Healing from church hurt depends on knowing what kind of wound you are carrying. A panel of two psychologists and two pastors, brought together by Jude 3 Project to take this question on directly, agreed on the main point: the word “church hurt” covers everything from a disappointed expectation to the criminal misuse of spiritual authority, and each needs a different response. Disappointment usually heals through honest conversation and an honest look at your own expectations. Abuse heals through safety, reclaimed agency and outside help, sometimes including the police. The panelists did not dispute that line. They differed on how to measure a wound, who holds power, and what you owe a church on your way out.
Is church hurt defined by what happened or by what it did to you?
Two instincts surfaced as soon as the panel tried to define the term. Dr. Jessica Brown, a clinical psychologist who works where faith and mental health meet, defined it by effect: “church hurt is pain, which leads to distance from God.” Whatever the event was, interpersonal or traumatic, it counts if it leaves you feeling cut off from God. John Onwuchekwa, who pastored for 16 years, called it “an injury without regards to intent.” He reached for the courtroom to make the point. First-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter carry different charges, yet “involuntary manslaughter both leave families at funerals.” People often wave off church hurt because nobody meant it. In his view, intent changes the charge and leaves the grief intact.
Dr. Christina Edmondson, a psychologist who also works in mediation, conflict resolution and ethics, sorted by cause instead. Some people suffer a misalignment of expectations. Her example is a longtime committee member who finds the role handed to someone else. Others suffer spiritual abuse, which she defined as “a misuse of power to misuse people.” She insisted on the distinction for a practical reason: “sometimes we need to call the police.”
These look like rival definitions, but they answer different questions. Brown and Onwuchekwa ask whether the wound is real, and they say yes whatever anyone intended. Edmondson asks what the wound needs, and that depends on whether power was misused. Intent, then, has no bearing on whether you deserve care. It bears on what kind of care fits. A careless remark and a groomed teenager may both leave someone unable to pray. They do not call for the same next step.
Pastor Reggie Sharpe, who serves the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on the south side of Chicago, agreed that spiritual abuse is real and that some pastors dress up an abuse of power as rebuke. He still believes most of what people bring under the label is disappointment. People assume church members will be kind and honest because it is church, yet “wherever there are people, there will be problems.” Judas was among the twelve. He even resists the phrase itself, since “we don’t walk around and claim barbershop hurt or club hurt or Kroger hurt.” His observation explains why ordinary disappointment can heal so slowly. People came expecting healing, and the broken expectation becomes part of the injury.
Who holds the power that can wound?
Onwuchekwa pressed Edmondson’s definition with a question many congregations will recognize. In some churches the most powerful person is a member, not the pastor. Edmondson agreed that power comes from more than a title. Money, family legacy and plain physical intimidation all confer it, as with the large giver who assumes that paying a lot means choosing the songs. She urged anyone with influence to do a power audit: list whom you influence, whom you never have to explain yourself to, and who assumes you are credible. Leaders who cannot see their power, she argued, have no way to hold themselves accountable for it.
Sharpe’s own history shows how far that idea reaches. He has been a victim of spiritual abuse, he has been wounded from the pews, and he has “hurt and harmed people and never knew I was hurting them.” A well-off member once told him she could not hear his education in his preaching. The remark reopened a childhood wound about never being enough, and he spent seven months in therapy. Onwuchekwa added that hurt can come from silence. When his brother died six weeks before he planted a church, the congregation cared for one another and assumed their leader needed nothing. “You can kill these beautiful flowers just by not watering them.”
Put together, these accounts widen the spectrum in two directions. Power runs upward as well as down, and neglect wounds as surely as words. That is why Brown’s counsel, “we don’t go wrong when we are just gentle with people,” functions as a safeguard. Nobody can see which unfinished place an offhand sentence will land on, and the speaker rarely learns how long the hearer carries it.
When does it become spiritual abuse, and who decides?
Asked what spiritual abuse looks like, Edmondson named the feature that turns harm into lasting damage. A leader with spiritual authority recruits others into the wrong. Many people recover from one disappointing pastor, she said, but “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.”
She described a college student she counseled, representative of many others. A youth pastor had manipulated her with talk of what a good girl does. The church then described 14- and 15-year-old girls as “fast” because their bodies were developing, and the senior pastor urged forgiveness so the youth pastor’s life would not be ruined. Edmondson called the whole system “that mob business that organized criminality of the church.” Her counsel for abuse of that kind was to run from it, call it out, and bring in the proper authorities, possibly the police. Her account sharpens the definition. The decisive question extends past the leader’s act to the community around him: did it blame the victim, press for forgiveness, or protect the institution? A church can turn one man’s sin into a congregation’s.
If what you are carrying includes sexual abuse, harm to a child, or violence or control at home, safety comes before any sorting. Contact law enforcement or child protective services where a crime or a minor is involved, and where abuse has reached the home, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233. No one should require you to reconcile with the person who harmed you.
The strongest objection to the whole approach arises right here. If healing depends on sorting experiences into categories, someone has to sort them, and the person most eager to call abuse a misunderstanding is often the one who caused it. The panel met this head-on. Onwuchekwa said an accused leader “is actually the worst person to diagnose if that is the case or not,” and described a network of leaders who brought in an outside expert because they were too close to judge. Edmondson admitted that naming one’s own experience can take years of hindsight. The categories therefore belong to the wounded person, used with help from someone outside the situation: a counselor, an independent leader, a qualified authority. Edmondson also warned against mistaking self-protection for stubbornness. A survivor who will not enter the building may look unforgiving, yet may be “trying to retain a sense of agency when it has been robbed from them.”
What do healing and return look like along the spectrum?
At the disappointment end, Edmondson described healing as doing her own work. Without blaming herself, she asked whether her expectations had been reasonable. Some were and some were not, and she knew there had been no malice. Return here can mean staying in the same congregation once a conversation has happened and expectations have been adjusted. Sharpe described this end generously: a church can carry real disagreement and still be livable when there are “more conversations than there are crucifixions.”
Further along, Brown’s clinical questions help locate a person. How intense is the pain? Being angry at one member differs from a physical reaction when you drive past the building, and some of her clients say the hurt has cut off their private prayer. What support do you have outside that congregation? Her key distinction is that “there’s a difference between leaving a church and leaving the church.” The first concerns doctrine and a congregation’s culture. The second concerns faith itself. For people in the middle, return often means a different congregation while personal prayer and devotion keep the connection to God alive. Brown’s own college experiment with skipping a Sunday or two taught her that her faith was larger than one service.
At the abuse end, healing begins with agency and safety, and return may wait a long season. When it comes, it is likely to be to a different community, one that has shown it can be trusted with power. Brown’s word for this end is that “we are not powerless.” Any step toward your own healing or your family’s protection counts.
Onwuchekwa added a caution that applies across the whole range. Stepping away is “the most popular, prevalent and expected reflex,” and he wanted other options weighed beside it. One is what his therapist calls a corrective emotional experience. He pointed to poet Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, a year of daily notes on small, unexpected joys that changed how Gay saw his own life. Complaints, Onwuchekwa said, arrive in bold capitals while God’s kindnesses come in small print. The practice fits the spectrum unevenly. For disappointment, deliberately noticing goodness can loosen a grievance and make return possible. For abuse, it cannot replace safety or accountability, but it can help a survivor whose sense of God has been tangled up with the abuser recover the memory of a God who gives good things. Onwuchekwa’s goal was that anyone who still steps away does so because “this seemed like the best choice, not my only choice.”
What do you owe a church on your way out, and what does it owe you?
Sharpe made the panel’s most direct appeal: “don’t leave that church without telling somebody what made you feel like I need to leave this church.” He has watched apologies go unoffered and problems go unsolved because people left in silence. He reached for Queen Vashti, who refused the king’s command in Esther 1 and lost her crown. The narrative describes her refusal rather than prescribing a rule, and Sharpe used it to show that a person can lose a position and keep their voice. He also confessed that he once waited until he was a volcano, so his exit became an eruption. “Don’t wait until you’re all the way over it to face it.”
Brown and Edmondson attached the condition that keeps this counsel from becoming another trap. Brown warned that “people don’t always take accountability,” so say what happened without staking your recovery on their response. Edmondson went further: “when our healing is contingent upon the understanding of the person who harmed us, then we are in shackles.” Sharpe agreed that “you have to accept the apology that you’ll never receive sometimes.”
Where on the spectrum does Sharpe’s appeal apply? It fits the disappointment end well, where nobody acted with malice and a conversation might repair something. At the abuse end, Edmondson’s emphasis on agency and outside authorities suggests the person you tell may need to be someone other than the abuser. Sharpe said to tell somebody, which leaves room for exactly that.
The panel also turned the obligation around. Edmondson said a healthy church treats everything as open for conversation, and plans for how people leave, through exit conversations and even anonymous surveys. A church with no way to think about healthy exits, she warned, “you might be dabbling in cult ness.” Leaders should remember that “It is a privilege to be in the back pew of the house of the Lord, but no one is owed the pulpit.” Before joining anywhere, she recommended asking: “Who holds you accountable? Who do you submit to?” And what happens when the problem is an abuse of power, beyond disappointment? A leader offended by those questions has already answered them. Her rule is that accountability must rise with power.
Onwuchekwa gave the reason a wounded person might still look for such a church. A thing’s worth survives its abuses, he argued, and “The reason why counterfeit money exists is because the actual dollar is so valuable.” Jude 3 Project holds the same distinction from the other side: the failures of leaders are real and grievous, and they are not the same as the failure of Christ.
Edmondson pointed past every congregation to the one who extends the invitation in Matthew 11:28: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Jesus speaks those words in his own name. A church that wounded you failed to carry them faithfully, and its failure leaves his invitation standing. Name the wound accurately, get the help that fits it, and refuse to let the people who misused his house decide whether you belong in it.