Church hurt refers to the emotional, psychological, and/or spiritual damage caused by the willfull actions or negligence of a church’s systems, leaders, or community - especially those where unhealthy dynamics are at play within the church.
Disclaimer: I want to contribute to the conversation with a voice that is hopeful - to cultivate faith, potential, and creativity in how we live out our mission of being the Church. Based on the topic at hand, today's post may feel heavier than I would generally like. But any doctor, consultant, or repair tech, has to acknowledge the problems before attempting to craft solutions. Today we're going to focus on naming some problems, but stay tuned for the next two posts for additional ways process and heal from it.
"Church Hurt" is a term that has grown in popularity in recent years, and has meant a lot of things to a lot of different types of people. But what exactly is church hurt? How does it happen? More importantly, how can we heal from it?
I wanted to put a post together to give us an operating definition of the term. Let's start by briefly describing what I DON'T mean...
What we DON'T Mean When Talking about Church Hurt
Jesus called us to make disciples, which is multi-faceted and complex. The mission of the Church, at its core, is developmental. As in good parenting, correction and accountability are important parts of discipleship. If you're reading this blog, there's a good chance you've experienced some unhealthy ways that churches have tried to live that mission out.
But Despite the hurt we may have experienced in church, there are healthy forms of accountability, leadership, and development. The Bible speaks to the positive power of loving, healthy forms of accountability, spiritual relationships, and discipleship.
Proverbs 27:17 - As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.
Proverbs 27:5-6 - Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 - Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Hebrews 10:24-25 - And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another...
James 5:16 - Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
While healthy friction in spiritual relationships and conversations like these may be painful, that is not the kind of hurt we're talking about when describing "church hurt." Growing pains that are handled in a healthy way, that lead to the flourishing of the one experiencing them, are not what we're talking about.
Likewise, there may be the occasion when someone experiences healthy forms of good faith accountability, but they reject and mislabel it. On some occasions, that may be because the person is young in their walk with Jesus and doesn't have the understanding to receive loving rebuke.
On the more insidious side, I have had the experience in my minstry career of attempting to offer support and loving accountability to those found in sinful situations, but the person is unrepentant, and probably embarrassed, among other highly charged emotions. In an emotionally charged context, the person rejects attempts to shepherd them, maybe even going on the counter offensive by projecting, accusing, or gaslighting. Again, refusing the healthy forms of intervention or accountability of one's spiritual community does not consititude what I think of when I'm describing "church hurt" (keyword: healthy forms).
"Church Hurt" implies something was toxic, broken, or mishandled
This is a nuanced conversation, and I'm open to hearing other definitions - let me know if you see it differently, in the comments. But for my operational definition of "Church Hurt," I would specify that the harm done and the pain felt is the direct result of the brokenness of the systems and/or the people we experience in the church.
Whether intended or not - abuse or neglect - spiritual harm was done by people and/or systems that are claiming the name of Jesus and His Church.
Church hurt isn’t just emotional—it’s spiritual. There are shelves full of books and hours of podcasts and resources that lay out why spiritual trauma is so damaging and hard to recover from. Losing faith in the church can very easily lead us to lose faith in Jesus. Our knee jerk response might be to leave the Church, or even to leave our faith completely.
I believe that as pastors, shepherds, and spiritual leaders, we've neglected our responsibility to care for those wounded by the institutions we lead. We've trivialized the trauma - distilling an explanation into a one-line objection we can quickly overcome with a sermon. In subtle ways, we often describe church hurt by turning hurt people into a straw man of a type of unhealthy or former Christian who is less than. A negative example - someone you don't want to be like. Never explicity stated, but communicated about in a way that has felt to me like those who have been legitimately wounded by the church are now talked about as outsiders with less faith, who are less spiritual. That they must have lost faith or done something wrong, because if they were better, like us, they would still be here.
But the fact of the matter is that we have to talk about church hurt so often, because the pain that it describes is such a common experience. If churches are a healthy place to be, why is church hurt be so widespread?
Do those of us that are still active in leading churches stop to think about why that is? Are those shaping and leading the direction of the institution ever motivated to think deeply about the ways that our institutional churches are designed in ways that systematically wound people?
If we are really God's Church, and we're following His design for His Church - why are people limping away from it in droves? Why have some of our most famous and influential pastors described the bodies that must be left behind the bus of American churches? If our mission is to follow Jesus, how many people did Jesus run over with His bus?
I believe there's a much larger conversation that we need to have around the systems that American churches have embraced and copy-and-pasted into thousands of churches all over the country. We have a hard time seeing it, because it's all we've ever known, but there are foundational ways we've misunderstood our purpose as Jesus' Church, and the systems we've designed are producing the wrong kind of fruit. I believe we should be humbling ourselves, repenting, and thinking prayerfully about how we can reform our systems to align more closely with God‘s heart and His purpose for His church, rather than running the same old play over and over again. But that's a conversation for another day...
Today we’re talking about church hurt, and I would like to keep the conversation going. In the next couple of posts, I want to dig in deeper on a couple of things in regard to church hurt:
Why is it so hard to name and acknowlege the church hurt that we experience? What internal and external pressures keep us from wanting to, or being able to get clear about it?
How do we practically start to heal? If I'm wounded, but I don't want to stay that way, what do I do?
Follow the links, and let’s keep the conversation going.
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