"“Connection shifts our body out of survival mode and into a state of calm and connectedness again.”
— Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering by Chuck DeGroat
It’s been tough, hasn’t it? For us as well! Things changed a number of years right around 2020. We saw an almost overnight change in the North American Church when Pastors were mobilized through parachurch organizations such as Biologos to shut their church doors and message for compliance… in essence becoming channels of government propaganda.
As if this was not enough, the Ravi Zacharias abuse scandal broke wide open in the summer of 2020. For my wife and I, we experienced the fun of our 10-year church home going through a destructive split, then Carl Lentz of Hillsong was caught in an affair, followed by Hillsong founder Brian Houston. Bethel Worship began to be exposed for increasingly unhinged theology. Rumors started circulating about Mike Bickle which have since ravaged IHOPKC and exposed it as a fraud from the beginning. Recently, we have seen several more Mega Church leaders fall as hidden affairs or abuse has been exposed.
Yes… the Church in Canada and the US has become a bit of a mess. It’s been difficult to navigate for many. Some have deconstructed—calling themselves “exvangelicals”; others have adopted new age teachings as part of their “Christian” faith… a kind of resurgence of early Church-era Gnosticism. Many have unknowingly adopted a naturalist worldview and worked that into their Christian faith.
In the midst of all this, here we are… a couple of broken people. We have struggled to regain a sense of community… we were kind of done with larger Sunday Church settings. Though we occasionally attended a small Winnipeg Church on Sundays, for a while… we had only the community group we joined as part of that Church as our regular “Church”.
One thing we struggled with was worship songs… especially if they were influenced by Bethel, Hillsong, or IHOPKC. This is a LARGE swath of songs! Worship was something difficult for myself to get into for a number of years. I knew psychologically why that was… but how do you fix that? I’m reminded of when my 20 year old nephew suddenly passed away from a motorcycle accident several decades ago. It took 5 years or more after that for me to hear a motorcycle engine and not relive the trauma of my nephew in that hospital laying there lifeless. As such, I knew that this aversion to worship songs would eventually dissipate. Further to that, I didn’t beat myself up for it as I’ve been in a place before where I struggled with “feeling” like I had a relationship with God during a bout with depression and anxiety. I knew I’d eventually come out of the wasteland.
My wife and I dove into a search for truth post 2020. I could not even tell you how many teaching podcasts we listened to both separately and together. For myself, I got into reading… I used to be a voracious reader decades ago but stopped to make room for being a workaholic dad. Since 2018, I’ve read well over 100 books - sometimes 3 or 4 books at once. Most of these were theological, but some were philosophical… some, like Eckhart Tolle’s book “A New Earth,” were pure word salad garbage which I only read to more fully understand their ideology. Others like Augustine’s “Confessions” were difficult to stick with but deepened my faith roots.
I digress… suffice to say that these last five years have been difficult for us. As I said, in the midst of this we got involved again with a community group from a Church plant we got involved in. This group, aptly named “life support” in our group chat, “life group” became a place where we could grow back lost trust. We could be real with each other without fear of rejection or malignment or manipulation. Honestly this has been one of the keys for us to regain our capacity to be able to trust in a community setting once again.
Our group was interesting… a couple of ex pastors, a few former atheists , a former Muslim couple, and my wife and I… the Mennonites. This sounds like the beginning of an inappropriate joke! It was rare if ever that the group didn’t just disintegrate into laughter at the end of the evening. No matter how heavy the topic we ended up lifting each others spirits by simply being authentic and real. We came into this group beat up, hurting, damaged, exhausted, and in desperate need of a positive influence in our lives. In this place, my wife and I learned to trust again, to become vulnerable with fellow Christian’s again.
We did mostly book studies, but also some Bible studies on specific books of the Bible. Each week, as the topic would inevitably shift off somewhere and we would devolve into laughter about something funny someone said, we found joy again. Lest you think that it was just a social gathering at this point, often… in the next heartbeat we would pray for each other and encourage whoever was experiencing difficulties that week.
As I have mentioned, we are Mennonites… so taking communion in shot glasses was a new experience for us - mostly because it reaffirmed for us how relaxed communion with Christ and his Church can be. It was okay to laugh and and even overlook the occasional off-color joke because our goal was lifting each other up in Christ from our current place - not a projected image. Yes… genuine Christian community was possible! We learned that we did not have to take ourselves so seriously! We learned what a faith community should look like and that formulas do not change us… that requires genuine care and empathy guided by the Holy Spirit and scripture!
Bringing my whole point back… Church is important. It was important to the apostles, it was important to Christ. We should desire it but many of us have been wounded by it. The small group is a form of Church… that said when the Apostles sent a letter to a “church” it was a larger group made up of many smaller house groups. It was a group of “cells” so to speak. Each cell had moving parts and its own operating systems but they functioned together for the whole body. We are social beings, even if our tendency is to act as introverts!
My wife and I have a favourite show called “Alone”. In the show the 10 contestants are all dropped off apart from each other, alone… with only 10 personal items and the cameras they themselves operate. The two greatest reasons that contestants tap out is either Hunger or Loneliness. The mind begins to lose its mooring apart from a connection on a deeper level with other human beings.
The Church is meant to be a safe place to grow, to be discipled, to find deep connection to other Christ followers. Community groups, or smaller groups are the incubators where such connection should happen… if they are healthy groups.
Sometimes a Church will try to centrally micromanage the smaller groups… as happened in the mega Church we attended. This proved to be the end of community as authenticity and peer pressure gave way to performance. Our little group helped us get back to what community was meant to be… a life group! A place where life happens… it was orderly but provided space to just deal with the things that life does or is!
All of this brings me back to what inspired my post today… we finally found a local Church which we started attending a few months ago. To be honest, in our search we had attended once before about a year ago and left as the guest speaker portrayed a slight prosperity ring… we had been through that before so we just didn’t go back. After several friends encouraged us to try again, we did about a month or two ago… and we connected right away! So many people came up to us. We were welcomed immediately… met several pastors. I could sense a strong community in watching the interactions in the Church before and after the services. Here’s what’s weird… we found we could enjoy worship again. It makes sense that a strong community is a place where worship can grow and past wounds can heal.
All of this brings me to the fact that many of you may be currently experiencing this void…
this place of disappointment with the Church.
It may be trauma from spiritual abuse, perhaps worse… sexual abuse which can completely destroy the capacity to trust for decades or longer without intentional efforts to heal inside.
Perhaps you just feel like the Church has let you down; whatever the case… this is a difficult place to be. This wasteland where all the food tastes the same.
I have some suggestions… based on books I’ve read and my own experiences:
Consider counselling: In particular if you have experienced sexual or spiritual abuse, find a counseler that can help you understand the emotional, mental and psychological part of your journey to healing. Additionally, a counseler can help you understand setting clear boundaries in relationships.
Start Journaling: From the book “Broken Trust: …a practical guide to identify and recover from toxic faith, toxic church, and spiritual abuse by F. Remy Diederich:
“Journaling has been proven to help people recover from trauma in dramatic ways. In her book, Daring Greatly, Brené Brown quotes research by University of Texas professor James Pennebaker: In his book, Writing to Heal, Pennebaker writes, “Since the mid-1980s an increasing number of studies have focused on the value of expressive writing as a way to bring about healing. The evidence is mounting that the act of writing about traumatic experiences for as little as fifteen or twenty minutes a day for three or four days can produce measurable changes in physical and mental health…””
Understand that you in fact do need community! From the same book:
“It would be ideal if you could immediately find a safe faith community that understands spiritual abuse and can help you with your recovery. By all means, go there if such a place exists. But if that kind of community is not available, then seek out friends, family members, and organizations where you can openly share your experiences without feeling judged or controlled. What you want to find is a place where it’s okay to be you: a place where people will listen to your story without judgment, a place where you can be honest and not feel like you have to hide anything in order to fit in, a place where you are accepted for who you are with no timetables on your recovery.”
If you are not part of a Church - perhaps you may not be ready for that yet - start a book club. Pick good Authors - perhaps apologetics, or books on healing such as those by Chuck DeGroat or books that deep dive into hard questions from Paul Copen. Our group studied Andrew Farley’s books for a bit… and while I don’t agree with some of what he says, I found new faith arise out of the community of discussing his teachings. A book club doesn’t have to be fancy… or connected to a church. It’s nice if it is, but for some, that may not be a thing they are comfortable with yet.
Find some friends who believe in Jesus Christ and want to grow in relationship with Him… get together and dig in. Learn to be real, if it doesn’t work out… it’s okay - try again with another group. The group we were a part of took several months to settle in and at first had to shake a few people who were really legalistic about what faith looked like.
Lastly, don’t feel like you have to rush. It’s okay to take time to heal. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a small step. A community of authentic Christian’s will most certainly help you develop trust again in a safe environment. This can take a few attempts before you get ignition. The group we were a part of really struggled to find that place of authenticity and had to settle in with the right people. In the end it was a group of people who would never have become close except that they all needed to experience Christ in a healthy community.
That is the true beauty of the bride of Christ… not uniformity, but rather unity in love, devotion to Christ and to each other’s well being in the genuine pursuit of Immutable truth. With that kind of care the Church can become the light in the darkness that it is meant to be!
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever” - Ephesians 4 NRSB
Let me know how that’s going! I’d love to hear how community has helped you heal!
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