What to Do When the Church Has Wounded You

Think about the person in your life who stopped going to

church a few years ago. Maybe it was someone in your family. Or

maybe it was you. There wasn't always a dramatic exit. Most

people just stop showing up one Sunday at a time until the seat

they used to occupy sits empty, and eventually no one mentions

it. Researchers who study why keep finding the same pattern.

Something happened inside a place that was supposed to be

and it never got addressed. Every year, roughly 2.7 million

Americans make that decision. Natalie Runyon is one of the

people who almost did. She grew up a pastor's daughter in

Cincinnati, spent her whole life in the church, and then watched

her family get pushed out of the congregation her father served.

She spent decades wrestling with whether God and the church were

the same thing, or whether she could separate the two. We'll

come back to what Natalie found. But

first, welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm

Bart Leger. Over the years, I've met far too many people who've

been hurt by the church. Some were judged without being loved.

Others watched a leader they trusted collapse under the

weight of a moral failure, and the collapse took their faith in

the institution with it. A few found their way back, but too

many never did. It grieves me every time because I know that

behind each of those stories is a person who walked through a

door looking for God and came out wounded instead. That's what

church hurt is. It's a wound that comes from a place that was

supposed to be safe. If that's your story, I want you to hear

something before anything else. The pain makes sense. The anger

makes sense. And so does the exhaustion with organized

religion. Those feelings are a reasonable response to what

happened to you. You're allowed to have them. But let me make a

distinction here. The people who hurt you were part of the church.

They were people. and some of them were broken people doing

broken things to someone who deserved better. What God thinks

of you stands apart from what those people did to you. Listen

to what Psalm 2710 says. Even if my father and mother abandon me,

the Lord will hold me close. This psalm is written about

people closest to you, the ones most supposed to be safe who

weren't. And what David says is that even there, even in that

worst case abandonment, God doesn't leave. He holds you

close. The people who hurt you in the church were supposed to

represent him. When they wounded you instead, God didn't abandon

you. I've been in pastoral ministry long enough to see what

church hurt does over time when it goes unaddressed. It spreads

into how the person thinks about God and whether community of any

kind is worth the risk.

God was there before the church that wounded you and He'll be

there long after it's gone. The question before you now is

whether you're going to let what broken people did to you set the

terms of your relationship with Him. You get to keep and leave

behind what broken people did. Now, let's get back to Natalie.

What the researchers keep finding is that most people who

leave still hold on to some form of faith in God. The church

became something they couldn't return to. The faith didn't

disappear with it. Natalie Runyon said it plainly after

years of working through her own church wound. All these people

had failed me. But when I look back over the course of my life,

God never did. The people who hurt you did something to you.

And God is not them. Psalm 2710 says, Even if a father and a

mother abandon you, the Lord will hold you close. He makes

the same promise to the person whose church did the abandoning.

Natalie eventually wrote a book about her experience called

Raised to Stay. And she became a voice for people navigating

church hurt across the country. She separated her faith in God

from the church institution that had wounded her. And what she

found on the other side was a faith that was more her own than

it had ever been. Because it had been tested and chosen and held

on to through the doubt. And that's available to you too. If

you're carrying a church wound today and you're not sure where

to start, I've put together a free resource called How to Keep

Your Faith When the Church Let's You Down. You can download it at

DailyDevotionsForBusyLives.com slash church. I wrote it for

people in exactly the place you're in. And I hope it helps.

Here's today's challenge. Separate the wound from God.

Take one step toward Him this week. And pray one prayer, even

if it's an angry one. And tell Him what happened, because He

already knows. But saying it out loud to Him is different from

carrying it alone. That's where the road back starts with God,

before it goes anywhere else. Lord, You see the ones carrying

church wounds today. You know the names of the people who did

the wounding and the people who are still bleeding from it. Draw

close to the ones who are far away, because they got hurt in

Your name. Let them know the difference between You and the

people who claimed to represent You. And hold them close, the

way Psalm 27 promises You will. In Jesus' name, Amen. If this

episode encouraged you today, would you share it with someone

who might need it? Just go to dailydevotionsforbusylives.com

slash 243 and copy the link. It only takes a moment, and it

might reach someone who needs to hear it. Thanks for joining me

on Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. Remember, the people who

hurt you in the church don't speak for God. He was there

before the wound, and He's still there now. Come back next time

for more encouragement to help you live grounded in God's truth.

Until then, God bless, and have a great day.