Acts 15:22-41 | Church HurtSample

From everything we can tell, Paul and Barnabas were close. They taught together. They traveled together. They were commissioned together. They were sent out to spread the word of the Lord together. They witnessed miracles together, participated in the Lord’s work together, suffered persecution together, and watched people come to Christ together. When nobody else trusted Paul, Barnabas vouched for him. When the church needed help in Antioch, Barnabas recruited Paul. They were theologically aligned, shared the same ministry values, and each deeply loved the Lord.

You’d think they were inseparable.

So when we come to the end of Acts 15, what we read is all the more painful.

“Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.’ Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company” (Acts 15:36-39).

They had such a sharp disagreement, that they parted company.

In this case, it’s over another person in the church who was one of their missionary companions, a person named John, also known as Mark. We meet Mark in Acts 12 when Peter takes refuge in his mother’s house, and he may be the same Mark who wrote the Gospel that goes by that name. You can almost imagine him getting caught up in youthful zeal over all that God was doing and wanting to share in the ministry, and maybe like Peter once did with Jesus, even vowing to give his life for it. We find out in Colossians that Mark is Barnabas’s cousin. You can imagine Barnabas wanting to give his cousin a chance. You can imagine Paul taking a chance on “this kid,” and going along with it.

He travels with Paul and Barnabas on the start of their missionary journey, but leaves them before it really gets started. He gets as far as Cyprus (that’s where Barnabas is from), but leaves them before they even make it to the mainland. Acts doesn’t tell us why. All it tells us is that he left them to return to Jerusalem (Acts 13:13).

Maybe Mark bit off more than he could chew. Maybe he failed to count the cost. Maybe the journey proved not to be as glamorous as he had hoped. Maybe he got disillusioned over how their message was received in the synagogues, or spooked over the whole showdown with the Jewish sorcerer named Bar-Jesus. Maybe he was simply a flighty young person who thought this trip work would be a spiritual adventure without realizing that it would also include the day-to-day drudgery and hardship any working missionary will tell you about. Or maybe he just wanted a trip to Cyprus.

Who knows. What we do know is that a sharp disagreement over Mark led to deep hurt between Paul and Barnabas.

It’s often those closest to us that hurt us the most.

It’s often those closest to us that divide us.

Sharp things hurt.

What we see in Acts 15 is church hurt.

Church hurt happens.

Anyone who’s experienced church hurt doesn’t need it defined. We know what it looks like, and we know what it feels like all too well. Church hurt can cut deeper than other hurts because Jesus’s church is meant to be a place of healing and hope. So when it isn’t, it hurts all the more. Church hurt destroys relationships. It destroys faith. It is a leading cause of why people stop going to church. It sticks with you and isn’t easily shaken. It brings us face-to-face with the ugliness of sin. Church hurt has a way of imprinting itself on the soul.

Maybe you’ve been hurt in the church. You’re not alone. It stretches back all the way to Paul and Barnabas and continues wherever you find the church today.

Sometimes that hurt is superficial. Other times it runs deep. Hopefully this five-day plan can help prepare you for the inevitability of church hurt, serve as a guide through your hurt, and even help you in the healing process. There’s no way a plan like this can ever delve into all the nuances of your specific type of church hurt, especially if there is deep trauma, nor substitute for the hard work of processing it. But perhaps it can give some perspective on the hurt you might have experienced, be experiencing, or possibly one day experience.

Our hope is that church hurt is not the end of faith, but the beginning of a new and deeper chapter in your walk with Christ.

Today, read the writings of a few excerpts of the account of Paul, Barnabas, and Mark. Then start by assessing your own church hurt, or how you may have witnessed others get hurt. What wounds do you carry, what hurt are you experiencing, or what injuries are you seeing in others? The path of healing begins by admitting where we’re hurting and bringing it to God.