The One About Church Hurt - Let's Talk About It! Episode #31

The Prayer Podcast with Jan L. Burt

#ChurchHurt #Church #Hurt

Well, hey there, hello to you today. Thanks so much for joining me here on The Prayer Podcast.

I’ve been praying and listening for the Lord’s leading, wanting to make sure I am hearing from Him and obeying Him regarding all aspects of my life, which includes podcasting. And it’s been a minute since I recorded an episode for this show.

Praying Psalm 91 Course
Choosing to really ask God for His exact will means I had to set aside time to really pray and really listen. And pray I did. Listen I did.

There’s an area of my life that God has done a tremendous work in since fall of 2019, and it was a good work, a needed work, but a hard season to walk through.

Recently I began working on something that I thought was just going to be for me, like a journaling exercise…many of us have Bible study journals and prayer journals, so I thought my journaling was going to be something like that. Uh, no. A solid nope.

It has been something else. So far, it has turned into about 9k words, and I am not even close to being finished with this project (for lack of a better word).

Two things that have jumped out at me lately are:

Number 1, I am way better off, more healed and whole in this particular area of my life, than I thought I was. Number 2, I am seeing that many, many Christians have been dealing with this same issue and the Lord has very clearly led me to talk about it.

Now before I get really bold, which I am incredibly prone to do, I want to share that I’ve vetted this topic with others, of course with my husband, and also in a group I’ve been part of that is led by Joanna Weaver (you know her as the author of the book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, which has sold over a million copies), and in that group we discussed this topic that I’ve been writing about and so I’m not just out here shooting from the hip. It’s taken a bit to get here, today, to record a podcast episode on the somewhat sensitive, often misunderstood, seen as too hot to handle topic of church hurt.

And since I am often bold when I speak, I want to mention that I have prayed and asked the Lord to make me more meek and caring and less bold for this subject. Because it’s a tender and sensitive topic, and the experiences so many of us have been through warrant thoughtful words and compassion and empathy and the love and truth of Jesus over all.

Lord, may my words be only what You want them to be, set a guard over my lips to stop unhelpful speech. Bless Your people, and may Your heart for them in this area of life overflow and bless them in ways that bring healing, and hope and Your highest favor. In Jesus name - Amen.

Church hurt.

First things first: it’s real, so if you don’t think it’s a real thing, I want to let you know it’s okay to stop listening to this podcast because my aim isn’t to argue, or to upset anybody, and my aim is not, as the Lord knows, to damage or malign the church, His church. I’m not here to badmouth or to bash.

I’m here because God put me here, frankly, and because His church is made up of His people, and we don’t do right by the people He loves so dearly when we set aside the hurts that many of us have experienced within His church. I love the church, because how can I love Him and not love His church? Out of that love, I served. Long time service to the body of Christ. In many different ways. And in total transparency, some of that was to the detriment of my health, when I kept on keeping on in ministry longer than I was physically equipped to (a heart failure diagnosis, to be specific, and I served for three years following that diagnosis, even though it came with a high price). And to the detriment of my time raising my children when they were young, also in total transparency. To them, all five of them, I owe an apology and I am so very sorry that I did not see clearly that what was being asked and even required of me, in order for the five of you to have a place in children’s ministry I had to serve enough to let all five of you have a spot, as crazy as that sounds it was true way back in the 90s, and I am so sorry that I, with my health struggles and my little tots to care for, gave up too much and did not see, know or understand that what God had given me to use to love you well at times was poured out on all the ways that the church demanded it… I didn’t totally get this wrong, but too often I was more tired than you deserved and often we were go go going when you needed to be home home homing. For that, my sorry is never going to be enough, in my mind. It grieves me, and I believe it also grieves the Lord.

To the mamas out there listening today who feel like they have to serve so much in order to even be able to attend Sunday morning services, who are serving and serving so their older kiddos can attend a mid-week group or to those who don’t go to Bible study or small group because they have been told that they have to meet the impossible x y z requirements for use of the nursery, or who don’t want to leave their little ones in the nursery (which is not a bad thing, honestly… we read that God’s sheltering of His children is a good thing, see Psalm 91 for a powerful example, but the church that bears His name tells His people to stop sheltering their young children…and for what? Numbers? The head count? Seats filled? Oh if you have dealt with this, I am so very sorry!).

Are we able to love the church well when we don’t love those who make up the church well? Do we honor or dishonor our Lord when we fail to love them well? And is it possible that part of loving well includes helping people to heal from church hurt? How is healing possible if this is a taboo, off-limits, untouchable subject? How can they get well if they’ve never had their illness, their hurt, acknowledged?

I know that we can address this huge issue while simultaneously not malinging the church as a whole. But we have to start somewhere. Maybe we start here, by stating that both can be true at the same time: people have been hurt by the church and the church is not my personal punching bag when I’m reeling from and dealing with church hurt.

I hope you hear my heart behind this episode. I’m going overboard to make it super duper crystal clear. God loves His church. He loves those hurt by His church, too. And we can love both well while also confronting some problems, tendencies, expectations, and at times confronting some people who are doing too much church hurting.

When we are hurt by the church and in the church, it isn’t the same as when we are hurt at work, by our neighbor, at school, other places and relationships. It’s just not! We expect the lost and broken world to be a hurtful place, that just comes with the territory. We expect our unsaved bff from high school to get snarky and sometimes a bit mean, because we changed dramatically when Jesus got hold of us. Does it still hurt? Yes, of course! But it’s not unexpected. It would be really odd if that never happened to us when we’re doing life around the unsaved, at work, in friendships that used to be both of us without Jesus and now one of us is in Christ, with neighbors who don’t like you praying over the meal at the block party, it would be weird to be totally without anything that’s hurtful in those scenarios.

And I’m not talking about church hurt that is, say, an offense taken at a super Biblical spot on sermon that touches a raw nerve, that hits home in an area we haven't surrendered to Jesus and His total Lordship. We have all experienced that, right? And that’s not the same as what I’m aiming to address.

There is a hurt that the church can inflict when we invest years, decades, serving and loving and giving and praying and at times entering into hard conversations, facing things in our own life that need to be faced or stepping up and challenging things that are not in line with the Word of God…anybody else want to raise their hand and say, “Yes, I’ve been there, served and loved and prayed and had the hard conversations and given until it hurt”…and then, boom, got thrown away when I could not serve in the same manner anymore… I needed some support when my aging parent was in hospice and I got nothing… I was asked to leave because I thought I could ask about why there were 25 two year olds in a classroom with only 2 adults, and I was thrown out of my paid ministry position and told not to upset the big givers…anybody else not been given pertinent legal information about someone that could have, and did, end up harming others because that family had money and could be utilized to pay for things when the church was in a pinch?

Those are real scenarios, and they really happened.

And here’s another one that was just really sad.

My mother was dying, out of state, and we’d been in that local church body and in leadership for over two decades. Our kids had grown up there, literally.

The grandparent they were closest too in their growing up years died, and they did not get a single text, call, card, hug, message…nothing. Now being in leadership, I knew what the normal procedure was for a loss like this, and this was a very small church, about 70 people at that time. My five kids were all grown or in college, and they got literally nothing. I also got nothing. Not a card, not a hug, no care or concern from anyone in leadership. I was totally set aside in my grief. The only time it was prayed over was when I asked, and the only thing the pastor said was, “If you need anything, let me know” and knowing him well for twenty plus years, I knew that meant, “I’m out. You won’t be hearing from me. Best of luck to ya!”

These are people that we stood by in their losses of loved ones. So it wasn’t like I hadn’t been there and this was tit for tat. They just did not care, as a whole or individually. Now one person on the leadership team did tell me he was sorry for my loss, and he meant it, but he was the only one. And it was painful and felt pretty personal. Seeing my kids hurting and them wondering what they did wrong to not even get a single hug or any condolences at all from people that said they were family…it did not make sense. It still doesn’t make sense.

In the end, we left that church, but not for this reason at all. That's the total truth. We did not leave that church because of my mom’s death. Period. The pastor knows why we left, and frankly we have left it up to him to explain it to those who’ve wondered, because with him, we’d seen times of basically slander in the pulpit when people left the church, we’d heard him talk at leadership meetings about people who left, seen the callousness and heard the cruel words and we knew that would come for us and for our kids. And some very pointed things were said to my husband when we stepped out of a leadership role due to my heart failure…and I’d kept serving from 2016 to early 2020 with heart failure. I just couldn't keep doing it. And it got heated and nasty and the total lack of care for my health was really bizarre. And another situation that is too personal to share, well, that was it. Time to go. And he wanted us to go, he even said so. But when we went, we didn’t slander. People turned on us, not everyone, but some, and we let them. We opted to be misunderstood and disliked over slandering and damaging the church. Maybe we should have said more, but we didn’t really have the bandwidth. We’d been through so much and we just had no more fight left in us, we needed to be sheltered by the Lord and we needed to heal.

Sometimes that’s how we exit a church, isn’t it? Really wounded, really needing shelter, finding it in the Lord and leaving the results and what people say and think about it with Him. Anybody else been there?

Now I may catch some heat for sharing parts of our story. That's okay. God has done more than just remove the sting. He really has brought me forward in all of this. I love the church more now than I did then. I just wish it were healthier! And that this kind of stuff didn’t happen. I mean, things happen, people are people, but it doesn’t have to be so painful. I really do believe that. And when we leave a church, we didn’t leave the entire church, just one branch, one location. We’re not in gangs. We don’t have to hate those who go somewhere else, who turn to Jesus to heal the church hurt. We don’t need to slander one another. We are not in gangs! If we go down the street, it isn’t a criminal offense. And slander from leaders or from the pulpit, that’s wrong. I know it’s hard. I’ve done church leadership in many forms for decades. I know it’s hard. But it is not an excuse to slander people and turn others against them. God told Jeremiah to toughen up, that if he couldn’t run with men, how would he be able to run with horses? Jeremiah chapter 12, I think verse 5.

We need to get thicker skin and toughen up if we turn on our church members with haughty, nasty, hurtful, hateful attitudes and spite when they have problems, when they go elsewhere, when they experience church hurt. Leadership, time to toughen up. If you can’t run with men, how will you run with horses? Gotta get tougher. Really hard things come with this calling. And if you defend and protect your own family, your spouse, your children, from all the ways that being a pastor’s family can run roughshod over them (and you should do that - don’t sacrifice your kids on the altar of ministry work) - you should be able to understand why church members at times also need to protect their wives, their children. Don’t hate them for doing what you do. Sheltering is never a bad thing in God’s word, see Psalm 91 for hard proof. Some of the things the church does behind closed doors when leadership meets, some of the things that are said about people, are things that never happen in other realms. Some companies would never tolerate the kind of verbal slandering nonsense that churches think is allowable venting due to the hardships and frustrations of ministry. Well, what does the Word say about it? My Bible, as I read it, does not give much room for such behavior. And it happens a lot. And it needs to stop.

Because the church, the people Jesus died for and loves so much, for God so loved, not sort of loved, but so loved, those people are not to be slandered behind closed doors by pastoral staff because they moved on to another church location due to hurts inflicted on them that are often never apologized for or acknowledged, let alone the kind of public repentance that the New Testament calls the church to. If you give it coming and going, then you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. Ministry difficulties are real, to be sure, but they are no excuse for doing ministry in ways that are unbiblical. Don’t become a Pharisee with a hard heart. Get out of church leadership and go sell used cars before you let that happen.

I’ve got a lot more I could say on this topic, and I am certainly not the only one. It’s real, church hurt. And it needs to be addressed and dealt with per God’s word rather than left as the elephant in the room.

Let’s address it!

And for all of you listening who’ve experienced church hurt, can I say this to you today?

One of the best things I ever did in the wake of all this stuff was to stay close to Jesus. I just kept going back to Jesus, again and again and again. Keep your Bible open. Keep praying - pray continually, Paul wrote, and my oh my does that ever apply to us in a season of church hurt recovery. Keep seeking His love, His healing, His grace, His peace. Keep choosing to forgive, because Jesus said we must forgive and because Jesus forgives us, so keep choosing to forgive, out of love for the Lord if you can’t do it for any other reason. He’ll be with you, He is with you in this, right there so close that He is catching all your tears in a bottle. He will never leave you nor forsake you and He does not expect you to pretend it didn’t hurt. He knows, He sees, and He cares so very much. Stick close to Him.

No lectures from me about getting back into church…not today. That’s not today’s message for you. Stick close to Jesus. Please keep praying. Please keep reading the Word of God. Please keep seeking Him to lead you into healing and to a safe place, a well place. And please, don’t totally throw out the church as a whole, because Jesus wouldn’t want you to do that. I see you today. You are seen, I want to say that to you now. You are seen. And this message was prompted by the Lord, and He wants you to know that He sees you. You’re not out there all alone. The God of the universe sees you and is right there with you. His love for you is unending and His pursuit of you will never stop. And rather than pray as part of this episode, I am committing to pray for any needs that make their way to me. You can email me at [e-mail] or DM me, on Instagram find me at @janlburt and I will stand with you in prayer.

Thanks for joining me today for this tender subject. I hope it was helpful somehow!