You can keep walking with God after his church wounded you, because the people who hurt you are not God, and he has not handed his presence over to them. That is easy to say and hard to live. This study is meant to be lived slowly. It will help you do three things: put the hurt into plain words, tell ordinary church hurt apart from abuse, and keep a small, steady line of prayer open while the rest is still unsettled.
You can work through it alone with a notebook, or with one or two people you trust. Nothing here asks you to tell your story to anyone. Every writing prompt is private unless you choose otherwise. If a section stirs up more than you can hold today, stop. Coming back next week still counts.
One thing comes first. If what you carry includes sexual abuse, abuse of a child, or violence or control at home, this study can sit beside you, but it cannot keep you safe. Tell a counselor, a trusted person outside that church, or the authorities. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. If the weight has turned into thoughts of ending your life, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You do not have to finish sorting anything before you ask for help.
Start with a psalm written by someone betrayed at worship
Many of the psalms were written by people in pain. One of them describes almost exactly what church hurt feels like. Read Psalm 55:12-14 slowly in your Bible. David says it was not an enemy who taunted him. He could have endured that, or hidden from someone who openly hated him. It was a man his equal, his guide and his familiar friend, someone he had shared sweet counsel with and walked beside into the house of God.
Notice what David says hurts most. It is not the insult itself. It is who delivered it. He could have braced himself against an enemy. This came from a friend he had walked with into the house of God. In this psalm, betrayal by someone you worshipped with is a wound with its own weight, and it is brought straight to God in prayer.
Pastor Reggie Sharpe, who serves the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on the south side of Chicago, named the same sting during a Jude 3 Project panel on healing from church hurt. People are disappointed everywhere, he said. What makes church different is the expectation that it would be the one safe place: “I assumed I would be healed and not wounded.” Part of what you are grieving may be that expectation, along with the event itself.
Psalm 55 also shows a man who does not pretend. David writes about fear, trembling and wanting to fly away (Psalm 55:4-6). He does not tidy that up before he prays. That is your permission for the first exercise.
Private writing: Write two or three sentences that begin, What happened was… Use plain words, the way you would say it to someone who already believes you. Then write one more sentence: What I expected instead was… You do not have to judge either sentence yet.
Is this hurt, or is this abuse?
The panel offered two ways of looking at church hurt, and you need both.
The first asks whether the wound is real. Dr. Jessica Brown, a clinical psychologist, defined it by what it does: “church hurt is pain, which leads to distance from God.” John Onwuchekwa, who pastored for 16 years, added that it is “an injury without regards to intent.” Both answers matter for someone who has been told the offense was small, or that nobody meant anything by it. If something is keeping you at a distance from God, it counts. Onwuchekwa also described a wound that came from silence. After his brother died, his young church cared for everyone but its pastor, and his image for that neglect was simple: “you can kill these beautiful flowers just by not watering them.”
The second asks what the wound needs. Dr. Christina Edmondson, a psychologist by training who works in mediation, conflict resolution and ethics, separated disappointment from abuse. Some church hurt, she said, is a misalignment of expectations. Abuse is different: “a misuse of power to misuse people.” When the hurt is disappointment, she described healing as doing some of her own work, “without victim blaming,” by honestly asking, “well, were my expectations reasonable.” When it is abuse, that question does not apply in the same way. Edmondson said the deepest damage comes “when the church gets on board and become complicit in the abuse and misuse of other people, that we start to get the kind of scars that are very, very deep and very hard to heal.” Her counsel for that kind of harm was blunt: “we gotta run from it. We gotta call it out. We gotta get the proper authorities, we might need to call the police.”
Use these questions privately. They are not a test, and you do not have to answer all of them.
- Did the person who hurt me hold power over me through a title, money, family standing, or the ability to shame me in front of others?
- When I raised a concern, or thought about raising one, was it safe? What happened, or what did I fear would happen?
- Did others in the church join in by blaming me, pressuring me to forgive quickly, or protecting someone’s reputation?
- How far has this reached? Is it anger at one person, or does my body react when I drive past the building? Brown put it simply: “the intensity of it matters.”
If you cannot tell yet, that is not failure. Edmondson said “it can also take time to be able to look back and to call something what it actually was.” Do not let the person who hurt you be the one to decide what it was. Onwuchekwa said a leader accused of spiritual abuse “is actually the worst person to diagnose if that is the case or not.” When the answer is unclear, find someone outside the situation: a counselor, a pastor from somewhere else, or a qualified authority. Seeking therapy is not a failure of faith. Jude 3 Project holds that God works through trained counselors, and that caring for your mind is part of stewarding the life he gave you.
Where God stands when his house has hurt you
The hardest part of church hurt is often theological. If his people did this, where is he? The Gospels speak to that question directly.
In Matthew 23, Jesus describes religious leaders this way: “For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers” (Matthew 23:4). He speaks these words openly, to the crowds and his disciples. Jesus sees religious leaders who load people down, and he names it.
Then read the invitation he gives in his own name earlier in the same Gospel, in Matthew 11:28-30. Jesus calls everyone who labours and is heavy laden to come to him, and he promises them rest. He tells them to take his yoke and learn from him, describing himself as gentle and humble, and he says his yoke is easy and his burden is light.
Look at how Jesus describes himself: “meek and lowly in heart.” A yoke still means following, so this is not an invitation to drift. But the one doing the inviting describes himself in the opposite terms from a leader who lays burdens on others and will not lift a finger. Jude 3 Project holds that the failures of leaders are real and grievous, and that they are not the same as the failure of Christ. The two passages, read side by side, show why. Jesus does not ask you to treat the people who misused his name as his voice.
Edmondson made a point about questions that belongs here. A church where “the thrice holy god, who is sovereign can tolerate your questions, but people won’t tolerate your questions, that’s a problem.” You may bring God the questions a church would not allow. Psalm 34:18 says, “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.” The psalm does not promise that the pain will lift on a schedule. It says where God is while it lasts.
Private writing: Write down one thing a church taught you about God that you are no longer sure is true. Next to it, write what Matthew 11:28-30 says about him. Leave any gap between the two on the page. You do not have to close it today.
A practice for this week: a line to God that no church controls
Brown said that after church hurt or spiritual abuse, “it’s important for our spiritual practices not to be totally located inside a church.” She has also heard people say the hurt has cut off private prayer completely. Both are true for many people. So this practice is small on purpose. It works whether you are in a pew every Sunday or have not entered a building in a year.
Once a day, for about ten minutes, do the following.
- Read a few verses of Psalm 55. Read the same verses all week, or move through the psalm a little at a time. If one line matches what you feel, read it aloud to God as your own.
- Say one honest sentence to God. It can be a complaint, a question, or I don’t know how to talk to you right now. Silence offered on purpose counts too.
- Notice one good thing, only if it is there. Onwuchekwa described the poet Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, a year of short daily notes on unexpected delights. In Onwuchekwa’s telling, Gay found that his complaints had been written large and his delights in tiny print. Writing them down changed what he could see. If you find one good thing, write it in a word or two. If you find none, leave the space blank. A blank day is not a failed day.
Some days only the first step will be possible. That is enough. This practice is not meant to produce a feeling. It keeps a thread between you and God that does not depend on who is preaching, who holds the microphone, or whether you have decided anything about a congregation. If you are weighing a season away from church, Onwuchekwa’s hope is worth keeping in mind. Whatever you decide, let it be because “this seemed like the best choice, not my only choice.”
What your healing does not have to wait for
Many wounded people put their recovery on hold until the other side admits what happened. Edmondson named the cost of that: “when our healing is contingent upon the understanding of the person who harmed us, then we are in shackles.” Sharpe, who has been on every side of church hurt, including the side that caused it, said that “you have to accept the apology that you’ll never receive sometimes.”
That is not a call to rush forgiveness or to pretend. Psalm 55 never asks David to act as if nothing happened. It also does not mean you must face the person who hurt you. If you were abused, safety and outside help come first, and no one has the right to require reconciliation with an abuser as proof of your faith. Edmondson noted that a survivor who will not walk into a church building may look stubborn to others, when that person is actually “trying to retain a sense of agency when it has been robbed from them.” Brown added that a big part of healing is realizing “we are not powerless.” Your pace is yours to set. It is not a measure of your faith.
Psalm 55 ends without the betrayal repaired, but it does give David somewhere to set the weight down: “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee” (Psalm 55:22). The promise is that God will sustain you, not that everything will be fixed by Friday.
If you are working through this with others
If you are leading a group, your job is to keep the room safe. You are not there to settle anyone’s case. Agree at the start that stories stay in the room, that anyone may pass on any question, and that no one will be handed a verse to end their pain. If someone describes abuse, believe them, thank them, and after the session help them connect with a counselor, an outside leader, or the authorities. Do not try to judge what happened in the group. Brown’s line is a good guide for everyone present: “we don’t go wrong when we are just gentle with people.”
Discuss as many of these as are useful. Each one can be answered from general experience, without telling a personal story.
- In Psalm 55:12-14, David says an enemy’s attack would have been easier to bear. Why does closeness make betrayal heavier, and what does it mean that he brought exactly that to God in prayer?
- Brown defines church hurt by its effect and Edmondson sorts it by its cause. Which way of looking at it have you needed more, and why?
- What makes it hard to tell disappointment apart from abuse while you are still inside a situation? Who outside the situation could help someone see it clearly?
- Put Matthew 23:4 next to Matthew 11:28-30. What does Jesus’ own description of himself change about how you read the leaders who hurt you?
- Where have you seen people tie their healing to someone else’s apology? What would it look like to stop waiting without pretending the harm was small?
- After a week of the practice, what was it like to pray in a way that did not depend on a church? Did anything surprise you, including what you could not do?
Nobody needs to leave this study with the wound closed. A better aim is smaller and more honest: that you know a little more clearly what happened, what it needs, and that God has not moved away from you. If you want something to take into the coming week, take the one sentence from your notebook that you have never said out loud. Say it first to God. Later, when it is safe, you may also say it to someone who will believe you.