims that when she and her husband would undergo marriage counseling at Grace, she "often felt bullied and talked down to" and that "what I had said was not taken into consideration and was usually dismissed."
"I was so stressed by these meetings that my doctor, who has been treating me for brain lesions, advised me to the best of my ability and if it was in my power, to not enter into any stressful situations, including meetings such as these," she wrote.
"Sadly, every time I raised this point with the pastors, it was completely ignored and unaddressed in what seemed like a shocking display of lack of care for my physical health. I came to notice that this became a pattern of those I would be in counseling with."
Zielinski stated that she didn't file for divorce, even though it was suggested by her lawyer. After filing for separation, she said it was her husband who filed for divorce and made it known to her and her daughter that he planned to remarry.
"This was before the pastors realized that it did not look right, and then they made him amend his divorce filing," she claimed.
After her husband moved out, Zielinski said one Grace pastor "insisted" that her husband move back "with absolutely no regard for the safety of me and my daughter."
She also considered the public disciplining "invalid," as she had already resigned her membership from Grace in December 2023 due to her issues with the pastoral response to her marriage problems.
She asserts that she was open from the beginning to try to reconcile with her husband "under the right circumstances" and was the one who wanted marriage counseling in the first place.
"I even suggested other solid Bible churches since I was no longer a member at GCC, and also because for the reasons described above, the pastors and counselors at GCC had broken my trust," she wrote.
Between her experience and others whom she had talked to, Zielinski concluded that, at Grace, "men were believed and their statements were accepted as true, women were often disbelieved or ignored or dismissed as less discerning and more gullible, and there was never any meaningful accountability for the men."
In an interview with CP last month, Zielinski confirmed that she "moved out of the area" and was not communicating with her husband, from whom she remained separated.
When asked if she was considering legal action, Zielinski replied that she is "still trying to deal with a lot of what has taken place, and it's still very difficult to talk about."
The Christian Post reached out via email and phone call to multiple people within Grace Community Church for a response to Zielinski's allegations. No one returned a comment by press time.
According to the church's website, all Christians "should hate divorce as God does and pursue it only when there is no other recourse."
"With God’s help a marriage can survive the worst sins," the Grace Community Church website reads, adding, "The only New Testament grounds for divorce are sexual sin or desertion by an unbeliever."
In March 2022, The Roys Report reported that prominent pastor and author MacArthur shamed and excommunicated a mother in 2002 for filing for separation from her husband, David Gray, a former teacher at GCC who was later convicted of child molestation.
When the woman reported Gray's abusive behavior to GCC, church leaders allegedly never reported the allegations to authorities and even harassed the mother to change her mind about the separation, according to the report.
Hohn Cho, a former elder at Grace who resigned from his role in April 2022, later filed a complaint to the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors regarding the allegedly unethical counseling practices at GCC. The ACBC officially recognizes Grace as an approved training center.
Last year, however, ACBC removed Grace Pastor Bill Shannon, who oversees GCC's biblical counseling ministry, from their list of approved counselors and as an ACBC fellow.
