What you saw was not a rumor. You were close enough to watch a leader you trusted do real harm, and maybe close enough to watch the people around that leader decide it wasn’t worth disturbing Sunday over. Now the songs land differently. Prayer can feel like talking in a room where someone might be listening for a reason to call you a troublemaker. You may still believe in God and still have no idea what to do with the picture you carry.
Take it to God, and take it in the form Scripture already provides: lament. Lament is telling God the truth with the details left in, before you are ready to be fine and without promising that you will be soon. The pages that follow walk slowly through one psalm written by a man who was betrayed on the way to worship. They draw on a conversation between Lisa Fields and Rev. Dr. Brianna Parker about seeing leaders fall, and they end with a practice of writing your own complaint to God. You can work through them alone over a few quiet sittings, or with two or three people you trust. Nothing here requires you to tell anyone anything you would rather keep between yourself and God.
First, a boundary. If what you saw was abuse or a crime, or if someone is still in danger, lament is not the first step. Lisa Fields’s counsel for those situations is to skip the church and call the police. Parker says she has deliberately kept the church out of such situations until after she had called the police, “Because sometimes the cover up is intentional.” A congregation’s process does not replace law enforcement, and prayer does not replace safety.
- If a crime has happened or someone is in danger now, contact the police.
- If you or someone you love is being harmed at home, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
- If the weight of this has turned into thoughts of ending your life, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Seeing a counselor alongside any of this is not a failure of faith. God works through trained people, and what you witnessed may need more care than a page of reflection can give.
What should not be hurried past
People who have watched church harm up close usually hear a set of familiar responses. Some come from older believers who have seen a lot: people are going to be people, so keep serving and keep moving. Some come from the pulpit: take the meat and leave the bone. Some are spiritual shortcuts: just forgive and let it go. Each one may contain something true. Each one also tends to arrive too early, before anyone has let you say what happened.
Lisa Fields describes telling other leaders and preachers what had happened to her and watching them carry on as if nothing had changed. She puts it simply: “But it’s kinda like everybody doesn’t feel it like you feel it.” That is not a judgment against you for feeling it. It describes how lonely this kind of knowledge can be. You are carrying something the people around you have decided not to pick up.
Parker names the second wound, which is often worse than the first. When you speak up, the people you confide in may be loyal to the leader, and sometimes leadership already knew. “You don’t always know who you’re talking to,” she says. And then: “If you are in community with people, that hurts more than whatever the leader has done.” If what keeps you awake is less what the leader did and more the way everyone closed ranks afterward, you are not being dramatic. You are describing the loss of a place where you expected to find God’s people.
So before anything else, let the harm be the size it actually is. You don’t have to make it larger to be taken seriously, and you don’t have to shrink it to be considered mature.
For reflection, written or silent: Which hurt more, what the leader did or how people responded once it was known? You can answer this privately and never say it aloud.
If you are meeting with others, agree on a few things before you begin. Don’t name people who aren’t in the room. Don’t try to fix each other. Anyone can pass on any question at any point, and no one has to explain why. The person who needs the most time should set the pace.
A psalm written from inside the house of God
Psalm 55 is poetry and prayer, a lament in the voice of David. It doesn’t explain betrayal. It brings betrayal to God. Read the whole psalm slowly, out loud if you can, before you go any further.
Early on, David admits he wants to escape: “And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest” (Psalm 55:6). The psalm records that wish without scolding it. If part of you wants to stop going, stop answering texts from church people, or stop praying because prayer reminds you of them, Scripture has room for that longing. Wanting rest is not the same as abandoning God.
Then David names who hurt him: “But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company” (Psalm 55:13-14). Notice how precise he is. The man was a peer, a guide and a friend. They shared counsel and walked to worship side by side. David doesn’t speak in general terms about hurt. He tells God exactly what the relationship was, because that is what makes the betrayal so heavy.
Later he describes the man’s speech: “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords” (Psalm 55:21). Anyone who has heard a beautiful sermon from someone they knew to be causing harm will recognize this verse. The psalm does not ask you to pretend the words weren’t moving. It tells the truth about the distance between the words and the heart.
David also asks God to bring his betrayers to judgment, in strong terms. Scripture records that request honestly, and recording it is not the same as recommending that you carry out a plan of your own. The psalm places the desire for justice in God’s hands, which is where Romans 12:19 puts it as well: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Parker is candid about what it was like before she handed over her own list of people to be angry at: “I have to remember who to be mad at.” She came to see what that list cost her: “There’s no way I’m gonna let you live free, and I’m gonna live bound.” Lisa Fields reaches the same place in different words: “you have to let God handle people.” Lament allows you to say what you want to happen to them. It then gives the case to the Judge.
The psalm also shows that lament is repeated: “Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice” (Psalm 55:17). This is not a single prayer that settles everything. It returns again and again. Near the end comes “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee” (Psalm 55:22), and the final line closes with “but I will trust in thee” (Psalm 55:23). That trust arrives at the end of a long complaint. It doesn’t take the complaint’s place. The psalm doesn’t promise that your feelings will settle by a certain date. It shows a person who keeps talking to God until trust has room to speak.
There is one more scene worth bringing in. In John 5, Jesus asks a man who has lain by a pool for years whether he wants to be made whole. Lisa Fields says that question comes to mind when she talks with wounded people: “I’m like do you wanna heal?” Parker refuses to read the man’s long answer as excuse-making: “He’s trying to explain.” That distinction matters for anyone in lament. Telling God your history, including every way you tried and every time it didn’t work, is not stalling. It may be the most honest thing you can bring.
Questions to sit with:
Read Psalm 55:13-14 again. What did David lose because the betrayer was a friend and not an enemy? If you are willing, put into words what your situation cost you that a stranger’s harm would not have.
Where would you fly to, if you had the wings David wished for? What do you fear it would mean about you if you went?
Parker observes that with a leader who is still living, “you have to resolve some things in self that will never be resolved in relationship.” What is one thing you have been waiting for that person or that church to settle, which may have to be settled between you and God instead?
Writing your own complaint
This practice takes three sittings. Give each one about twenty minutes, on separate days, in a place where no one will read over your shoulder.
In the first sitting, write your own version of Psalm 55. Begin the way David does, by naming who the person was to you: guide, pastor, mentor, friend, someone you walked into church with. Then write what you saw, as plainly as you can. Write what the people around them did once it came out. Write what it has cost you, in sleep, in trust, in the way you hear Scripture read. You don’t have to be fair or polished, and you don’t have to finish. This page is for God.
In the second sitting, read what you wrote aloud to God. Then add what you want. That might be rest, a way out, justice, or simply some understanding. If you want them to suffer, write that down too, because David did. Underneath it, write Romans 12:19 or Psalm 55:22, and say plainly that you are giving the case to God. You may need to do this again next month, and that isn’t failure. The psalm prays evening, morning and noon. If words won’t come, Parker offers a prayer she says she prays often, and it is short enough to carry with you: “God if you don’t give us an explanation, give us peace.”
In the third sitting, decide whether there is one right person who should hear the truth. Parker’s rule for her own situation, which involved betrayal and not a crime, was “either you talk to the right person or you talk to no person.” She is careful to add, “I’m not saying silence is for everybody.” The right person might be a counselor, a mature friend with nothing to gain from the situation, or, where a crime is involved, the police. The wrong audience is usually a feed. Lisa Fields warns that public pain can turn into “trauma bonding around shared pain without any path to wholeness or healing,” and Parker says, “I don’t know if social media has a space for healing.” Keeping your lament private doesn’t mean your pain is shameful. It means the first room for it is God’s.
Groups should never read these complaints aloud as an exercise. If people want to, they can share a single sentence about what the writing was like, or say nothing at all. Close each meeting by asking whether anyone needs something practical this week, such as a ride, a meal or a phone number for a counselor. Don’t ask anyone for a lesson learned.
Questions for after the writing:
What did you find yourself unable to write, and what do you think kept it off the page?
Who is the right person for you, if there is one, and what makes them right instead of merely available?
Parker suggests that with messages you’ve already heard from a leader who fell, “you sit with it and you ask God what you should keep from it.” Is there a sermon or a lesson from that season you need to bring to God in this way, instead of keeping it all or throwing it all out?
You don’t need to finish all of this, or feel any particular way about it, before you put it down. If you only manage one thing this week, write the first two sentences of your complaint, the ones that name who that person was to you, and say them to God. The rest can wait for another sitting.
Go deeper in the Jude 3 library
This study guide draws on a Jude 3 Project conversation with Lisa Fields and Rev. Dr. Brianna Parker. Hear it in full on the Watch page.