This study is about one woman’s story and the church’s part in it. Sistar Outspoken grew up deep inside church life and eventually left for an African spiritual system. The church failed her long before any rival teaching reached her: it answered her without first listening to her. The guide asks you to stay with that failure and lament it honestly before turning to the theology of where she went. You can work through it alone over a few quiet sittings, or with a group in one longer session or two shorter ones.
Arguments come later, if they come at all. First comes the harder work of hearing what happened to her and noticing where you recognize it.
How to use this study
Some readers will come to these pages as church members who want to do better. Some will come as people who were hurt in a church and are still deciding what that hurt means. Some will be both. The study is written to hold all of these readers, so every reflection is optional. Nothing here requires you to tell anyone your story.
If you are leading a group, say this out loud at the start: no one has to share, and anything shared stays in the room. Do not call on people by name for the personal questions. Allow silence. If someone begins describing a current crisis, stop the study, care for that person, and help them reach a pastor, counselor or doctor they trust. A study session is not the right container for an emergency.
The source for this guide is a conversation from Jude 3 Project’s People to Person series, made with the Matthew 5:9 Fellowship. Brandon Cleaver of the Matthew 5:9 Fellowship explains the spirit of the series this way: “we don’t necessarily endorse everything that’s espoused, but we do endorse the idea of listening to those whom we may disagree with.” That is the posture this study asks of you. Listening is not agreement. It is the thing the church in her story did not do.
First, hear her account
Before you read any Scripture, read what she says happened. Take a pen. As you read, mark every point where someone responded to her before they understood her.
Sistar Outspoken describes her start this way: “A hardcore Christian. My whole family worked in a church.” She sang in the choir, ushered and later served as a stewardess. When she began asking questions about how Jesus was pictured, about his name and about the “us” in Genesis 1:26, Sistar Outspoken says, “So I’m asking these questions and I’m not getting answers.” She adds, “I’m not getting appropriate answers.” When people did respond, she says they would “Kind of turn the question into something else, you know, take it to another direction, even when I’m asking.”
Then came a season of hardship and repeated trips to the altar. “I was going up there and I was crying, I was praying, and the preacher said, if you come up here every week and you still crying, you not doing what you’re supposed to do in the rest of the week.” Her reaction: “No, he did not just judge me like that without asking me what I’m going through.”
After her boyfriend was killed, she began having experiences she could not explain, and she carried them back to church. Her summary of what she met: “when people are not experiencing certain things, they cannot talk to you. They cannot relate with you.” Some did a little better and then retreated: “some people would tell me some stories in the Bible, but then kind of brush it off and say, but only certain people can experience those things.” She also says, “I’m not trying to be special.”
One more detail matters, because it keeps the story honest. Not everyone failed her. “I still had people at the church that supported me because I was still a poet.” The failure was real, but it was not total. Lament has to be truthful in both directions.
Observation prompt: Count your marks. In how many moments did someone ask her a question before giving her an answer? Write down the number and the moments. Do not interpret yet.
Scripture gives words for this kind of grief
Lament is not complaining, and it is not disloyalty. It is a form of prayer Scripture itself teaches, where a person brings real loss and real confusion straight to God without pretending. Psalm 13:1 opens, “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” The psalm does not resolve in its first line. It lets the question stand. Notice that the psalmist addresses God directly. Lament is spoken to Someone.
Lament can also be spoken about the failure of God’s own people. In Ezekiel 34 the prophet speaks against the shepherds of Israel, the leaders who were supposed to care for the flock. Among the charges in Ezekiel 34:4: “neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost.” This is a word to a specific people in a specific crisis, so read it carefully. It is not a verdict on any one modern congregation, and her pastor is not Ezekiel’s target. But the passage shows that God takes seriously the harm done when those entrusted with care scatter the people they were meant to gather. The church may grieve its own failures without first defending itself.
Two short texts put words to the specific failure in her story. Proverbs 18:13 says, “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.” Proverbs is wisdom literature. It describes how life generally works, not a law with a penalty clause, and the pattern here is plain. James 1:19 gives the order for the church: “let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” Hearing comes first in the sentence and first in practice.
Observation prompt: Go back to the moments you marked in her account. Beside each one, write which of these texts speaks to it, if any. Some moments may fit none of them. Leave those blank rather than forcing a match.
What not to rush past
When Christians hear a story like hers, a few familiar responses arrive quickly. Each one contains a grain of something true. Each one also lets the listener skip the lament.
The first response is that she wanted something that suited her. She does say she “found something that worked better for me,” and that phrase deserves a serious response later. But she also says, “even now I don’t disrespect Christianity in a sense because I know it works. And I know truth still lives there.” A person who says that did not wander off casually. If we jump to her conclusion, we miss the years of unanswered questions that came before it.
The second response is that the preacher had a point about growth. Perhaps he hoped people would carry their faith into the week. But she names the real wound: he judged her “without asking me what I’m going through.” A correct principle delivered without a single question, to a woman in tears, in public, is not pastoral care. The principle cannot excuse the method.
The third response is that grief explains everything she experienced. Grief does affect the mind and body, and that matters. But she heard some version of “you’re just grieving” as a way of closing the conversation. Even a true observation can be used to end a person instead of understanding her. In the interview itself, she came close to tears telling this part of the story. That is worth remembering when we are tempted to hurry.
Underneath all three is a deeper separation. The failures of church leaders are real and grievous, and they are not the same as a failure of Christ. That distinction is a comfort, and it is also a responsibility. It means the church cannot hide its failures behind God’s faithfulness. It also means a person who was failed is not wrong to keep the two questions apart.
A practice: writing a lament
This practice takes about twenty minutes. Do it alone, on paper, somewhere you will not be interrupted. In a group, give everyone the time to write in silence and make clear that no one will be asked to read aloud.
Choose the version that fits you. You may change versions partway through.
- If you have been the one not listened to: Address God by whatever name you can honestly use right now. Describe what happened in plain words, without softening it. Name what you lost, whether it was trust, a community, a sense of being normal, or something else. Ask God the question you were never able to ask anyone else. If a word of trust comes honestly, write it. If it does not, stop at the question. Psalm 13 does not rush either.
- If you have been the one who answered too fast: Address God. Name one specific occasion, with a real person in mind, when you responded before you understood. Write what you think that person needed and did not get from you. Do not write a plan to fix it yet. Stay with what happened first.
- If you watched it happen and said nothing: Address God. Describe what you saw and what kept you quiet. Name the person who was left alone in that moment.
Keep what you write. You are not required to show it to anyone, including a pastor or a group leader. If writing it stirs up more than you expected, especially around grief or past harm in a church, talk with someone you trust. A counselor can help carry what a page cannot, and seeking that help is not a failure of faith.
When the theology question comes
This study puts listening first, but listening is not the same as having nothing to say. Sistar Outspoken asked real questions about Scripture, and those questions have answers worth giving with care. Her experiences after her loss also raise questions a faithful pastor would eventually need to address. Jude 3 Project honors the desire to respect heritage and the dead, and draws a line between memory and honor on one side and veneration or spiritual contact on the other. Jude 3 Project also refuses to treat spiritual and mental health concerns as an either/or, and urges qualified care and prayerful support together. That applies to anyone whose grief has left them unable to eat, sleep or work, as hers did.
The point of this study is the order. Brandon Cleaver describes the aim of the series this way: “The goal in this series from people to person is not to give immediate answers, but to cultivate genuine understanding.” A conviction spoken after real understanding sounds very different from the same conviction used to shut someone down. In her account, she received labels before anyone understood her. The church owes people the reverse.
Discussion questions
- In your observation exercise, how many moments did you find where someone asked her a question first? What do you make of that number?
- She names people at church who did support her. What did they seem to offer that others did not, and why might it still not have been enough?
- Proverbs 18:13 calls answering before hearing “folly and shame.” Where in church life does the pressure to answer quickly come from? What would it cost a pastor or member to slow down?
- Ezekiel 34 holds leaders responsible for those driven away. How would you describe the difference between lamenting a failure and simply blaming someone for it?
- She says she wanted a place where “we can move as a village.” What would it look like for a congregation to grow alongside a person who keeps coming back in tears, instead of grading her progress?
- Think of a question someone once brought you that you did not know how to answer. What did you do? What could you honestly say next time, instead of changing the subject?
- For those willing: is there someone you need to go back to, not to argue, but to ask what they were going through? You do not need to say who.
Facilitators: the last two questions are personal. Invite responses but do not wait them out or press. It is fine for a group to spend all its time on the first four.
Before you close the book
Choose one person in your life who has gone quiet about church, or who has left. This week, do not plan what you will tell them. Plan one question you could ask them about their experience, and decide in advance that you will let them finish their answer. Write the question down. If the moment comes, ask it, and then listen longer than feels comfortable. Whatever they tell you, your first job is to understand it.