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Healing from Church Hurt: Creating a Culture of Welcome and Refuge
People join churches expecting a place of love, grace, and safety–a place that looks and feels like the heart of Jesus. Sadly, the reality of sin often messes that up, and people get hurt.
Few hurts hurt like church hurt. People join churches expecting a place of love, grace, and safety–a place that looks and feels like the heart of Jesus. Sadly, the reality of sin often messes that up, and people get hurt. This is especially painful when church leadership causes the hurt. I’ve been on the receiving end of this kind of hurt, and the effect is awful. It makes a person mistrust the very institution that God created to care for hurting people. It fosters fear and loneliness and breeds cynicism and bitterness. Church hurt makes it difficult to walk back through the doors of a church again, so when someone shows up at our churches having experienced it, how can we respond? How can we cultivate a culture of safety and welcome for people who have been hurt in the church?
Normally, the obvious steps would go without saying, but given the prevalence of church leadership failures in recent years, the obvious stuff needs addressing at the outset. So here it is. Pastors, do not lie. Do not cover up your mistakes or your sins. Confess, be honest, and handle those with transparency. Do not lead without accountability–personal, organizational, and financial. Accountability won’t transform a sinful heart, but it provides opportunities to repent before we ruin our own lives or anyone else’s. Respond to accusations of abuse or manipulation with prompt seriousness, assuring the well-being of the vulnerable. Bring in the authorities if the accusation pertains to anything illegal. Show no partiality towards fellow leaders or prominent, powerful members of your congregation. Make no excuses and harbor no tolerance for abuse or manipulation. We are shepherds to the sheep, so protect and nurture them and keep the wolves at bay.
All of that is a mere baseline of safety in a church and makes up the most minimal skeleton of a culture that feels safe to a person hurt in the church. The seven practices to follow are ones I have experienced as a hurting church attender and have sought to adhere to in pastoral ministry.
1. Acknowledge the reality of church hurt.
It’s tempting to downplay someone’s pain or to adjudicate their story. Who was at fault? What role did you play in this mess? And a time may come to sort that stuff out, but a hurting person needs to be welcomed with gentleness. Even perceived hurt hurts. Even unwarranted pain causes damage to a person’s trust in the church. So ask yourself whether your aim is to solve the puzzle of their pain or to invite them into the comfort of Jesus and let His Holy Spirit do the necessary work of clarifying, restoring, healing, and convicting on His terms.
2. Resist defensiveness and respond with gentleness.
Hurt people often lash out. A person who’s been hurt in another church may very well feel threatened in your church simply because it is a church. When their anger, suspicion, or fear shows don’t get defensive. Respond with gentle truth. A soft answer turns away wrath and a soft answer by a pastor might just offer a paradigm shift for a hurting person. Don’t compare your church to their previous one: “We would never do something like that!” Rather express sorrow for their hurt and share the kind of church you intend to be for them: “I’m so sorry for how you’re hurting; we want to be the kind of church where you can rest, recover, pose your questions, and experience the love of Jesus.”
3. Give space and time.
One of the most meaningful things a pastor ever said to me was, “We don’t need anything from you; just receive.” I was in a place of personal pain, spiritual exhaustion, and church cynicism, and this removed the pressure of walking through the doors of the church. I was free to simply drag myself in, sit as far from the front as I wanted, and receive. It was his way of telling me that I had all the space to observe and to ask questions that I needed. I had the time to heal, to take stock, to open up. This is how we want to treat hurting people. They need rest and healing. They need a chance to come to community on their terms (even if their terms are longer than our preferences). We need to trust that the Holy Spirit will do the silent, transformative work of restoration in their souls. So we seek hurting people out to connect relationally, to ensure they know the door is open, and to express our gratitude for their presence.
4. Welcome honesty and honor it.
Opening up about past church pain can be scary, especially in a new church. So we need to welcome the honesty and vulnerability of hurting people and even honor them for their courage to share. We can do this in the privacy of one-on-one meetings and in the public forums of a prayer gathering. An additional significant way to honor honesty is to protect privacy. When a person shares something vulnerable, protect them by being a haven for their trust until they are ready to share publicly.
5. Reject gossip and slander.
This might seem obvious, given that the Bible condemns both gossip and slander, but somehow churches can become petri dishes for this putridity. We have a longstanding principle at our church, “Talk to, not about.” We ask members and leaders alike to gently put a stop to gossip with something as simple as “At Immanuel (or fill in the name of your church), we don’t talk about folks like that.” The reason this is so significant in matters of church hurt is twofold. First, it fosters a culture where it is safe to struggle because no one is talking about you behind your back. Second, it enforces a culture of honoring one another in Christ rather than tearing down. Often people who have been hurt in church have never experienced that. They need to see the high calling of Christians to build one another up and God’s vision for his church as a place of unity.
6. Always be honest and invite hard questions.
What do you have to hide? The answer should be nothing–not personally and not in the leading of the church. So let fearful and cynical people pose questions about polity, finances, transparency, safety policies, church discipline, and whatever else. In fact, give them opportunities to do so. They may not like every answer you give, but they should be able to read your honesty and see the pattern of truthfulness. Thank them for having the guts to ask the hard questions. If you find yourself in a context where answering a question isn’t appropriate, give a clear follow-up plan or invitation that doesn’t squash the question but offers a conversation in a different context. For people who have suspicions about the church because of past pain, a pattern of honesty and transparency is a powerful assurance.
7. Preach a hopeful gospel, not a heavy law.
Preach Jesus did more than you must. Point them to the rest and restoration of Jesus as the how and the why of the moral commands. Rejoice and revel in Jesus more than you theologize about Him. Hurting people need the hope of Jesus, but they are more prone to hear the demands of the law. So we must counteract that in our preaching. Make the point of every sermon the beauty and majesty of Jesus. Show the hurting that Jesus welcomes them and has everything they need for life and godliness.
