Given the amount of it we see and hear reported, church hurt is a hot topic. What is church hurt, and, more importantly, how do you go about healing it? People usually define church hurt on an individual basis such as in spiritual or emotional abuse by a church leader. Personal affronts from other church folk can also create wounds in a church’s body. Sometimes church hurt is severe enough to motivate the wounded one to find another church or give up on church altogether.
These kinds of unhealed individual wounds are difficult enough to mend. But we have found in our ministry that unhealed church hurt on a congregational level reverberates for decades. It limits an entire ministry’s fruitfulness. At Blessing Point Ministries, we call this collective version of church hurt “corporate pain.”
In our consulting ministry, we work to heal ministries with painful histories. And we have seen many sad examples of church hurt/corporate pain. These include moral failures among leaders, church splits, incidents of racial or economic prejudice, financial improprieties, churches that abuse pastors, leaders who abuse congregations, and getting caught up in politics or conspiracies, etc.
In addition to the devastating impact of such incidents on individuals, it cuts a church off from the fruitfulness that should mark a church under Jesus’ lordship (See 1 Cor. 11:17-32; Mt.5:24). Since that is the case, it is vital to explore how leaders can heal church hurt on a congregational/corporate level.
Don’t Confuse Symptoms with the Cause
I recently went in for my annual checkup. I told my physician that in the mornings I had water in my ears. In my mind, I figured that getting out of bed made the water settle, which allowed me to hear again. But imagine my surprise when the symptom was not the cause and I simply needed to clean out my ears!
When a church experiences hurt that impacts the whole congregation, it is not always just about the events we associate with the hurt. Sometimes God uses church hurt to get our attention about deeper unaddressed issues.
Jesus spoke to the church in Pergamum about an unresolved problem that, left unaddressed, would lead to divinely inflicted church hurt (Rev. 2:12-17). And think how many times Israel experienced divinely inflicted famine, drought, or conflict because of deeper unresolved issues in their relationship with God. Jesus told the church in Laodicea that He reproves and disciplines churches He loves (Rev. 3:19).
Could such divinely inflicted discipline lay behind your congregation’s hurt?
We must consider how the Great Physician would diagnose a church’s painful symptoms. While we may think our diagnosis is right (“It’s the pastor’s fault!” or “This congregation is rebellious!” or “That staff person needs to go.”), perhaps we need to clean out our ears.
In some cases, God may have deeper issues He seeks to communicate to your church. In our ministry, we have learned that until we discern Jesus’ diagnoses of church hurt, symptoms continue.
Your Church’s History is Key
Current expressions of church hurt are often the reverberations of previous unhealed wounds in the history of your church. In God’s loving persistence, if we don’t learn what He intended our church hurt to teach us, we will face similar problems down the road. Dr. Kenneth Quick, in his book Healing the Heart of Your Church, writes,
God keeps taking His people around and around through similar experiences until they finally learn the lessons that allow them to make further progress. Could that explain your church’s problems in the present? Are they taking yet again another trip around Mt. Sinai?[i]
Leaders seldom understand that there may be a long and tortured history behind the present symptoms. We should seek the Lord about anything He may be trying to tell us through a pattern of similar hurts in our church’s past.
Get to the Root of the Hurt
If Old Testament Israel attributed their divinely inflicted famines to poor farming methods, they would have missed the point. The prophets often pronounced that their dire circumstances had a root cause. The root cause was that Israel repeatedly adopted the idolatrous ways of their non-Israelite neighbors.
If I asked you what the root cause was behind the problems the church of Ephesus experienced in Revelation 2:1-7, you could tell me: “They lost their first love.” You’d be right! If I were to ask you what the root cause of the troubles in the Laodicean church was in Revelation 3:14-22, you no doubt would reply, “They were lukewarm.” Again, you’d be right! The other three churches Jesus called to repent in Revelation 2-3 had root causes too.
In each of those cases, their poor corporate condition had a root cause anchored in their spiritual and relational history. You need to get to the root cause of the church hurt in your ministry. Otherwise, you will fall short of repenting of the right things, if you repent at all.
And without authentic repentance for the right things, in the right way, and for the right reasons, such wounds will not heal. Neither will a church’s relationship with the Lord. Unrepentant churches face a similar fate to the church at Ephesus. Jesus told them, Repent, or else I will remove your lampstand from its place (Rev. 2:5).
Cleanse your Church’s Corporate Conscience
We know what repentance looks like between individual believers wounded by church hurt. Mutual understanding, acknowledgment of the offense, open-hearted apologies and extending forgiveness go into the mix. But how do you cleanse a whole church’s conscience of church hurt?
In other words, how does a church repent? After identifying the root problem, leaders must seek the Lord for Divine cleansing of their church and pursue forgiveness from the congregation. When church leaders model this kind humility, it creates an environment where congregants feel safer reconciling with each other. (You can learn more about the biblical setting of corporate repentance here.)
Absent that type of total repentance, church hurt will continue to plague your ministry and undermine its fruitfulness. The good news is that we have a compassionate Savior. The Lord of the Church is eager to heal congregations that overcome church hurt and mend the broken relationships that flow from it.
[i] Dr. Kenneth Quick, Healing the Heart of Your Church-How Ministry Leaders Can Facilitate Corporate Healing (Second Edition, 2018), 6.
Mark Barnard serves with Blessing Point Ministries. He is the author of The Corporate Church – Why We Need To Get our House in Order.