When Your Church Hurts You: 5 Points To Help Keep You Strong

By Tom Gilson Published on June 28, 2018

It’s supposed to be the safest place in the world. It’s not always, though. It’s made up of people, and people make mistakes. I’m talking about your church. And mine. Church is God’s chosen way, His very best place, to grow His work and build His people — yet sometimes it can really hurt there.

I could tell stories. Lots of them, sad to say. I’ll keep it to just two.

“I don’t need your friendship.”

There was the church we attended for about six years, where I led the choir and served on the sound tech team. I could never break through to real friendship with anyone there. It wasn’t for lack of trying, and I wasn’t the only one who had that problem.

One of the older gentlemen in the church, a widower, invited my wife and me plus one other couple out to a very fancy French dinner. We had no idea why he was treating us so grandly until dessert, when he explained, “You two couples are the only people in the church who have had me over to your home in years.”

Church is God’s chosen way to grow His work and build His people — yet sometimes it can really hurt there.

Anyway, I initiated lunch several times with another man about my age, knowing he was my best shot at finding a real friend there. I gave up when he told me one day — with the pastor standing there and approving of it — “Tom, I’ve got lots of old friends and family here. I don’t need your friendship.”

That’s an exact quote, near as I can remember it. Six years trying, and that was what I got. It hurt like mad. We moved to another church.

The Youth Pastor Who Blew It Badly

Far worse was the crushing blow several years later when my good friend and our church’s youth minister, Jack, was arrested for taking “indecent liberties” with minors. He’s serving time in federal prison now. It happened at a crucial time in my teenage son’s life in the church. My son is still following Christ. Others in that youth group just walked away.

It was, and it still remains, the hardest experience of my life. Visiting Jack in jail before his trial was as painful as it could be. The whole thing hurt like crazy for months.

And I wasn’t even one of Jack’s young victims. Or one of his family members.

#ChurchToo

These church failures have come back to the foreground in my mind — and woke me up at 3:30 this morning — because of background research I’ve been doing on the Paige Patterson story, including follow-through work I’ve done since writing that linked article. Patterson mishandled women’s reports of rape and abuse. Other leaders’ sexual misconduct has come to light as well, in the unfolding of what many have labeled #ChurchToo.

I don’t know how often this happens. I’m still researching it. What I do know is that it’s way too often. For each individual affected by it, though, the real question isn’t about all those other situations. It’s, “What do I do when church hurts me?

Five Responses When Church Hurts You

I won’t pretend to know the whole answer, but in 43 years as a Christian, I’ve learned this much:

1. Jesus Christ is still real, and His message is still the world’s only hope. Two years or so after Jack was arrested, I asked my son, “With what you’ve seen and what you’ve been through, why are you still following Jesus Christ?” He said, “Because the things Jack taught about Him are still true.” He’s right. And that’s good enough reason to follow Jesus no matter how badly people may disappoint us.

2. God is not surprised at people’s failings, and we shouldn’t be either. We know this first because of the New Testament’s frequent instructions to forgive one another, bear with each other, instruct and exhort and rebuke one another.

I know it, too, because I know my own failings. I’ve hurt people, not because I intended to but because I’m not always good, loving and wise enough to do the right thing with them. We’re all in this together — to greater or lesser degrees — on both sides of the hurting equation.

3. Church is still God’s number one vehicle for making Himself known in the world, and growing us up as His followers. My wife and I have lived in five different cities, and we’ve had disappointing experiences in churches everywhere we’ve gone. But we don’t leave churches on that account: never have and never will.

We have left when we’ve lost trust in a senior pastor’s leadership. Even when that happened, though, we gave him the benefit of the doubt for as long as we possibly could, and we stayed with it until he really proved he wasn’t someone we could trust.

Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.

Now, I can imagine situations — some #ChurchToo misconduct, for example, either perpetrated by a senior pastor or badly mishandled after the fact — where a leader might very quickly prove himself unworthy of your trust. Otherwise, though, it’s usually better for all if you stay in a situation than if you run from it.

We’re still all in this together, after all. God planned it that way for our growth.

4. You’re not alone in being hurt.There’s a reason Anne Graham Lotz’s book Wounded by God’s People has 379 overwhelmingly positive reviews on Amazon. (I recommend the book highly.)

5. There’s also a reason she subtitled her book, “Discovering How God’s Love Heals Our Hearts.” God does that for us, if we’ll stay in the process with Him.

Again: God is still good. You’re not alone. Stay in the faith, stay in the process. As long as you can still trust your leadership there, or unless you find other truly sufficient reasons to leave, stay in your church and stay in the process with the people there. It’s a great part of God’s way of helping us help each other grow.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Like the article? Share it with your friends! And use our social media pages to join or start the conversation! Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, MeWe and Gab.

Inspiration
The Scarcity Mindset
Robert Morris
More from The Stream
Connect with Us