Finding a healthy church after facing spiritual abuse

When we are hurt by someone, it damages our ability to trust that person, perhaps permanently. Depending on who is doing the hurting and how they hurt us, sometimes that mistrust can be far reaching, often beyond the individual who harmed us. We learn, out of our innate sense of self-preservation perhaps, to mistrust all people who, in our mind, are the type of person our abuser represents.

This is often true in various forms of child abuse, sexual abuse and yes, spiritual abuse. A few months ago, I wrote a blog entry for Daily Jesus about spiritual abuse and it became one of the most read posts on the site this year. The sheer number of comments and nature of the comments we received both on the post directly and in private emails paint a picture that is very clear: many of you have been hurt by some of the people you should be able to trust the most, people from your church.

My heart goes out to those who are aware that they have been or are being abused and I pray that if you are not out of that abusive situation, that God will give you the courage to leave it soon. My heart also goes out to those who are not yet aware they are being spiritually abused. My prayer for those in that situation is that God will guide their heart to realize what they are being taught is wrong, and that they will be guided to the truth.

In the comments I saw on the first post, two themes of distrust seemed painfully clear. Those who are victims of spiritual abuse face a great level of distrust of both churches and of God himself.

I wish I had some kind of magic answer to heal your pain, and I suppose I do—God can heal your pain, if you let him. But that answer is probably feels useless if you already don’t trust him, doesn’t it?

So let’s tackle the church issue and I will address the “trusting God thing” in a future post.

There are healthy churches out there and through prayer and searching, you can find them. But how? There’s no one single list for measuring a healthy church but there’s plenty of lists out there to help you formulate what a healthy church means to you.

A friend of mine who is recovering from spiritual abuse offered these two examples of sites list basic attributes you should be able to find in a healthy church:
http://www.simplychurch.com/2006/10/5_signs_of_a_he.html
http://www.lifeway.com/article/?id=167792

If you have time and the energy for more involved reading, one of the pastors at the church my husband and I attend (which is a healthy, growing and vibrant church) suggested these:
-Stephen Macchia authored a book titled “Becoming A Healthy Church: 10 Traits of a Vital Ministry.”
-Scazzero, who equates emotional health with spiritual maturity, authored “The Emotionally Healthy Church.”

One more thought I will note on this subject is that oftentimes spiritual abuse can be a trend along certain denominational/belief system lines. While some spiritually abusive churches are more abusive than others, I believe there’s some element of abuse in all churches of certain belief systems. If you find strong elements of spiritual abuse in one specific type of church, my bet would be that other churches of that type will be similar and thus should be avoided.

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Last 5 posts by gingerbreadnewslady

• It's OK for churches to take snow days - May 7th, 2010
• Worth saving - February 7th, 2010
• Finding a healthy you (after spiritual abuse) - January 30th, 2010
• Do you experience 'Toxic Faith?' - October 26th, 2009
• Who am I? (Casting Crowns) - September 25th, 2009