Church Hurt

Many of you who know me know I’m a storyteller. I tell stories of all kinds: travel, adventure, relationships, and sometimes Jesus. The whole gambit. For the past few years, however, I’ve been more silent in this forum. The reason for this is a whole lot has been happening behind the scenes. Today, I’ve decided it’s time to pull back a curtain. So, before we begin, I’m going to warn you that this story is a big one and different from most I’ve ever told. I’ve attempted writing it dozens and dozens of times and spent hundreds of hundreds of hours drafting and re-drafting it. Today, I am writing it from start to finish and publishing the draft that comes from it. If you’re here for it, please have grace. It ends almost four years of silence for me in this space and tells a very, very personal story, which is mine.

Here we go.

Have you ever been to a rodeo?

I was born in Texas, but I haven’t. I’ve only seen one in the movies. In short, a cowboy or cowgirl gets on a bucking bronco and tries to stay on for as long as possible without getting trampled. It’s wild to watch and wilder to experience. For me, this is how the church has often felt—trying to stay on without getting trampled.

Eleven years ago, (when I was 16), Jesus called me into ministry. I had countless positive experiences with this, and the high of seeing people meet Jesus as I did is an amazing fuel to keep going. At the same time as this, however, there was always great hurt.

When I was 18 my father passed away and when I was 21 I found out he had always been a pedophile. I already felt he had been a terrible father, and this revelation cemented it, but truth be told the harder thing to accept was that he had a good side, too. He led literally thousands of people to Jesus, worked in the church, and was more devoted to reading his Bible than anyone I’ve ever known. I don’t think he was really a Christian himself until he got his brain cancer—at that point, he went from the most curt and critical person I knew to the most supportive, peaceful, and loving person I ever knew. This juxtaposition took me 8 years of therapy to get a grasp on, and to be honest will probably be one I continue processing for the rest of my life.

I summarize it here because It forms the background for my rodeo.

I grew up in church, and I have had many, many positive experiences in it. To name a few churches that have greatly impacted me for the better, I’d be amiss not to recount Tim Harring’s Chestnut Ridge Church, Derwin Grey’s Transformation Church, Johnny Caruso’s First Baptist Fort Mill, Whitson Sidey’s Stough Memorial Baptist, Nick Connley’s Gospel Community, Matt Roger’s The Church at Cherrydale, and Tommy Martinsen’s Evergreen. All of these churches, by and large, were very positive experiences and loved people like Jesus does. I’m so so so grateful for their places in the world. Too often, the voice of experiences like these tends to be cut at the behest of more painful experiences crying louder for our attention.

As for the churches I did not mention, I also had so many pockets of joy, love, friendship, and growth even in those environments. I have realized that no church is perfect, and I have forgiven and released the hurt I received from specific individuals under their roofs so many years ago. Truly, I write these things today for their edification, not their harm.

I write because I’ve learned that the church is my deepest passion, and I want to see as much of it healed, thriving, and as well as possible—both here in LA and across the world. My prayer is that these words can play a small part in doing just that. Or, at the very least, bring greater light to your heart and mine.

So, if you feel led to read, here is my rodeo.

I was 18, sitting in the conference room of my home church where I was a pastoral intern. Just outside the door sat my mentor, the minister of education, and the secretaries who loved my family so well as my Dad passed. Across the hall was the assistant pastor, the man who had convinced me to come under the church’s leadership and be trained for ministry at such a young age. At the table with me was my head pastor and on the wall behind him hung my late father’s painting of Jesus. We had just conducted his funeral the week prior under that same roof.

On the table between my head pastor and me was a referral form for a Bible college whose theology was in seeming disagreement with my church’s. Nonetheless, my father had blessed my voyage there on his deathbed. So, I sat with my pastor asking for a signature. I walked out of that room empty-handed and suspended from the program I was in there. A gruesome email chain between my grieving mother, me, and the church elders ensued as I was promptly told to turn in my church keys along with anything associated with my employment. Five years of family-like investment went out the door that day.

Through the grapevine, in the years following, I’ve heard the head pastor would respond differently to the 18-year-old boy he had invested so much into prior to that day, but the way it played out, he was so shocked at that boy’s proposition that he took the road of caution.

Having since gone to Bible college and gained a greater understanding of theology, I can empathize with his position. Suspension was the cautious option. A church can’t have staff that doesn’t line up with what it believes to be its core values. However, a church must also shepherd, and that boy certainly needed the men who were closest to His father that day more than he needed a program.

That boy was utterly devastated.

Jesus took such care of me, though. For the next five years at my Bible college, North Greenville University, I sat under the mentorship of countless substitute father figures with doctorates in theology and others who were just God-fearing men. I was loved beyond measure by men of integrity there. I had a home any time I asked for it. Three years later, I also interned for my church’s college ministry, The Church at Cherrydale. There, I was loved very well and completed the program.

Eventually, I felt called to start a charismatic ministry—which would be very culturally different than the school I was attending. During this time, I had two leadership teams walk out on me. To be honest, I was a bull in a china shop, though. They each had their reasons for leaving, but I think it was because I didn’t communicate my vision clearly enough, and I moved too quickly. Everyone wasn’t on the same page.

Nonetheless, I took it personally. To cope, I told myself they couldn’t handle being different.

Eventually, I graduated and went for my first post-college church job, which was going to be a resident position at the church I interned for. However, it was the same denomination as my Father’s church, and I hadn’t really healed from his church letting me go at that point. So, I took my triggers and left before anyone could stop me.

Soon, I found another church residency and made it to the final round of interviews with them. At this point, I was told I had done too much ministry, would probably not be teachable, and needed to work a secular job for a year before they would consider me.

At the time, that made me feel like a med school graduate being told he knew too much medicine to work in a hospital. Today, I can see how a person who only knows how to talk about Bible studies might not be the most well-rounded candidate for vocational ministry.

Nonetheless, I took it personally.

Determined to still work for a church, I found another church needing people for its teaching team. This position was perfect for me since I had been in my University’s preaching club and I had a degree in communications and Christian Studies. I was also the tutor for my school’s Principles of Theological Research and Writing classes, New Testament Survey classes, Old Testament Survey classes, Bible Interpretation Classes, Speech Writing classes, PowerPoint Presentation classes, and Public Speaking classes. (You could say I was qualified to teach.) Not to mention, I’d grown up in a ministry home and had been mentored by the pastors at the first church that fired me for years before they let me go at 18.

As I moved into an office at this church at 23, things quickly felt off. I was often the only one there, although I was not the head pastor. Further, when we had meetings to create sermons, I didn’t feel any of my advice was really listened to at all. I was a cog in a machine that didn’t really seem to need me.

Soon, I felt the Spirit was saying this church wasn’t right for me.

With a world of church hurt culminating, I remember sitting in that church’s auditorium behind the pulpit with the lights off and the seats all empty. In my head, I pictured every sermon I’d preached up to that point in my life. I pictured every difficult experience I’d faced in ministry, and I placed the microphone down on the pulpit. I told God that Christians were too hard, I stood up, and I walked out—heartbroken.

The following month I found out that the pastor had been cheating on his wife. Today, I hope he is in a different place and extend him the forgiveness Christ gave me.

Back then, I was truly, truly done.

I moved home and used the pandemic as an excuse to isolate. I took myself off the map.

I remembered how many years I’d tried so hard to do well for God’s church and became embittered that neither the men I worked for, nor my father, had carried the same integrity.

Eventually, I attended our family friend Derwin Grey’s church, but I stayed on the fringes and didn’t get involved.

Then, I felt the Lord blessing a move to Los Angeles, where my brother was.

I stayed out of church for another year and then joined one for about a year until I decided to live on the road rock climbing full-time.

When I was in the desert, the Holy Spirit met me and told me I didn’t have to work for one, but I did need to go back to church.

Upon returning to LA, I also noticed Him pulling me back out of the sinful lifestyle I’d begun to embrace.

Somehow, I decided to return to ministry. So, I told my church that if they had job openings I’d take one.

A few months later, just that happened.

I joined the staff.

Unfortunately, someone I’d sinned against in the months prior wasn’t comfortable with this at that time. Without asking my side of the story, I was immediately suspended with little explanation.

The church was only taking the cautious road in the face of a situation that they knew little about, so I can empathize with their position. For the next 8 months, the church further looked into the situation, I explained my side, and they eventually cleared me to re-apply for leadership.

In this process, however, I felt greatly hurt, and I left.

At this point, you’re probably thinking this guy is really done with church.

To be honest, for years, I couldn’t figure out how to redeem this story. I was burned out on forgiving churches, and I quickly allowed that bitterness to drift me further away from Jesus.

Well, eventually, what Jesus showed me in this process is that I myself had character flaws as deep and deeper than all of the wrongs done to me by any church or my Father.

Yup. I can’t get into those things here right now, but that, believe it or not, is the better story. That is the way this comes around.

What?

Well, the whole time I was upset with other church leaders for their legitimate shortcomings, I wasn’t looking back at myself. Further, hurt begot hurt and I came up with my own shortcomings. Some, correlated with the hurt I received, and others were all on my own.

As I began digging deeper into my own walk with Jesus and my own biggest shortcomings, I realized I had no narrative I could build that said I deserved to do ministry in any way, shape, or form any more than any of these other people or churches did.

I had so much sin in my own personal walk, even during seasons of ministry, that there was no narrative or story I could possibly build that made it feel okay to go back to ministry.

I kept wanting to go back because it’s what I’m called to, but my own hurt and my own sin said I didn’t belong in that space.

So, I stayed away.

In that time, Jesus began to form a deeper, better story—one that was actually possible.

That story is still ongoing, but I’m beginning to feel more healed and more ready for ministry than ever before because, for the first time, I’m not focused on others or myself. I’m focused on Jesus’s forgiveness for us both. That is the out.

Jesus has shown me that only He and His Spirit always do it right.

I don’t know where you are on your journey, but I believe that in each of our own ways, we are all on a rodeo.

Some of us are getting back on the bull.

Some of us are feeling the weight of it crushing us.

Others are using all their might to dodge it, and others are too hurt and broken by it to even be in the arena.

I believe the Bible teaches that none are without sin, and only one of our sins would require Jesus to die on the cross as payment. At the same time, in Christ, we are fully redeemed and ministers of reconciliation capable of greater things than Jesus ever accomplished.

What a juxtaposition!

It isn’t about what we did or what they did, it is about who Jesus is for us. This is the story of ministry.

This is reconciliation.

The church isn’t a bull. It’s people. People come from all walks of life, and in my experience, many of them are just like us—doing their best in a china shop.

So here are some questions my journey has brought me:

Is your story a story of how you overcame others or yourself or a story of how Jesus overcame you and them?

Are you so blinded by the hurt committed to you that you cannot see the hurt you’ve leaked onto others?

Does your commitment to the church rely on your experience with it or Jesus’ love for it?

If Jesus truly forgives your deepest sins, how does this inform the way you can treat other’s deepest sins against you?

This post ends almost four years of silence for me in the Christian blog-sphere and I have done my best to keep the sensitive parts of my story involving others anonymous while still providing the details necessary to tell my story as it is today. My prayer is that this pushes forgiveness for ourselves and for others. May we each continue building His church in our own ways and finding more and more ways that our stories are about Him, not us or anyone else. This is freedom. He is adequate.