How Do You Help Victims Of Spiritual Abuse? People come to our church for a host of reasons, but most of them selfish. That s OK by the way. People didn t come to hear Jesus so they could make a contribution. They came to him because they needed physical healing, deliverance from demons or a better understanding of God and his will for their lives. Sometimes as leaders, we can get lost in the process of leading a church and forget that people come to our services to meet their own needs, not ours. Statistics reveal that key reasons people come to church are to widen their list of friendships with similar values, fill spiritual hunger or meet an emotional need. In any case, what do you do when someone comes to your church hurting from bad church experience elsewhere? This is pretty common but largely unaddressed. If you have been in church leadership any amount of time, you have experienced the reality that Christians tend to move around. They come to your church from another church across town because they are searching for something they haven t found there. Other times, they leave your church and go elsewhere for ostensibly the same reason. Church transfers happen all the time and not just from city to city. Sometimes it is between churches ½ mile apart. I participate weekly in a group we informally have named Gatekeepers. It is a collection of church leaders from a variety of different denominational backgrounds who meet without an agenda, to get to know each other as fellow laborers in the body of Christ. Gone are the days of the one-man band approach to ministry. God has called many people into your region. It stands to reason that you should work together closely so that the church has maximum impact in your city or town.
When someone comes to our church, we use the visitor sign up process to learn their church history. If they have been attending the church down the street for the last ten years and suddenly show up at our church, I am going to want to sit down and have a conversation with them. I also want to have a conversation with the church leader from whence they came if we are acquainted. This is one reason fellowship among pastors and church leaders is so valuable. It is always difficult for pastors and leaders to lose people; especially longtime attendees. Because of the relationships I have with area leaders, they will give me a call to tell me that so & so has been attending their church for several weeks. They do this, and on occasion, I have done this to keep the lines of communication open and investigate the best course of action. In most cases, I am able to report to other leaders that parting from us should not affect their new relationship with them. Our vision as a congregation is to embrace change as a means of staying current with the culture we are trying to reach. If you are a leader you know that Christians, in general, are not known for their love of change but more often their stubborn resistance to it. Sometimes people have left us, or come to us from other churches because they do not like the changes they see. Rather than get into the variety of reasons people change membership, let's focus instead on what to do with people who come to you from other churches and then talk about victims of spiritual abuse. After speaking with the former pastor, we do our best as a church to get to know this new arrival. If they carry a wound from a broken relationship with the former pastor or another prominent church member, I take note that they may need to just hang out at our church until they get their bearings. We are very deliberate about helping people connect to our church by understanding our mission and vision.
Each leader has to make up their own mind, but personally, I will not allow anyone with unresolved issues serve in any ministry that demands spiritual authority. In other words, I do not want them representing our church in a leadership capacity if they have not taken every step possible to fix what is broken with former pastors or leaders. I do this because if these issues are not resolved, you will be the next target down the road. It is not even a question of if, but when. Sometimes, there is no human way to resolve the problem. Paul and Barnabas came to an impasse in Acts which severed their relationship for a time. My main concern is whether the person coming to our church has made every possible attempt to reconcile. But what about people who come to us as victims of spiritual abuse? What do I mean by spiritual abuse? In other words, their former church starts to do things that are unethical and damaging to the spiritual or emotional lives of their members. Spiritual abuse exists where leaders exercise dominating control over members. Spiritual abuse exists where accounting is not available to anyone to verify. Spiritual abuse exists where churches condemn other churches in the region for no discernable reason. The challenge with spiritual abuse is that your role as a pastor is often not reconciliation but inner healing. That is not something easily done. For several years as a young minister, God opened the doors to minister to Jehovah s Witnesses. Jehovah s Witness manifest all the characteristics of a cult. The blood of Christ and the cross are minor discussions among their members. The main emphasis in that group is obedience to their church organization led by a governing body at headquarters. If you are unfamiliar with Jehovah s Witnesses, I will not bore you with details, but their doctrine is based loosely on their founder, Charles Russell and his successor, Judge Rutherford.*
Jehovah s Witness are taught early on to stop celebrating Christmas, Easter and birthdays because such celebrations have pagan origins. Further, they are taught that all churches other than Jehovahs Witnesses are part of Christendom. That is code for the anti-christ Church. Any church without a Kingdom Hall designation is considered part of the apostate church and must be avoided at all costs. Jehovah s Witnesses are a very loving group, provided you stick to their rules and ways. If you ask too many questions or dare to disagree with something in their Watchtower magazine, it is possible or even likely that two elders will show up at your home and put you on trial. They will call for you to repent or be disfellowshipped. If you refuse and do experience disfellowship, everyone in the Jehovah s Witnesses will pretend you are dead. They will not speak with you. Whole families have split by following these doctrines. In any case, I didn t intend to make this into cult 101. I bring this to your attention as a backdrop to say this. In the five years, we ministered to Jehovah s witnesses, I was successful in helping many men and women break free of that harmful cult. They walked away from Kingdom Hall never to return, but here is the sad reality. Very, few of those who left ever went on to become Christians or serve a local church. In essence, the abuse had so affected their thinking and behavior that deep down, they still were suspicious of all non-jehovah s Witness churches. I learned first-hand that it is possible to get people out of the Jehovah s witnesses but much harder to get them healed on the inside to become productive Christians. I can attest from personal experience that coming away from a spiritually abusive environment is not easy. Here is the reason: To become genuinely free of spiritual abuse, you must address what attracted you to it in the first place.
Now you see why is not easy. You see, people who have attended churches that became abusive or cultic often break free and put the entire blame for their life s problems on their former pastor. Maybe he or she manifests dominating control or did unethical things. All that may be 100% true, but Jesus does not have an escape clause in scripture for victims of spiritual abuse. Unforgiveness is unforgiveness no matter how it plays about. We are never given the freedom to despise those with whom we disagree. So, spiritually abused people come to you with a combination of righteous indignation, unforgiveness, a heart to change and ignorance of the part they played in empowering the abuser. People who have experienced spiritual abuse will need time to sort things out and be healed. There are some excellent resources available on the subject that you can access at our website, ministerstoolbox.com. In addition, this is also a subject that is near and dear to my heart because I once attended a church that started out in a very dynamic and powerful way that eventually went off the rails. I republished a book about this experience I had more than 30 years ago and it is now available on Kindle, as a paperback and also on Audiobooks. It is entitled When a Good Church Goes Bad. The book shares my journey as both a congregant and a leader over 15 years of my Christian life. If you would like to read the first 3 chapters of the book, click this link and click Synopsis. Spiritual abuse is a difficult situation to help people navigate through. If you have never experienced it, Satan can use the confusion, guilt, blame, and unforgiveness closely associated with it to ruin many lives. Even if you have never experienced spiritual abuse yourself, you may want to consider getting the book to gain insight into how to help those who have been there.
One of the unique things that happened when I first published the book, was that I did about 30 radio and television interviews across the country. Every call in show I would hear someone tell me they were convinced I was talking about their church. It was then that I learned that my experiences were not isolated but more commonplace than originally thought. As a matter of fact, just yesterday I was having lunch with a pastor who told me that a national organization he was once associated with manifested many of the same characteristics I described. As leaders, we need to equip ourselves with godly advice for people who have been through this. Often times they are both parts of the problem and part of the solution all wrapped up into one. Well, we ve run out of time. I hope that these few minutes have been informative and helpful. Thanks again for listening. You know that we always end with a quote. This one is from Jeff Von Vonderon, co-author of the book, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse. He said, Jesus leads through friendship rather than fear Every day of our lives he invites us to voluntarily follow him. At no point does he employ his allencompassing authority to compel us to follow.