If you haven't already read Part 1 from 4/2/25, please take the time to read Part 1 here. This will help give more context to my continued story.
It's been over a year of wrestling and working hard in my journey of recovery from church abuse and church hurt. I'm glad to have made significant progress, but I am also frustrated that trauma is often cyclical just like grief is cyclical, and when you think you are finally on the other side, something comes up that triggers you all over again. It's such a hard journey of learning to trust God, learning to trust and open your heart up to others again, and learning to let go of past hurts.
Since May 2025, we have been regularly attending All Saints Church, feeling that of all of the reformed churches in the area, our family could grow and be nourished and feel like we have a place to belong. It took us nearly a year of visiting a few different churches to come to that conclusion. However, we have taken our time to become members, because the fear of being hurt again and the difficulty of learning to trust church leadership again is a tough hurdle. We also want to make sure we give ourselves plenty of time to pray and discern how well the leadership shepherd as God's Word calls them to shepherd. Elders have a high calling and a huge task required of them. Sadly, so many miss the mark, so we just want more time to quietly observe and ask questions before making a final decision in moving forward with membership.
As one of the first steps toward membership, Tim decided it would be wise to meet with the pastors of the church to ask questions about membership and the church and the role and practice of elders in the church. He also took the time to share our family's story of church hurt and the resulting trauma to each of us, explaining why we aren't in a hurry to become members. He did it as a test case to see how they would respond to our situation.
To give a summary, a couple of years ago, we had a really traumatic event shake us to the core. We went to the church leadership for prayer and help working through the trauma, erroneously thinking the church was the place to go for help and encouragement. We thought they would walk with us through the unknowns of our valley, encouraging us with Scripture and praying with us, bearing our burdens with us and encouraging us when we felt we couldn't go on. That should be what shepherding looks like, shouldn't it? It's what I envision when I read I Peter 5 and other passages listing the duties of elders. That's what I see in Jesus' example during His earthly ministry. Instead, we were made to feel like we were too much trouble for what we were worth. We were welcome in the church as long as we didn't have trouble. Once we had trouble, we were no longer welcome. We were too much of a burden. We needed to leave because we weren't welcome anymore as a family. They violated their confidentiality policy, they emotionally abused one of our children, they encouraged the congregation to not ostracize us all while leaders were guilty of doing that exact thing. It took me a year to lament, pray, and strive to forgive when no one even asked for forgiveness. At the end of my year long journey to forgive and as an exercise from a book on forgiveness I was reading, I wrote a letter to the elders sharing my heart with them, sharing my disappointment in how vastly different their actions were compared to the various passages of Scripture that model elder behavior, and finally telling them specifically what I forgive them for. It was helpful to get that off of my chest and to name the hurts that I forgive. In my forgiveness journey, I read several helpful books on forgiveness. Forgiveness is not forgetting. It's also not condoning or excusing their behavior. Forgiveness is simply choosing to not be angry with or resenting or taking vengeance on someone for the harm they have caused. In a spiritual sense, it's not personally holding them accountable for the hurts they caused, but entrusting the situation to God to hold them accountable, bring justice, and resolve the situation or help us move on, if resolution isn't possible. That letter was very freeing for me as I let go of the resentment onto which I was holding.
Since then, I have been able to move on in many ways. Because the trauma is still there, there have been times when something triggers me and brings up all of those feelings once again, but those triggers are getting less frequent and often are easier to deal with than they had been even a year ago. In part though, I wasn't prepared for or expecting the grief that my letter would cause me when my letter seemingly fell on deaf ears. We requested that the letter be shared with all of the elders since it was written to the elders as a whole. It wasn't as if I was expecting the elders to come and ask for forgiveness, although, that would have been the Biblical thing to do, even if they didn't believe they were wrong but at least to apologize for and acknowledge the hurt that was caused. I guess I just would have thought that I'd at least get an acknowledgment that the letter was received and my heart understood even if it was just from one elder who had been involved in the situation. Unfortunately, it was silence that ensued, and that just caused grief over how far the elders missed the mark in shepherding a small number of their sheep. Interestingly enough, the new pastor of the church who wasn't involved in our situation at all acknowledged my letter by sending me a note and explaining that he was somewhat familiar with the details of our story but obviously hadn't been involved in any of the details or decisions regarding our family's situation since that was before his arrival. The note was from him personally, not on behalf of the elders.
I've attended a seminar on church abuse and church hurt. It was helpful for me in working through my feelings and knowing I'm not alone in how I was feeling or what I was wrestling through. One thing they talked about was how church leaders typically have a repetitive pattern to abuse/hurt because no one is bold enough to talk about their trauma and speak out against the leaders. As a result, the sin patterns are repeated and more people continue to get hurt. I've wrestled with that fact and knowing how to best proceed with that. Obviously, I don't want anyone else to suffer as we have suffered, and sadly, we aren't the only ones who have suffered in this way under those elders. I know of other people and families who have had similar reactions from the elders with similar breaches of confidence and letter writing to the church members. Some of these hurt people have left silently. Others have been outspoken or have had people close to their situation be very vocal about it. I think there is a balance between being silent and being aggressive and harsh and bordering on defamation. I don't know what that balance looks like, but I do want people to know that there is a church that may look really good from an outsider's perspective or someone who has never needed help, but when looking closely at the leadership and the shepherding model, there are outstanding issues that shouldn't be overlooked, especially when there is a repetitive pattern and a neglect of shepherding the individual sheep (microshepherding).
I don't know about you, but I want my shepherds to take time to pray and seek God's Word for wisdom in how to love and shepherd a hurting sheep before plowing ahead bulldozing the hurting ones instead of helping them. I want them triaging the most critical ones before worrying about those who aren't sick. I don't want them making rash decisions without getting all of the facts or trying understand the hurting heart. I don't want them instantly thinking the worst before understanding where the hurting are actually at. I don't want them worrying more about what people will think about them rather than worrying about a wounded soul. I want elders who are humble enough to admit when they are wrong or who apologize when there is hurt. I don't want elders who go and tell everyone what was shared with them in confidence. They shouldn't be quick to overreact, but they should be quick to pray and seek God's Word. They also should be willing to rule and make their own decisions as elders and not give non-elders the task of making a judgment and choice of how to shepherd. Shepherds are the ones that God will hold accountable (Hebrews 13:17) in that final day when the great Shepherd appears, and those who do shepherd faithfully, will receive the unfading crown of glory (I Peter 5:4).
So back to Tim's test case with the pastors of our current church we are attending: How did they respond to our situation and story? Did they immediately say we weren't welcome at their church? Did they look at our family with disgust and tell us to find somewhere else to worship because our problems are too much? No! In fact, how they responded is exactly how we expected our previous shepherds to respond - with love and care and a desire to walk with us in our valley. They encouraged Tim even more strongly to consider having our family become members so that they can minister to us on a deeper level as our shepherds. There was something redemptive in that the meeting. I was too fearful to be present for the meeting. Tim walked away encouraged and refreshed. He shared with me what was said in the meeting and how the pastors acted and what they said. I was so grateful and rejoiced in the redemptive actions of these godly men. I know that the Bible has a tall order for elders, but I know it's humanly possible, or God wouldn't call men to do it. I'm grateful for a glimmer of hope that we may have found elders we can submit to in their shepherding care. Now to continue to seek and observe and pray that God would lead us in His timing to take the final step of membership once again, and that if this is not His will, He will make it abundantly clear to us. In the meantime, my prayer is that God would give me the strength to cast my anxieties about submitting to church leadership after all of the hurt and trauma on Him, because He cares for me. After all, that's what Peter was getting at in I Peter 5:7 as he concluded his chapters on submitting to authority or the needs and cares of various groups/people and finally about submitting to the needs of each other, and entrusting God with the worries that submission may cause. "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen" (I Peter 5:10-11).
