What we dive into in this episode:
Church should be a haven for the hurt; unfortunately, it can also be the biggest instigator of trauma. Today on Revive Her, Haley and Noel delve into real testimonies of church hurt within our Revive Her community. With each vulnerable story, they point out where and how the church got it wrong and advise listeners how they can heal.
Today on Revive Her:
- Experiencing trauma from church leadership
- Praying for those who hurt you
- Dealing with church hurt
- Defining forgiveness within Christianity
- Healing after church hurt
- Confronting those who hurt you in a Biblical way
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What is Church Hurt?
Church hurt has plagued the people of God since the very beginning. Church hurt is when church leadership uses their power to abuse, manipulate, or control a member of their church. Although church hurt meaning can vary, in this podcast we focus on the abuse of authoritative power from within specific churches. When you’ve been hurt by church leadership it can lead to anxious thoughts, distrust of Christianity or Christ himself, avoidance of faith-based events, and feelings of anger or shame. Today, we want to help you overcome those feelings and get you back to basics – The Gospel. Christ has come so that you might be forgiven of your sins and experience the over-abundant love and mercy of God.
Examples of Church Hurt in The Bible
Church hurt and abuse has been going on since the beginning of the church, and it is seriously offensive to God. In fact, Jesus himself calls out this type of manipulation. When He goes into the temple and finds the temple leaders profiting off of the poor, we see Jesus’s righteous anger escalate. Jesus begins to flip over tables and crack whips saying “It is written, ‘My house will be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” We can see from this passage how seriously Jesus takes the manipulation and abuse of God’s house and God’s people.
We can even point to the Old Testament and see that God takes leaders abusing their power seriously. When Saul, God’s anointed king, started to make decisions for God’s people on his own and stopped obeying God, God rejected Saul as king and took His presence from Saul (1 Samuel 15). When leaders find their power to be more important than God’s power, God cannot be with that person.
Just in these two examples, we can see that the God of mercy and forgiveness takes church hurt seriously. If you’ve been hurt by the church, please know that God never intended that for you. He is just as righteously angry as you are about it. You are not alone.
What is Deconstruction Christianity?
After being hurt by the church, many Christians undergo a process of deconstruction. Deconstruction can range from simply reevaluating closely held beliefs to actively turning away from Christianity altogether.
We as Revivers believe that with a heart searching for truth and seeking God, reevaluating beliefs should lead us closer to God’s heart – not further.
With that being said, let’s listen to our community’s specific hurts and offer them ways to heal.
Reviver One’s Church Hurt: Affairs and Double Standards
“So, I was married before my current hubs. We did everything right. He transferred his membership from downstate to our current town, did the marriage classes, etc.
Things went south a few months after the wedding and we split. I understand the church and a pastor wanting to save the marriage etc. but he flat out cheated. He was sending dirty pictures to one of my closest friends. He was also addicted to porn amongst other things and had a drinking problem that he hid until we got married. The pastor at our church kept trying to force me to forgive him and wanted us to fix the relationship. He told me he didn’t think I had a REAL reason for divorce 🙃
I brushed it off and told him it was my decision 1000% to be done with the relationship.
Then when I got with my current and we moved in together he kicked me out of being able to help with children’s church because I wasn’t living up to their standards since I was living with my SO and weren’t ACTUALLY married.
Okay, cool. But then the girl who was the main head of the children’s church and the cafeteria started sleeping around on her husband and she was allowed to do all the things like normal at church…despite her and her husband being separated and her refusing to do the work to repair the marriage.
I’ve never been back 🙃”
Our Response
You have biblical grounds to divorce him on cheating alone. It’s possible to restore the relationship if there is remorse on his part and if both parties are willing to work on it. But it certainly isn’t commanded biblically when cheating has happened. You’re not in the wrong to divorce after an affair if that’s what you choose.
The church does have a right to enforce standards, and we need standards. But it isn’t right living by double standards. The other woman should have been asked to step down immediately.
In these situations, you have to be nurtured, restored, and healed and then get back into the ministry. We shouldn’t ever cast people aside because of sin. We have to help them uphold standards, disciple, teach, heal, restore, and then help them return to their ministry.
What can you do to heal?
Unfortunately, the church is made up of humans. We are all sinful and make mistakes, church leadership included.
In these situations, we have to look past the human and focus on JESUS. When we are hurt by the church, we should always go to the source of love.
God himself is great at not hurting us even though people have hurt us. Because Jesus never makes mistakes. He never sins, and always has your best interest in mind. It’s not right, but we have to understand we aren’t always the best reflection of Jesus because we are human.
We encourage you to pray about this.
Pray for the church leadership by name. Pray for the person who hurt you by name. Ask God to help you forgive. Ask him to help you focus on HIM and feel restored and peaceful to move on from it.
Forgiveness is not easy! In fact, I think it’s the hardest thing to do as a Christian. But the truth is that forgiveness is not optional for Christians.
Jesus says, “But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matt. 6:15). This is difficult to hear. Remember all the wrong that you have caused against God, and remember that you have been forgiven. Forgiven people forgive!
Reviver Two’s Church Hurt: Shunned and Shame
“Shew 😮💨😮💨 do I have some church hurt. I went to the same church for 8 years, I originally started attending by myself and my family slowly started coming with me. My best friend’s dad is the pastor, and I love them and their family. However, I experienced church hurt from the “leaders” of the church when my 16-year-old sister had a baby. I never thought things like that could happen to me and my family until she had her son. It was truly humbling and made me realize how judgmental I once was. However, my church hurt wasn’t directly towards me, but my sister. She was excluded from every youth trip etc because she did not fit the mold. It crushed me because someone like her needed community and Jesus more than ever. I loved the church and the pastor, but certain leaders left me feeling angry. It was a hard situation because they were all so nice to me, but watching how they labeled my sister and excluded someone who needed a church more than anyone, caused me to leave the church.
It’s been a whole year since I went. A lot of things happened for me to make that hard decision, and I’ve struggled because I love the pastor so much and I have a hard time connecting with other pastors and churches I’ve tried out. It was my first experience with church hurt and why churches get bad names. Mind you, the same people doing this to my little, sweet, sister, had also done so many things in their past that would label them to be judged as well. But sinners turned Christians who have been saved and delivered forget where they started. It just goes to say, it can happen to anyone, and a church is supposed to build girls like my sister up, instead of excluding her. I’ve not been the same since this church hurt.”
Our Response
First of all, this should have never happened. I can see how you’re hurt, how your sister was hurt, and it breaks my heart. Your sister had her world turned upside down. I can’t imagine how scary it was to be pregnant at 16 for so many reasons.
She could have chosen to have an abortion, but she chose to have the baby and raise it. She chose to love her baby as God loves us. There’s love and forgiveness and restoration available. She shouldn’t have felt an ounce of being exiled because her “sin” was exposed. I say that because that’s probably what the church was looking at, that she had sex before marriage at a young age.
If we all had our sins exposed every single one of us sins, we wouldn’t leave our homes because of how we’d be treated. The church should be a haven for hurt people to come to, but sometimes the church is the instigator of hurting people. It should not be that way. This has to stop.
What can you do to heal?
One of the hardest parts of forgiveness is when people don’t ask for forgiveness or think they need to be forgiven. Harboring hurt and resentment turns to bitterness and it becomes a root that infects every part of your life. Satan will constantly remind you of how you and your sister were done wrong. Every chance he gets to remind you, he will take it. So the unforgiveness grows and festers and keeps this wide barrier between you and Jesus.
You’re not alone. It’s hard. It hurts. But moments like these require digging so deep to find it in yourself to forgive in the midst of that deep hurt. Because unforgiveness and hurt only harm YOU in the long run.
There are Christians and church leaders who absolutely would not and will not treat your sister the way she was treated. It’s easy to forget that when the hurt is so deep, but that group of leadership isn’t the WHOLE leadership and they certainly aren’t Jesus. They had a chance to be like Jesus. They could have responded as Jesus did with the woman accused of adultery. They should have simply said “go and sin no more,” and then smother her in love.
Remember that even though those leaders didn’t love your sister well, Jesus holds love for you and your sister and views you both as worthy of love and fellowship.
In Matthew 18 it says that “He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle. He will bring justice to all who have been wronged” This verse is saying that Jesus wants to repair people. Broken and sinful people, people who make mistakes, and people from all walks of life are important and meaningful. They still matter. The church is responsible for hurting people. They are responsible for the people who need guidance love and support. You will find a church that will love and support your whole family. We encourage you to try to find that community!
Reviver Three’s Church Hurt: Deconstructing Faith
“So I was raised in a pretty hyper-fundamentalist environment (Pentecostal holiness). There was such a focus on women in dresses, men with short hair, no jewelry, no TV, no sports – the list goes on and on. Being the overthinker I am, (😂), I began to doubt some of these standards because they were not in scripture. This sent me down the path of studying the Word of God for myself, and eventually, out of the holiness movement.
Though I’m stronger in my faith now more than ever, many of my friends have denounced me as a Christian. I’ve been unfollowed, unfriended, ignored, and talked about simply because I made my faith my own. I’ve tried a LOT to talk to some of the people when I see them, but they won’t have anything to do with me. This is not exhaustive as there are still some who treat me as a brother, but the sad truth is anyone who leaves the movement is treated this way. This is by far nowhere near the amount of church hurt that people generally experience, but I did want to share.”
Our Response
In Matthew 15, When the Pharisees were judging Jesus for eating without washing his hands. He responds that it’s what comes out of your mouth that defiles people. It’s not the traditions of man, what we wear, or what we watch on TV. It’s what comes out of our mouths.
This is legalism at its finest here.
As far as women in dresses and wearing jewelry, I’m sure there is an underlying belief that it’s modest. But you can wear something other than a dress and still be biblically modest and honor Jesus. Just because you wear a dress doesn’t mean you bring more glory to His name than if you wear pants or something else that is equally as modest.
As far as TV and sports, it’s essentially the same. Media is used for both good and bad. There is a ton of solid Christian and clean entertainment. Should we be watching things that don’t honor God? No! If it isn’t edifying our spirit and is filthy, sure, we shouldn’t consume that. But there are plenty of things that don’t go against God. It’s about balance. Sometimes the church believes these things take away our focus or time with God. While it can, if you’re still spending time with God and making time for him in your daily life, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with someone enjoying entertainment.
Many times scripture is taken out of context and we focus on the lesser message and we miss the big picture and heart that Jesus is talking about in His word. Ultimately, God is looking at your heart and your intention. God doesn’t look at a list of how we live out His commandments, but rather our hearts for Him and our obedience to Him.
To treat anyone differently because of how they believe isn’t how Jesus treated people. Jesus directly spent time with tax collectors and sinners alike so he could be a light in a dark place. Shunning and exile are directly UN-Christ-like.
What can you do to heal?
I imagine the nation of Judah felt similarly when Babylon arrived to capture and cart off its first group of exiles from Jerusalem.
In Jeremiah 29, the prophet sends a letter to the elders of the exiles. God gives his exiles interesting commands, specifically about how to live faithfully during the difficult season of exile they were enduring: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce, etc.
What’s amazing to me is that, instead of simply saying, “hang out until I relieve your burdens,” God explicitly commands his people to invest in their circumstances. In other words, “bloom where you’re planted.”
So our advice is to bloom where you’re planted. Focus on Jesus. The people putting you in exile are simply misunderstanding Jesus and His word. They probably have good intentions but fortunately for us, we aren’t under their law or expectations – we are under Christ’s. Our advice is to surround yourself with people who have found the truth in scripture such as yourself. It sounds like you’ve found true freedom…revel in it.
What are our top five pieces of advice to heal from church hurt?
- Recognize your hurt. You can’t heal if you can’t admit that you need healing. It’s ok to not be ok. But you can’t stay here in this place of hurt.
- Pray. Ask God to illuminate what still needs healing in your heart, mind, and body. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you the best way to heal from these hurts. Pray for the people who hurt you by name.
- Forgive. Forgiveness is not for the other person’s benefit – it’s for yours! When we allow ourselves to forgive others, we are able to move forward with our lives instead of holding onto past traumas. Holding onto these hurts only holds us back from reaching our full potential.
- Focus on Jesus. When we turn our attention to others or even to ourselves, everything tends to get messy quickly. When we seek first the Kingdom of God and turn our attention to Jesus, the chaos of our lives and the severity of our pain lessen. They aren’t gone, necessarily, but the weight of the world doesn’t seem as heavy when you’re shouldering it with Christ.
- Bloom where you’re planted. The best way to heal after you’ve been hurt or taken advantage of is to find your passion again. After experiencing trauma, we can sometimes turn inward and self-sabotage. If we can refocus our attention and allow God to turn the test into a testimony, we can begin to lead others from a place of empathy.
Romans 8:28 says “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
Even though the church can and does hurt people – if you keep the faith if you love Jesus, if you seek Him…all things WILL be okay.
Jesus promises that He will use the pain meant to take you out and turn it into something truly beautiful.
FAQs – For My Girlies Who Skim
What is church hurt?
For the purposes of this article, church hurt is when an authority figure in the church uses their power to abuse, manipulate, or control members within the church.
What is the Gospel?
It’s the “good news” that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ there is powerful healing and freedom from sin and death.
What are our top five pieces of advice to heal from church hurt?
Bloom where you’re planted.
Recognize your hurt.
Pray.
Forgive.
Focus on Jesus.
