This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on September 1, 2026.
The morning after receiving word that his wife, Mica, had died by a gunshot wound to the head, pastor John-Paul Miller declared with excitement to his congregation, “I wrote a new parody for you all today!” Cheers erupted as Miller announced that his “best friend” Mark Kaufman was going to sing it after 25 years of Miller begging him to take the mic.
Although Kaufman’s role in the Netflix series Death of the Pastor’s Wife tends to stay in the background, he occasionally pops up as Miller’s right-hand man.
In Episode 1, Kaufman serves as Miller’s best man for JP’s wedding to Mica. Kaufman jokes, “I’ve known John-Paul unfortunately for quite a while. He forced me to be his friend, forced me to be his best man.”
In Episode 2, Pam Muise, one of the other pastors of Solid Rock Church, says her church phone began blowing up one Saturday with text messages from Miller intended for Kaufman. She says, “Mark was being asked to pick up a young woman from the airport who was supposedly coming in to see JP.” Muise understood the request to be sexual. But she soon discovered the elders didn’t have the authority to hold Miller accountable.
After Mica left JP to stay with an elderly woman she trusted in the weeks leading up to her death, witnesses say JP became relentless in calling her, sending her flowers, chasing her and trying to mess with her mind. Then Kaufman called Mica and said, “I’m not calling on John-Paul’s behalf. I’m calling on both of y’all’s behalf.”
The night Mica died, Erica Rahr, a former member of Solid Rock Church, said, “Mark Kaufman had texted me and very bluntly said, ‘Mica killed herself.’” That same night, JP texted Mica’s friend Charlotte and her husband, “I thought u 2 should know. Mica killed herself earlier today. She needed her lithium because she has been having a 3-month psychotic episode.”
Miller and Kaufman were describing her death as a suicide before police had publicly classified it that way.
So the morning after learning Mica’s body had just been found with a bullet wound to the head in a river, Miller smirked as his fingers flew enthusiastically across the piano, while Kaufman stood on the church stage with his hat on backward. With Miller pounding the keys, Kaufman began singing a jazz rendition of “The River of Dreams.”
It’s one thing to play and sing this enthusiastically the morning after your wife died such a violent death. It’s another thing to do it to a parody you wrote. But to choose a song called “The River of Dreams” after your wife was found dead in a river is unconscionable.
As the song closed, JP showed off his jazz piano skills to the cheers of the congregation as Kaufman smiled and pointed at him.
With the release of the new Netflix series, there are likely to be many reflections on the abusive dynamics of male headship and female submission in JP and Mica Miller’s marriage. By recognizing those connections, hopefully many women will begin to notice the way theology gets used as a weapon to abuse them in their marriages. But there’s also a story here about music and how the culture of church worship ministries gives predators extraordinary access to vulnerable people.
Becoming the worship leader
“I was 13 years old when I met John-Paul Miller as my pastor,” Mica wrote in her diary about the man who would become her future husband. Her family had just moved to Myrtle Beach, S.C., from Wichita, Kan.
Her sister Abigail Francis said, “Moving to a place where you’ve never been and you have no idea who anybody is, finding a church is one way to start.”
Anna Francis, Mica’s other sister, countered, “I think finding a church is almost why we’re in this chair.”
But to the young Mica, the opportunity to be a part of the worship team was a fun way to point people to Jesus. Her sister Destinnee Barrientos said Mica would say, “I’m gonna be in the ministry, and I’m gonna help people. And everyone’s gonna know about Jesus.”
Abigail added, “The choir needed people in it. So yeah, ‘We can sing. Let’s go.’ It was something fun. It was something we enjoyed doing.”
Within a year, Anna said, “Mica’s talents were being used on stage.”
“My whole family is very musically talented,” Mica’s brother Nate said. “But Mica has the best voice. She loved singing. She was just extremely talented.”
But Mica’s parents would soon divorce, which Anna said led Mica to focus on the church worship ministry even more. And by age 16, Mica was named the worship leader. Although JP was married to another woman at the time, he regularly played the piano and interacted with Mica on stage. Eventually, that led to him having an affair with Mica, after which both Mica and JP went through their own divorces and married one another.
Mica’s biblical counselor would later recall: “JP was in her life from a very early age. She was on the worship team as a very young girl. So he had a position of influence over her when she was young. She just listened to his voice — a voice of a pastor, a voice of a mentor, and then a voice of a husband.”
‘The church was JPM’s sexual playground’
In the wake of Mica’s death, other women have come forward with their own allegations against Miller.