“Have you seen Death of a Pastor’s Wife?” a friend asked recently. At that point, we hadn’t. We had only heard about it, and what we’d heard was repulsive.
But since the film was clearly a topic of conversation in church circles, I gave it a watch last weekend. Aside from being a cautionary (and infuriating) tale that’s worthwhile knowing about, there are some broader issues the entire Church can glean from it.
Death of a Pastor’s Wife is a three-episode documentary about Mica Miller and the stalking and abuse she endured at the hands John-Paul(JP) Miller—former pastor of the now-dissolved Solid Rock Church in Myrtle Beach, SC.
The film extensively uses text messages, sermon recordings, and social media posts in narrating the story. It also relies heavily on interviews from Mica’s friends, family, attorney, and fellow church members, all of whom watched helplessly as every institution that could have protected her failed to do so, including her own church.
That’s the short version.
I’ll relate some of the story here but the longer version is far worse than you can probably fathom. Others have written some fine articles about it. If you want to know the details in context though, you should watch it for yourself.
That said, for all of its value, it misses some key elements that probably didn’t fit with Netflix’s agenda.
Mica Miller’s ordeal is a case that church leadership should study and take to heart. It should also spur us to examine our own congregations, the messages we’re giving, the signs we might be missing. We need to ask Jesus to reveal what might be hidden in plain sight.
Lesson 1: Pay Attention
If someone is being abused, there will be signs. We all know the obvious ones like black eyes and bruises, but the church is often lax in recognizing more subtle ones that signal sexual manipulation, grooming, and marital rape.
This is all the more difficult because distortions of scripture are frequently used to normalize sexual coercion, using damaging books and teachings as foundational support, as was the case with JP Miller on numerous occasions. These are then reinforced from the pulpit and youth groups and social media.
But even in healthy churches that don’t shame women to repent for having sexual boundaries, the signs of coercion, manipulation, or abuse can easily get missed entirely if we’re not paying close enough attention.
What can we do?
Find the women (or men) who aren’t showing up as regularly, who never reply to invites, or who seem otherwise deflated or perpetually dejected. Send a text to check in with those who’ve lost the spark they used to have.
Invite them over to your home and let them give you a real, deep, sometimes painful answer to the question often asked but rarely answered honestly: How are you doing? It may be that they’re just going through a hard season, but you only know if you ask.
Since she lead worship, everyone in Mica Miller’s church noticed her voice was changing. Nobody knew it was because her husband was forcing her to take testosterone to boost her libido and satisfy his 1-5 times a day demand for sex. That came out in conversations long after she was at a breaking point.
Lesson 2: Save The Documents
One of the reasons we know so much about Mica and JP Miller is because there are terabytes of available data. Taken together, it paints a clear picture of stalking and abuse. There was so much documentation—text messages, videos, journals, vlogs, social media posts, 911 calls—that Netflix was able to make a documentary in record time, largely using JP Miller’s own words. It’s also why Miller tried so hard in the wake of her death, even within days, to confiscate every incriminating document Mica left behind.
This should convince us to keep those text chains. Save those emails. Secure those journals. And even though it’s hard and emotionally taxing, make police reports, create and use church incident reports, and take notes when offering counseling or discipleship.
Mica Miller’s family took pictures of the tracking devices her estranged husband placed on her car once they separated, and the razor blades he punctured her tires with. They got video of him threatening to place pornographic images of her on the internet, which came in handy when he hacked her account and did so.
That the police ignored all of this documentation with tragic results is an indictment on them; never rely on the police or attorney generals to do the right thing.
But as for her church, the writing was there on the wall. Had they been willing to step in and protect her before it reached critical mass, they may have dramatically altered the outcome. The documentation raised the red flags; now all it can do is tell the sad tale.
We need to keep it, guard it, and put a system in place to prevent both the large and small incidents from getting ignored — or worse, swept under the rug.
[Note: This should also be applied to childcare issues, security, financial matters, and many more.]
Lesson 3: Get Back Into Bible Study
I mentioned earlier that though I recommend watching Death of a Pastor’s Wife for several reasons, for all its virtues,it isn’t a great film. The main reason for that is because it inadvertently (in case of Mica Miller’s friends) yet probably intentionally (by Netflix, given it’s anti-Christian agenda) reinforces often-taught lies about marriage.
In one interview, Mica Miller’s friend detailed how JP used to coerce her into sexual depravity, and added, “I understand the Biblical command to never deny your husband, but…” My jaw almost dropped as I watched it. Nothing about that comment lines up with scripture. Nor does it square with Jesus’ teaching (nor Paul’s, nor Peter’s) regarding women, ministry, marriage, submission, or anything else.
The American church has so saturated Christian culture with anti-Christ traditions pertaining to women—do we even understand how hard he flipped over the gender role applecart? —that even those who’ve experienced the downstream effects of clergy abuse first-hand reinforce the ingrained programming when describing it.
That’s because we’ve often sublet our Biblical instruction to pastors and leaders who don’t understand scripture, who sometimes haven’t even read all of it, and who themselves were taught things that were never true about it.
Anyone choosing to follow Jesus needs to prioritize Bible study. It’s the playbook that you’re handed when joining the team, and unless you know it, you’re gonna get smoked on the field.
If we can make time for doomscrolling, or gardening, or golf, we can make time for Bible study. We need to understand original texts, who they were written to and for (Hint: It wasn’t 21st century Americans), and in what context they served to instruct.
This isn’t easy. It takes time.
A series of line-by-line, Greek and Hebrew hermeneutical sermons on the entire bookof Acts, or First and Second Peter (for examples) might take months; they’re not as appealing to the crowds and social media algorithms as a sermon series on 5 Ways To Honor Your Spouse that gets spicy and heaps new burdens on women to carry.
Digging into original context and language isn’t always easy, and it tends to blow conventional traditional false teachings out of the water. But blowing false teaching out of the water is what Jesus did, and He did it best.
We don’t need more pastors and teachers in skinny t-shirts lifting weights on stage, or talking about how men need their wives to provide sexual dopamine hits. We need more teachers who know what the Septuagint says, and how it differs from the Masoretic translations, and perhaps initiate discussions on why.
And also, some of those teachers and pastors should rightfully be women, just like in the early church’s day. Any thoughts on who wrote the book of Hebrews? Or why we’re never told who many scholars argue wrote it?
Solid Bible study answers those questions.
Lesson 4: Elders and leaders, do your your job.
When a church chooses elders and leaders, it should never be done lightly. Those in leadership are going to be called on to make hard decisions, devastating ones even. There will come a time when they’ll need to conduct investigations (even if it’s just hearing two people’s gripes) and follow the evidence wherever it leads.
This is what every manager in the secular world has to do and its no different in church leadership. It’s what elders and leaders would do if the money count is consistently off on Monday morning. It’s what they’d do if a child was injured in a classroom. And it’s what Mica Miller’s should have done during the staggering onslaught of JP Miller’s offenses.
That’s their job. And if you’re an elder or leader, it’s yours, too.
It might mean removing a charismatic pastor, or a highly competent and valuable member of the team. Do it.
It doesn’t mean applying disproportional measures of “grace” upon the one who committed sexual sin while simultaneously throwing the victim(s) under the bus. Ask around and you can probably find plenty of examples of this. I’ve seen several over the years.
Instead of defaulting into immediate restoration mode, we as leaders need to inspect the foundations and dig out any underlying rot we may be oblivious to. Incidents don’t just occur; they ferment under the surface, sometimes for years.
The Four Rules
The first thing any responsible firearms instructor teaches are the Four Rules of Gun Safety. The interesting thing about almost all accidental gun tragedies is that had the shooter followed at least one of the four rules, nobody would have gotten shot.
Similarly, at any step of Mica’s stalking and abuse, if someone carrying authority—church elders, the police, ministry leadership, the courts, hospital staff, the FBI, medical examiners—had done their job effectively, Mica might still be alive.
Likewise, JP Miller would be facing serious criminal charges, at the very least for contributing to her death1, instead of a couple of slaps on the wrist2. It serves as a sobering reminder that we need to stop assuming that just because we can’t see bruises, atrocious acts aren’t all around us. We need to come to terms with the fact that some men abuse and rape their wives. Even men who raise their hands and serve in church.
We need to learn how to read the signs and recognize the warnings for what they usually are: red flags waving on the tip of massive iceberg. The elders and leaders in Solid Rock church failed Mica Miller, and she ended up dead.
Nobody wants that to be their church’s legacy.
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If you enjoyed this article, you might check out these as well:
Butts In Seats: The Paradox of Corporate Christianity
David & Bathsheba: A Bible Story Elephant In The Room
Antichrists & End Times: Eschatology Gone Wild
Footnotes
- Mica’s death was ruled a suicide and no autopsy or forensic investigation into her death was performed. This was in spite of suspicious circumstances involving JP Miller in both her death and the death of his new wife’s former husband, Christopher Skinner which was also ruled a suicide. The argument can be made that even if Mica took her own life, it was to escape the never ending abuse. South Carolina Senate Bill 702 was proposed to criminalize “coercive control” which it defines as “an act or pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation, manipulation, intimidation, or other abuse, including emotional abuse, that is used to harm, punish, or frighten another person by fraudulent representations.” The bill was defeated in June of 2026. ↩︎
- JP Miller faces a maximum penalty of 7 years in prison (5 years for cyberstalking and 2 years for making false statements to federal investigators), along with a fine of up to $250,000. ↩︎