How to Navigate Real Church Life With Honesty and HumorPrøve

When Church Hurt Comes for the Church Leaders

Middle school kids have made being weird cool, and we can’t help but salute them for embracing their uniqueness. Our little hormonal adolescents even speak their own language of gibberish courtesy of their favorite YouTubers— their choice vocabulary consisting of “bruh,” “sus,” and “newb.” “Sus” (short for “suspicious”) is a particularly overused favorite of our children, whether something is suspicious or not. “That’s so sus, Mom!” our cherubs exclaim as if we should instantly relate to the “sus-ness” of any situation. Bless their hearts. It’s flippantly used without any fundamental understanding of suspiciousness. Like our silly kids, we have taken on a new vocabulary, just not quite as cute as theirs. One couplet of words has even become a viral hashtag across social media; sadly, it is a reality for many people: "#church hurt."

Many of us have experienced pain and even harm from people within the walls of our most sacred place. The church should be our second home, the family we run to for understanding, encouragement, and constructive criticism when needed. But this is not always the case. Let’s be clear. People have hurt us, not necessarily the big “C” church. Often, the local church looks more like the world and less like Jesus. It can be filled with people who claim to be Christians but don’t know Christ at all. Others do know Him, but they slip up, allowing their emotions to control their speech and actions. Hurt people hurt people who hurt people. The cycle is destructive, and what’s left in the aftermath is a trail of spiritually and emotionally wounded people who want nothing to do with the local church. We live in a broken world where people will hurt people until Jesus returns and all things are made right. Revelation 21:5 reminds us of our future hope: “Then the one seated on the throne said, ‘Look, I am making everything new.’ He also said, ‘Write, because these words are faithful and true.’”

Pastors and their spouses are not immune to church hurt. We are living proof, and our hurt has come in multiple forms: members of church staff leaving for selfish reasons (which felt eerily similar to a painful divorce), critical anonymous letters sent to us stuffed with complaints about the preaching, other pastors on staff attempting to deter us from our callings, hurtful words spewed without remorse, women in the church forming their version of high school cliques where we were not invited, and so on. Perhaps your story is similar. Our hearts break for you. We see you, and we weep with you.

What do we do when the people we thought we could trust hurt us the most? We forgive and bring things to the light (Matt 18:15-20). We seek counseling, slowly heal, and continue giving our hurt to God daily. We ask God if this is where we are supposed to be. You could be stuck in an emotionally manipulative or spiritually abusive situation, and what you might need to do is shake the dust off your shoes and leave (see Matthew 10:14). But on the flip side, we need to decipher abuse from offense. There is a difference; jumping ship because someone has offended you is unhealthy. We all need to be held accountable.

Friend, stay the course, and remain faithful in serving the church. Love people well, don’t be easily offended, and continue to meet as Hebrew 10:25 urges us to do. Your testimony of pain could heal another hurt because vulnerability breeds hope when we share our story.