Overcoming Church Trauma
Overcoming Church Trauma
I always know what’s coming next. It’s a normal enough question, and it never really bothers me when it happens, but there is just the smallest cringe in my heart when they ask because I always know what’s coming next.
“What do you do for a living?”
It probably comes as no surprise that I am an extrovert. I enjoy people. I enjoy striking up a conversation with people. I’ve met so many great people and heard so many great stories through the years just by being curious. But when you get past the superficial, the question usually comes. And I always answer honestly. I usually say something like, “I work for a church,” or, “I’m a minister.” What usually comes next is one of three things. One, they tell me about their church. Two, they apologize for using profanity. Or three, they tell me why they don’t go to church anymore. It’s this last response I get most often.
As you can imagine, these are filled with tragic and upsetting stories. A barista once told me that his dad cheated on his mom, but their church sided with the dad because he was a big contributor. A mechanic who went to church with his girlfriend felt instantly judged because of his tattoos. A young black man who was asked not to come back to church when he was a teen because he asked out a white girl in the youth group. These are just a few of the stories I’ve heard through the years. The saddest part, I’m rarely surprised. I have some experience with toxic cultures within a church.
What I almost never hear - “I don’t believe in God anymore.”
I am convinced that there are thousands of people out there who still believe in God, who still believe Jesus is the son of God, but sadly are no longer part of a church community. They’ve been hurt, and they are having a difficult time finding their way back. The one thing they say most often, “I’ll never set foot back in a church.”
One of my ongoing dreams for Northwest is that we are a place where people find healing, a place where we are so connected to the story of Jesus, that we not only help people heal, we also help them thrive once again in a faith community. If we are going to do that, there are a few things we need to keep in mind.
There are no perfect churches. It would be impossible to be a perfect church because churches are made up of people, and there are no perfect people. Even though this can never be used as an excuse for maintaining toxic cultures within a church, it also must be acknowledged that no church is going to get this right one hundred percent of the time. The best a church can hope to do is be honest about the times they get it wrong and try to do better. We should always be praying that God will show us our toxicity and confront it when we see it, always be quick to apologize, and make up for it when we’ve hurt someone. If we are going to be a place of healing, then we need God’s strength to help us move through conflict in a healthy way instead of pretending like it doesn’t exist.
We need to be quick to listen. Hopefully, we will always give people the benefit of the doubt. Recently I said in a sermon, “We are a loving church.” Later that week, one of our members contacted me and told me how they had experienced the opposite of love at our church. I was so sad to hear her story. I know our church to be a loving church, but I also believed her experience was valid. Here’s the thing, just because you haven’t had church trauma doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t, and sometimes in that same church. Conversely, just because we get it wrong sometimes doesn’t mean we aren’t a loving church. Church is messy. Family is messy. Church is always a mixed bag. So instead of seeing healthy church cultures as a destination, we view health as a journey. We should be progressing. Paul says in Philippians 3:12, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”
We should always keep our focus on Jesus. James 4:1 says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” I think James saw things clearly. Toxic church culture comes from us focusing on ourselves and not Jesus. The more we focus on Jesus, the more we move toward health in a church. Jesus was around a lot of sinners. If anyone had the right to judge them, it was him. He didn’t. He did, however, save his harshest criticism for those elite religious leaders who thought they were better than everyone else.
As we overcome church trauma, we move toward Jesus. The same Jesus who healed the sick. The same Jesus who forgave sinners. The same Jesus who welcomed the outcasts. We have a choice. Do we identify with the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, or do we find our place with those who most need to be healed?
May God bless us as we seek to make a difference in the world.
George Welty
