Hope For Healing Church Wounds

Dr. Michael Gray

• Publisher: Elm Hill
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781595559890
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Statistics from George Barna Research Group reveal that twenty-five to thirty million adults stay away from the Christian church because of hurtful treatment experienced at the hands of the body of Christ. Having gone through several church hurts himself, the author has written this book to be a practice guide on how to be restored, renewed and healed from church inflicted wounds so that one’s relationship to God is joyous and fruitful.

From his own experience and documented research through surveys to pastor’s, church members and non-church goers, the author provides a training manual that churches and church leaders can use to reach and restore church members to a healthy relationship with God and His church. We all want the church to be a place where we can go to worship God with freedom and joy. We all want to be encouraged to grow in our faith and walk with Christ. We all want a place where we find joy in serving others, a place of safety and unconditional love. No one wants to be part of a church that acts like the world, treating people with judgment, condemnation, lack of ompassion and love. Church wounds happen but God is a restorer of the broken hearted. God is the great healer of our pain and disappointment. The author believes that if one takes the steps outlined in the book, there will be renewal and restoration. If churches reach out to those who have been wounded in the way outlined in this book, many will come back into fellowship with the Lord and His church.

CHAPTER ONE

O GOD, WHY ME? WHY THIS?

In his Christianity Today article “The Church’s Walking Wounded,” author Tim Stafford was referring to an old friend, a pastor’s wife, who in her letter revealed that she had been deeply wounded by the church. After a lifetime of engagement, she dropped out of active involvement as she indicated to Stafford that she needed to learn how to experience Jesus’ love instead of guilt and duty. In response, Stafford made this observation concerning the growing dilemma of this problem: “She reminded me of an epidemic I have been uneasily witnessing. Every time I turn around, I meet another person like her, who feels wounded by the church.”¹

According to George Barna, being wounded by church people is a rising epidemic. He stated in the foreword to Stephen Mansfield’s book Healing Your Church Hurt: What to Do When You Still Love God but Have Been Wounded by His People:

Spiritual injury occurs in churches more often than we would like to admit. My research among unchurched adults reveals that nearly four out of every ten unchurched people (37 percent) in the United States avoid church life because of bad experiences in a church or in relation to churched people.²

These statistics, according to Barna, have resulted in twenty-five to thirty million adults who have stayed away from Christian churches because of hurtful treatment experienced at the hands of the body of Christ. Barna admitted that he went through several painful times in church ministry. On one occasion, his pastor disagreed with his theology. Instead of the pastor taking the right action to confront him personally, he chose to avoid Barna and made a public statement about how Barna was out of line in his theology. Barna recounted: “He didn’t do it by just bad-mouthing me to a few of the faithful: he wrote an entire book on the subject, using me as his unknowing, voiceless foil.”³ Barna approached his pastor on this move and requested that they resolve their differences; however, the pastor’s response was harsh and uncaring. He basically told Barna that if he had a problem with his approach, tough luck. Barna was very wounded by the pastor’s actions and his unwillingness to handle the situation as brothers in the Lord. This resulted in Barna and his family seeking another church. On another occasion Barna was hurt because the pastor of this church was jealous of his ministry, which was gaining national attention. Barna was in a leadership position, but his pastor falsely accused him in leadership meetings and to other congregational leaders. This kind of treatment was another blow to Barna and his family. Again, his family had no recourse but to the leave the church. There was a third time he was hurt by the church. The church was a predominantly white congregation where Sunday school teachers and students treated his two adopted Hispanic daughters badly. Ridicule and prejudice made it difficult for Barna and his family to stay with this church family. These are just a few examples of the many church ministers and church members who have had to leave a church because of ill-treatment by the church body or the pastor.

We all want the church to be a place where we can go to worship God with freedom. We all want to be encouraged to grow in becoming more like Christ. We all want a place where we find joy in serving others, a place of safety and unconditional love. No one wants to be part of a church that acts like the world, treating people with judgment and condemnation, or lacking concern and love. I recognize that no church is perfect, but as Barna stated, “it can be a shattering reality when your ‘church home’ becomes a place of rejection and suffering while you are doing your best to be part of the spiritual family.”⁴

Different factors contribute to church members being wounded by the church. As has already been stated, church people wound because of judgmental or condemning attitudes. Others confess a serious lack of trust between church members and their leaders. Still others have observed blatant hypocrisy in the lives of the churched. Another factor is the uncivilized treatment some members suffer at the hands of church members.

The recurrence of wounding church members should not be the norm; however, in my research, this sadly happens more frequently than the church wants to admit. This kind of treatment of God’s people only grieves the heart of God. Therefore, it is important that the church takes certain measures to put safeguards in place. In doing so the question arises, “How can the church reach and restore fellowship with God and with God’s people those who have been legitimately hurt by the church?”

Statement of the Problem

Today church wounds are a growing problem. Mansfield described the sad results of those who have been wounded by the church.

The poisoning of souls through church hurt is killing us. The cause of Christ is hindered because the body of Christ is bruised. Most Christians I know either believe they’ve been wronged by a church or have friends that do.”⁵

Mansfield, a pastor of a growing four-thousand-member church for nearly a decade, saw it all come to an end in what he called a “good old-fashioned church fight.” This conflict was so intense it resulted in his leaving that ministry. As he recounted his experience, he suffered isolation, suspicion, and humiliation living in what he called “a vise of pain and hostility.”⁶

Mansfield is not the only one who has experienced this kind of pain in church ministry. In my pastoral experience, there have been many wounds by both church members and church leaders in the local church and in church organizations. It has taken me several years to heal from these wounds and be restored back to pastoral ministry. I have learned that God never wastes an experience, and my experience of pain from the church has birthed and empowered a heart of compassion and care for those who have been hurt by the church. God has enabled me to spend a considerable number of hours counseling both believers and nonbelievers who have been wounded emotionally and spiritually by church members and church pastors. In my experience, it has been observed that church hurt can so paralyze a member of the body of Christ that he or she does not desire to return to the local church. Some, in fact, are so wounded that they do not trust any pastor or church member again. It may take years of working through their wounds to ever trust another church. Sadly, some of these wounded people slip into the habit of not going to church, and I have seen that some are caught up in another type of religious practice that is not according to the teachings of the Bible.

In the research for this book, being hurt by the church is observed as a serious, ongoing problem that needs to be addressed, with concrete solutions offered. Therefore, it is important that a plan of action be put in place to reach out to those who have been wounded and love them back to the fellowship of the church. God is a God of restoration, and his church must be the place where that restoration and healing takes place. It is my burden that many churches do not have a plan in place. Even my own church, which truly has a heart to heal wounded people, lacks this structure and concrete plan. We cannot leave the wounded behind; the gospel of Jesus Christ demands it.

It is therefore the purpose of this book to offer, through scholarly resources and field research, concrete solutions for reaching and restoring God’s people back to church fellowship. The focus of this book is to first address the problem in a local setting of the church where I minister: New Seasons Church in San Diego, California.

I began by first exploring church hurts of some members of this church in El Cajon, California, where I currently serve as the campus pastor. In addition to interviewing some in this congregation, I interviewed some members of other congregations within the greater El Cajon area. Research was also conducted through a survey given to church members, non-church members, and several pastors in my constituency. Though this research has focused upon the greater El Cajon area, it is my intent to broaden my conclusions and recommendations in order to help facilitate healing and restoration well beyond the immediate research target.

Statement of Limitations

The goal of this book is to address legitimate hurts that church members in my area of ministry have experienced. As previously stated, the purpose of this book is to research those who have been hurt by the church in my central location and congregation. It is not the intention of this book to address hurt feelings church members sometimes have because they dislike something that their church is doing. Nor will it address church members leaving their churches because they do not get their way. Hurt feelings do happen among church members and ministers because preferences are not being met, and even though it is important for Christian people to work these things out, the book is not intended to address these hurts that happen among church members. Secondly, this book will not address the physical abuse that some church members experience at the hands of church pastors and leaders. Addressing being wounded because of physical abuse or sexual misconduct and abuse would require an entirely different focus. Through my research, I have discovered that addressing church wounds is a very broad subject. Therefore, it is necessary to narrow the topic to mainly emotional and spiritual wounds that members experience from the church.

Statement of Purpose

The focus of this book is to answer this question: How can the church in the greater El Cajon area of San Diego, California, reach and restore those people who have been genuinely hurt by the local church? As stated above, this book will first address the problem where I minister at New Seasons Church of El Cajon, California. New Seasons of El Cajon is the second campus of the main church located in Spring Valley, California. I have experienced that in nearly five years of pastoring New Seasons of El Cajon, several people have left the church, some because of past wounds—caused by other church leaders—that have never been healed. I sought to reach out to these members; however, restoration did not take place. Others have decided to stay in spite of past problems in the church. These are the members I interviewed.

In addition to New Seasons, I interviewed some members of other congregations who feel that churches within the greater El Cajon area wounded them. Through the results of these interviews, my goal was to provide a training model that my church, New Seasons, can use to help reach out and restore wounded church members back to the fellowship of New Seasons Church.

Importance of Project

The reason this area of study was chosen was not only personal, but for the overall good of the body of Christ. In more than thirty years of pastoral ministry I have seen the agonizing effects on church members and church ministers who have been legitimately wounded by others within the body of Christ. It is disheartening and very sad. Some of my closest friends who were once in pastoral ministry are no longer serving the Lord in that capacity because of being hurt so deeply by the church. In the current pastorate––a work that involved rebuilding a declining church that was preparing to close its doors––I often meet unchurched people who have been hurt or wounded by the church; most want nothing more to do with “the church.”

In this research, I discovered that a very large group of those who are leaving the church are young teens, post high school, who have either personally been wounded or they have seen their parents wounded in the church. And because they do not have sufficient development in their biblical worldview, if they enter college, secular and atheistic professors and the general atmosphere of the college overcome them so that they have no interest in church.

David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, in their book unChristian, documented that many sixteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds have been hurt by the church and thus have lost respect for the church and no longer attend. Their research showed that “many outside of Christianity, especially younger adults, have little trust in the Christian faith, and esteem for the lifestyle of Christ followers is quickly fading among them.”⁷ Two out of every five of this age group claim to have “a bad impression of present-day Christianity.”⁸

These young people do not have argument with what the Bible says a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Foreword
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Abbreviations
• Chapter One: O God, Why Me? Why This?
• Chapter Two: When God Steps In
• Chapter Three: What Veterans of “Woundedness” Have Said
• Chapter Four: What “Woundedness” Means For You
• Chapter Five: Offering the Hope of Healing
• Chapter Six: Recovery and Restoration
• Appendix A
• Bibliography
• Endnotes
• Back cover