Psalm 55 contains one of the most exact descriptions of betrayal in Scripture. David says he could have endured an enemy’s attack. What undid him was someone else: “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). The person who wounded him had walked beside him toward worship. If a pastor, teacher or mentor who shaped your faith has fallen, that sentence may describe what happened to you better than anything you have yet said out loud.
Grief like this usually goes one of two ways. It gets packed away and carried, or it hardens into outrage that replays the headline. Neither lets God reshape what the fall disturbed. The stages below move from naming the loss, through reading a lament and examining what you had hung on the leader, to testing your anger and practicing lament over two weeks. You can work alone with a Bible and a few sheets of paper, across several sittings, or with a small group across two or three meetings. Nothing here asks you to decide whether the leader should lead again. A church has to answer that. Your question is what happens in you.
Name what the fall took
Dr. Cynthia James, speaking with Lisa Fields on the Jude 3 Project podcast, describes two tracks after a leader falls: one for the church as an institution, and one for the individual “dealing with the grief, recognizing that it is a test of our theological identity.” She also asks for “a clear statement that there’s profound pain and injury that goes along with it.” Notice the order. The pain gets named before anything gets fixed.
So begin there. Take one sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left, write what this person gave you. Be specific: a sermon you still remember, a habit of reading Scripture, the reason you stayed in church through a hard year. On the right, write what the fall took. Again, be specific: you cannot listen to recordings of that person anymore, you stopped serving, you no longer trust your own judgment about people.
Do not rank the items or explain them. When both columns feel honest, look at the right side and mark each item with one letter: L if the loss is about the leader, G if it is about God, Y if it is about you. Keep the sheet. You will return to it.
Read Psalm 55 as a prayer, slowly
Psalm 55 is a lament, a poem of complaint prayed to God. Read the whole psalm aloud once without stopping. Then read it again with a pencil and mark four things.
- Where David describes his body and his fear (verses 4-5).
- Where he wants to escape: “Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest” (Psalm 55:6).
- Where he names the friend who betrayed him (verses 12-14 and 20-21).
- Where he tells himself, and anyone listening, where the weight belongs: “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22).
You will also find harsh lines. In verse 15 David asks God to bring judgment on his enemies. Lament in Scripture is not tidy, and the psalm does not edit his anger into politeness. But look at what the anger does. It is spoken to God, and the verdict is left with God. The psalm records David’s prayer; it does not hand him a sword, and it ends with “but I will trust in thee” (Psalm 55:23). That is the movement you are practicing: outrage said honestly, then handed over.
One caution. David’s betrayer is a deceitful man plotting against him. Your leader’s story may be different in important ways, and you may not know all of it. The psalm gives you permission and a pattern for prayer. It does not supply a verdict on any particular person.
Copy verses 6 and 22 onto a fresh page. Under each, write one sentence of your own in the same spirit. Where would you fly to, if you could? What burden would you name, if you were handing it over today?
Trace what you had hung on them
The harder examination comes next, and it is not an accusation. Dr. James notes that some congregants struggle after a fall “because they identify perhaps too strongly with the leader.” She refuses to point at others while saying it: “Prone to sin, I’m prone to sin.” Part of healthy grief, she argues, is helping people “put some distancing there between their admiration and over idealizing and not be quick to demonize on any side.”
She knows how that sounds. “We think of detachment as cold,” she admits, and then explains what she means: “we want congregants to know how to healthily detach as well as engage.” Detachment in her sense does not mean leaving the church or refusing to love anyone again. It means your faith stops resting on one person’s performance.
Lisa Fields adds a sharper possibility. Followers sometimes cling to a leader for reasons that live inside the follower: “you can over identify because you yourself are experiencing some things you can’t overcome.” She calls it “almost projection.” That can be uncomfortable to consider, so consider it privately first.
Now read Jeremiah 17:5-8. The passage is prophetic poetry addressed to Judah, and it contrasts two kinds of trust using two plants: a shrub in the desert and a tree by water. “Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD” (Jeremiah 17:5). Then: “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is” (Jeremiah 17:7). Read the end of verse 5 carefully. The problem is not that Judah trusted people at all. It is trust that replaces the LORD, a heart that “departeth” from him. Applying that to a pastor you admired is application, not the passage’s original setting, but the logic carries.
Return to your sheet and add a third column: What only God can carry. Go down the left column item by item. For each, ask whether it came from God through this person, or whether you had located it in the person. Your sense that God loves you, your confidence that your faith is real, your reason for believing the Bible: if any of those leaned on the leader, move them into the third column.
Test your anger before it hardens
Anger at real wrong is not sin, and Scripture never asks you to pretend harm was not harm. Some failures are not church matters at all. Lisa Fields draws that line plainly: “some things you just gotta call the police.” If you were the one harmed, and that harm included abuse at home or in a relationship, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.
The question here is different: what is your anger doing to you? Dr. James worries about a culture where “Everyone is a journalist, everyone is an authority,” and she urges people toward prevention “rather than a revenge stance.” Outrage can feel like loyalty to the truth while it slowly becomes a way of never grieving.
Lisa Fields describes her own movement after her mentor’s scandal came out. He had once told her, “make sure your public and private life match.” Her first reaction was judgment: “man that was something he should have been practicing.” She did not take that back. But later, she says, “as I look back after healing and processing, I was like I think he was just trying to help me.” Her assessment of his failure stayed honest. What changed is that grief, worked through, let her see the true things he had given her without needing to defend him or erase him. Outrage alone would have frozen the picture at the moment of the headline.
Write down three sentences you have said or thought about the leader since the fall. Next to each, answer two things. Is it true, as far as you actually know? And is it aimed at justice for the harmed, or at the leader’s humiliation? You do not have to fix anything you find. Bring those sentences into your next lament and say them to God as they are.
Turn the lamp on yourself
Galatians 6:1 tells believers how to restore someone caught in a fault, and it ends with a warning to the restorer: “considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” In context the verse addresses a community helping a fallen brother. Using it to examine a grieving follower’s heart is a step of application, but Dr. James makes the same move. She suggests that before any fall, both leaders and congregants should ask, “Where am I prone to go left?” and “What is tempting me that I just assume I have a handle on?”
This is not a way to shift blame from the leader to you. It is protection against a quieter danger: believing you are a different kind of person than the one who fell. Dr. James’s phrase for the discipline is to “learn how to take ourself off of pedestals,” and she is speaking first about herself.
Choose one of her two questions and answer it in writing. No one needs to read it. If you can name a place where you run without margin or rest, write that too.
Practice lament for two weeks
When Elijah sat under the juniper tree, “he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life” (1 Kings 19:4). The angel’s answer was food and sleep, twice: “Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee” (1 Kings 19:7). Dr. James reads that scene as a model of care: “First he dealt with his physical needs.” She also says of good restoration, “It’s not a quick process.” Grief keeps the same pace. If your own grief has moved toward thoughts of ending your life, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, today.
Here is a two-week practice built on Psalm 55 and that pace.
- Days 1-3: Sleep, eat real meals, and drop one obligation you took on out of guilt. Do no writing about the leader.
- Three times each week: Write a lament of half a page, addressed to God, following the psalm’s shape. Say what you feel in your body. Say where you wish you could flee. Name the person and what they were to you. Name one burden you are handing over. End with one sentence of trust, or an honest admission that you cannot write one yet.
- Once each week: Reread your three-column sheet. Move anything that has shifted. Add anything you missed.
- At the end of week two, if you choose: Tell one trusted person one item from your sheet. A friend, a counselor or a pastor outside the situation all count. Choosing to wait is also an answer.
Talk it through
If you lead a group through these stages, assume someone present was harmed by a church leader, or loves someone who was. Make every activity optional to share. Read Psalm 55 aloud together, but let people write their columns and laments privately. Do not let the conversation become a debate about the leader’s future or a trading of rumors; Dr. James warns that “too much secrecy builds this mistrust,” but a grief group is not the place to investigate. If anger fills the room, let it stand. Your role is to keep the space honest and slow, not to make anyone sound gracious on schedule.
- Looking at your marks of L, G and Y, which kind of loss surprised you most?
- Psalm 55 lets David say harsh things to God. What do you think changes when anger is spoken to God rather than about someone?
- Where would you place the line between healthy detachment and simply refusing to trust anyone again?
- Lisa Fields saw her mentor differently after healing. Is there anything true this leader gave you that you have been afraid to keep?
- What would justice for the people harmed actually look like, as distinct from the leader’s humiliation?
- If someone you admire now were to fall next year, what in your faith would still be standing?
Carry one item forward
At the end of the two weeks, choose one entry from your third column, something you had placed on the leader that only God can carry. Write it as a sentence addressed to God, in your own words, and read it once a day for the following week. Then ask yourself one question: did the true thing you first received through this person ever really belong to them?
This study guide draws on a Jude 3 Project conversation with Lisa Fields and Dr. Cynthia James. Hear it in full on the Watch page.