The head pastor of the fairly large church that I attended for nearly my entire life got caught having an affair with another pastor 20 years his junior while his wife was sick and frequented hospital stays - sometimes weeks at a time - due to her illness.

This was found out during an annual board meeting by the board members who noticed a discrepancy in their expense books. Apparently, the head pastor had been withdrawing cash from the church’s funds and written them off as “donations”.

The best worst part of it all was that there happened to be a good member of board members who didn’t agree with his leadership (idk, church politics ig)and wanted to get to the bottom of this since the books were showing this wasn’t a one-time thing. And oh, did they really dig. Surely illegal but not only did they gain access to his email account, but they printed out all the email conversations between him and his lover (which were pretty much love letters and a lot of cornyass poems), made a shitload of copies, and mailed them out to every single church member.

The head pastor claimed that he was “mentoring” her, and admitted to meeting with her a few times to “pray together”. A little side note here: there was an address that was frequently mentioned throughout their emails as their “meeting spot”. Yeah, that was an address to a motel.

It was an absolute shitshow.