Why Church Hurt Hurts So Much

The Work Within Podcast

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability

John Lin: I love the church. I grew up in a small Taiwanese church in Cleveland, Ohio, where I was baptized in middle school. I remember my baptism very well. It was at a community pool, and we were surrounded by my family, friends, and a bunch of spiritual aunties and uncles. That day was particularly memorable because right after my baptism, the kid after me barfed into the pool.

I bring that up because, looking back, that experience is sort of a metaphor. It reminds me that the church is really complex, and it highlights what we want to talk about today. When I think about the church, it’s beautiful, and it’s extremely messy. At its best, the church is the beloved community of Christ that forms and shapes people, an unstoppable force for good in the world. But at its worst, the church can wreck lives, damage faith, and defame God’s reputation.

In this episode, we want to grapple with these dual realities. How is it possible that in one moment the church is a place of hope, connection, and healing, and in the very next moment it can, literally and figuratively, barf all over you?

This is a really important topic, and we want to say from the outset that all of us on the show love the church. We believe in the church. That’s why this conversation is so necessary.

My name is John Lin, and I’m the host of The Work Within. Today I’m joined by my friends Dieula Previlon and Paul McMullen. They’re both licensed therapists, and both have a lot of experience being part of and serving in leadership in churches. I’m really looking forward to this conversation. How are y’all doing today?

Dieula Previlon, LPC-S: Doing good today.

Paul McMullen, LPC: Hey, guys.

John: Pretty good, because it’s your birthday, Dieula. I did say I might mention it.

Dieula: Yes, that part. I love birthdays, especially mine. I’m just grateful to be alive. It’s a gift.

John: Well, thank you for gracing us with your presence on your birthday.

Paul: Should we sing to her, John? We’ll spare our vast audience our singing voices.

Dieula: If you’re going to sing, Paul, make it good.

John: I’ll do some auto-tune after we stop recording.

Before we get into today’s conversation, two important invitations. First, if you haven’t yet, would you please consider leaving us a review or rating? Your support really means a lot to us, and it helps get the show into more hands. Last I checked Apple Podcasts, we had 12 reviews. Let’s see if we can get that to 24. That would be pretty amazing. Second, if you’re looking for a clinically trained Christian therapist, we would love to help, so please reach out to us.

All right. I shared a memorable moment from my church life. Dieula, Paul, is there anything you’d like to share?

Dieula: Well, my memorable moment of the church is not as light. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t do light conversations. I can go very deep very quickly.

I have deep memories of the church, both from growing up in Haiti and from being an immigrant in America. The church has always been a safe place where I find community and healing. Those topics aren’t light, because part of it is about identity. I found my identity through the church.

I remember when we first came from Haiti to New Jersey. Everything was new. I couldn’t speak the language. The culture, the food, the climate, everything was brand new. My only saving grace was the Haitian immigrant church in New Jersey. They spoke my language, they understood the culture, and we gravitated toward each other. In times of need, they provided community. They provided a safe place when I was feeling unsafe everywhere else.

I was in the fifth grade. I couldn’t find people who understood me or knew me. That immigrant church literally saved my life, in so many ways. So I have a deep love and a deep affinity for the church because of that experience. It meant something at that time.

John: I really appreciate that, Dieula. Growing up Taiwanese American in Cleveland, for most of my elementary and middle school years, the week often felt like going into battle, trying to find places of safety, because I was definitely a minority. Then the weekend was a place of refuge with the ten other kids who had a similar background. That was one of the ways the church really showed up for me. So I resonate with what you shared.

Paul: I love hearing your story, Dieula, and I love how you can identify with it, John, that sense of a safe place.

Some of the irony for me is that the church has, in some ways, been an unsafe place to really explore my own faith and some of what I’ve gone through in different seasons of life. But at other times it’s been a harbor. In different places around the world, I’ve found a sense of family there.

What stands out most is that my wife and I were part of a church planting team, and we had a supporting church in Texas. They believed in us and supported us for about a decade. It was beautiful.

I remember sharing with them that we were moving from Texas to the Northwest, and we were talking about the weather change. After church, this guy took off the jacket he was wearing. I think it was January. He said, “Hey, I heard you talk, and I just want you to have this.” He gave me the jacket right off his back.

It was one of those moments where you experience God touching somebody’s heart to be a part of what the church is doing, and to support us in this vision and this dream. It was so special, so powerful. So I’ve experienced a mixture, and I know that’s what we’re talking about today. But that memory of being well loved and supported by a church in Texas for a decade or more really stands out.

John: Wow, that’s beautiful. Someone literally giving you the coat off their back. Did you ask for their pants too? Just kidding.

Paul: I did not.

John: I think it’s important to touch on the ways we’ve seen the church show up for us before we talk about the ways it has disappointed or caused pain, because that’s the dual reality of the church.

So let’s talk about the darker side of church life. What have y’all either personally experienced or seen as clinicians? I know a lot of people come to you processing church trauma or deconstruction of their faith, and they bring that into the therapy room. Personally or clinically, what are you seeing?

Dieula: One of the things I struggle with is that the church stands to represent God, but at times it doesn’t. When we learn about God, God is love, God is patient, God is an open door, God loves the immigrant and the other. It feels like God’s love has no limits, and no place it can’t go. But the church has limits. The church’s love has places it won’t go. The church has boundaries around who gets in and who is out.

In my own life, I remember being pregnant out of wedlock my last semester in college. The church was all I knew. My life was messy and falling apart, and I was struggling. I didn’t know what to do, and I was scared. I was scared to approach the church, because I knew its limitations and its boundaries. I knew the church could not contain it. I wouldn’t say a pregnancy is messy, but it’s not the pretty picture the church wants to handle.

That has always been hard for me, because in my heart and in my soul, the question I ask of the church is: why not? Why can’t the church contain the messy realities of life? As a people, as the big-C Christian Church, how have we created a church that can’t handle the many different ways we live our lives? The church can hold the beauty of our lives, but not the messy and broken spaces.

That’s one example of many I have of the challenge between the love of God and the love of the church for humanity.

Paul: I want to pause on that one, Dieula, because it’s so true. People have experienced that in different ways. They’ve felt neglected, ostracized, kicked out, not allowed in.

I recognize, at least from the American church’s standpoint, that as a white male I’ve been in the traditional position of privilege and power. That’s a factor.

At the same time, I’ve experienced moments of rigidity around beliefs. I’m not saying churches shouldn’t have firm beliefs. But it felt like beliefs came before my own struggle and my own wrestling. It was not okay for me to doubt, to not know what I believed, to ask questions. In my mind, the interpretation was that I was either good or bad. I was good if I went along, and I was bad if I didn’t.

That was more in my youth and adolescent years, and it wasn’t one person who said that to me. It was a culture where there was no space for doubt, questioning, or frustration with faith, or with a church that didn’t make sense to me.

Later, as a leader of a church, when there were things I was struggling with deeply, there wasn’t space for that either. There wasn’t a way for a leader to struggle. Nobody came up to me and said, “You better not struggle.” It was more the vibe, the cultural expectation of what was allowed and what wasn’t. From the unspoken language of that system, I learned that I needed to hide the messy things in me, rather than being free to share myself, be loved and welcomed, and have people wrestle alongside me. That’s where I’ve felt most wounded by the church.

John: Dieula, thank you for sharing some of your story, and the ways the church struggled to be a container of God’s love. I appreciate that vulnerability.

I wonder if y’all see any themes among people who come in wrestling with their faith and with church involvement. I hear conflicting things. On one hand, there are reports of a great resurgence of people going back to church. On the other hand, I see a lot of people leaving. Maybe both are true depending on who you talk to. But as you consider folks who are leaving, or who are wounded and trying to figure out what involvement, if any, to have in organized church life, what are you seeing?

Paul: There are a lot of people who like some aspects of the church, but then they say, “Yeah, but this church is really political in this way, and I just can’t.” So many things get meshed together when people think about being part of a church that it becomes a real struggle.

I think a lot of people who grew up in church still long for that connection, even if they’ve disconnected for a time. But the church can align itself wherever the pendulum swings, culturally and politically, in either direction. And there’s a sense that the church isn’t being what it should be, that it’s gone too far one way or the other, and they can’t be part of that.

I see that in people I know and love very deeply. It’s hard to connect, because signing up with a group can mean you’re aligned with things you don’t agree with. That’s where you hear, “I love Jesus. I love people. But I have a hard time committing to a particular community.”

Dieula: The group I see struggling most with the church are people in my demographic: women, and Black women, who are struggling with how the church treats women and the limitations placed on women.

Many women feel that outside of the church, their gifts and talents are seen, applauded, rewarded, and used well, and they can grow. But in the church, how far can a woman go? In certain denominations and certain places, not far.

I’ll give you an example. In the traditional Haitian immigrant church, I feel seen and loved as a Black woman. I feel connected to my people. But in that church, I can’t pastor. This podcast isn’t necessarily arguing for one side or the other. This is my story. I believe this is my calling and what God has revealed to me, and I have been ordained as a minister. But in my traditional Haitian church, my gifts as an ordained minister are often not seen, celebrated, or honored. Then I go to a predominantly white church, where my race is not celebrated, seen, or honored.

So women like me often feel spiritually orphaned, without a spiritual mother or father in the church. Wherever we go there’s tension. There’s no place to call home, no place where you’re celebrated and invited and know there’s a place for you. And who wants to go to church and feel tension all the time?

As you shared earlier, John, you may have tension five days a week at school, at work, everywhere else. At least at church you’d hope to feel celebrated, seen, and that people are glad you’re there. But depending on where I go, I feel like I’m present as a symbol of dissent in the church. That is not a good feeling.

Many women like me resonate with that sense of being spiritually orphaned. And we still love the church. That’s the thing. That’s the problem. I still love the idea of the church and the community it represents. I still love coming in and hearing worship. There’s nothing like Haitian worship sung in Creole. But there are so many Haitian churches where I can’t show up. So there’s that pain. It’s a grief. It’s a loss.

Paul: Another thing that comes to mind: we talk a lot about what happens when we go into protective mode as individuals, into fight, flight, or freeze. It gets kind of ugly. Individual churches, and big denominational groups of churches, can get into protective modes too, where they’re out to protect themselves more than the people within them. When a church gets anxious about its place, it goes into fight mode, and it misses people.

I think we’ve all heard stories about a church that was more concerned about protecting itself or its leaders than the people who were hurt. Just as the worst side of us comes out when we get defensive, the church as a whole can get into a defensive, anxious mode, and it tends to really hurt people. I think that’s been a lot of people’s experience: they were mistreated by an anxious church system worried about holding on to power.

I was thinking about that, Dieula, because of the withholding of power you experienced, and the withholding of an embrace of the gifts God has given you. Instead of celebrating you, or figuring it out together, it’s “No, you’re a threat, so we’re going to treat you like a threat.” That’s when a lot of hurt happens. I’m so sorry for people who have been hurt in those ways.

Dieula: Thank you for sharing that. I resonate with the church being protective of itself and not necessarily of the people it’s serving.

What I love about the church is what it symbolizes in the community: that we’re in this together. Because of that, every church isn’t going to look the same. It’s going to look like its community and encourage its community to be fuller. I love the idea of a church that is protective of the people it embodies, not just the idea of itself. Sometimes the church is more protective of looking like a perfect church than of covering the people in its midst. Thank you for putting words to that tension.

John: Can y’all unpack what it is about church hurt and church trauma that makes it particularly painful? I’m assuming there’s a unique way that disappointment, hurt, and betrayal from the church and from religious leaders lands differently than from other sources. Or maybe it doesn’t.

Dieula: I think it does. It goes back to what I was sharing earlier. The church is a prophetic representation of God. When church hurt happens, it lands harder, more painfully, and more deeply because we expect more from the church.

If God is love, all-knowing, and all-powerful, if God is for everyone and stands with us and protects us, and the church represents God, then we expect the church to know more. The world can hurt us, and in our heads we almost expect it to, because they don’t know what they do. But the church? Et tu? You’re supposed to know better. You’re supposed to be the voice of God and represent God. So when church hurt happens, it lands deeply. It feels like betrayal.

And it doesn’t just feel like betrayal from the church. Sometimes it feels like betrayal from God, like God Himself has left us. Like God believes we don’t belong, because this church believes we don’t belong. It’s hard to separate what the church does from what God believes. So it’s almost a double force against us, as if God is against us too, not just the people of the church.

Part of the healing is separating the two: God’s love on one side, and on the other, a church run by sinful, broken people who often aren’t doing their own work. People who often aren’t trained in people development, in holding space, in listening, in not having answers for everything. Because sometimes we don’t have answers, but the church often acts as if it does. All of that compounds the hurt and the pain.

Paul: That’s so true. Well said, Dieula. Attachment theory comes to mind. In your most connected relationships growing up, with whoever your primary caregiver was, the idea is that you would feel secure and safe. When you’re in pain and crying out for help, your pain matters to somebody. They’re there to soothe you, to comfort you, to be with you.

When the people you expect to be safe and to soothe you are the same ones who hurt you, that’s what develops disorganized attachment. You don’t know what to expect anymore. Your nervous system is all jumbled up inside.

I think something very similar happens with the church. The church should be the safe place, the place of comfort. When that’s where you’re wounded most deeply, it makes sense that it would create a broken understanding of your attachment with the church and with God. This is the place that verbally says it’s supposed to be a place of grace and comfort, so getting that negative, mismatched experience is really destructive. It takes a lot to overcome.

John: What I’m sitting with as I hear y’all share is a real tension. God designed the church to be a community where we experience safety and being seen. I think it’s truly meant to be a conduit of God’s love. That’s why we call the church the body of Christ. But if you’re going to have any human system, that comes with a big dose of disappointment and betrayal.

So I’m struggling with that. Is it possible to hold on to hope that the church can be this really good thing, while knowing that just by opening myself up to it, I’m going to risk being hurt and disappointed? That comes with the territory, and I don’t like it. I wish there was a way to hedge the damage and make sure every church lived into this beautiful calling. But it doesn’t.

That also brings up a question. In any relationship, there’s going to be hurt and struggle. So where’s the line between what’s par for the course, because the church is a human system with a divine imprint, and what becomes religious trauma or church trauma? It’s easy to throw those terms around now. I think we joked in an earlier episode about how everything is trauma: “You won’t let me see a movie? Stop traumatizing me!” Not everything is trauma. So when does it become church trauma? Are there helpful ways of seeing that?

Paul: I think it’s when there’s a manipulation of power. Part of trauma is that you’re left not knowing what’s safe anymore. When you’re manipulated, when you’re gaslighted, when you’re not sure what you can trust in yourself, that’s inherently traumatizing. That’s being betrayed and not knowing what to expect.

To the extent that church hurt leaves you all jumbled up and uncertain about what to trust, what to believe, and what to think about yourself, I think you’ve experienced some sort of trauma. Trauma is as much about how somebody experiences something as it is about what was intended or what the event was. One person might be traumatized by something, and someone else might not be traumatized by the same thing.

But whenever there’s been a manipulation of power in particular, and you’re left questioning yourself and your own value and worth, I think there’s a sense in which that’s church-related trauma.

John: The abuse of power sounds like a critical ingredient. Not just that I hurt you or I screwed up, but that I abused my power, and the hurt and pain that results from that.

Dieula: I agree. Another aspect of trauma is the inability to regain control and power, or even to metabolize what’s happened to you. It becomes even more traumatizing when you’re left without a voice. You can’t talk back, you can’t question, you can’t defend yourself. You have no advocates, no one to stand with you.

The church is such a strong force. If little old me has a struggle with the church, or they did something traumatizing, that strong force gets stronger. When it’s me versus the church, who is the larger society going to believe? Little old me, or the big old church that’s been standing for however long? That imbalance of power is what makes it even more traumatizing.

Power and control are the language of violence. You feel overpowered, left without a voice, and left with no choice but to leave, because the big structure is unwilling to sit with you, really listen, and hear that they’ve done something damaging to you. What do you do? Keep showing up, day in and day out, listening to sermons you feel are targeted at you? That happens. I’ve heard it.

Some people do leave. Others check out. They separate themselves so they can stay part of the community. That’s trauma language: people showing up without really embodying who they are, just going through the motions to keep the peace. There’s no true healing. They’re just showing up to show up.

There’s a lot of trauma in the church. I believe everyone who comes to me and says they were traumatized by the church, because again, we’re talking about power, and wherever there’s a power imbalance, there’s pain.

The church needs to not hold on to so much power, so that it can come down, just like Jesus did. Jesus became one of us so that people could see him as one of them, for safety. I think Jesus was methodical in that. So there are things the church can do to create safety and trust again, and I think it needs to start at the place of power: relinquishing power to make itself safe again for people.

John: So hard.

Dieula: So hard.

John: I imagine there are folks listening who have been on the receiving end of these misuses of power. They’ve been hurt, betrayed, or traumatized by the church. Maybe their view of God has been struck to the core, or maybe they’ve been able to salvage that but aren’t sure about being involved in anything formal anymore. What does the healing process look like for those folks? Are there particular things that need to happen for healing?

Dieula: First, I want to reiterate: a lot of people have left the church, not God. That’s hope right there. People still desire community. There’s research from the Lilly Endowment that studied people leaving the church and what they’re really feeling. What they found is that people still love Jesus and still love community, but they don’t love the church as it is. So they’re looking for other spaces to belong: places that are open, loving, receiving, and not hypocritical. Hypocrisy is another podcast for another time.

People still love Jesus and still love the idea of the church. I think we’re in a season where people are reimagining what the church can be and creating other spaces. I’ve been part of online churches, home churches, brunch churches. The Bible says where two or three are gathered, God’s presence is there. So people are reimagining and recreating.

I love the idea of small community healing groups. That’s another place I see the church going: small spaces where people can talk about God, talk about messy stuff, and invite the Holy Spirit to be among them. That’s a church. Some things need to be dismantled, some of the old idea of church. I really believe that in the next couple of decades we’ll see the church reimagined.

Paul: Thanks for saying that, Dieula. For people who have one picture of what the church has to be, a building that meets at this time, looks like this, where I have to wear these clothes, let’s deconstruct that a little. The church is God’s people showing up in lots of different ways, shapes, and forms. So be open to what God might bring.

I also want to mention this. In so many conversations about pain in the world, about how we understand evil, hurt, and trauma: Jesus was hurt. You could say he was traumatized. He was killed on a tree by his own people. He was abandoned by his closest disciples, who ran away and denied they knew him. So he knows what it feels like for the people who should be his safe place to instead hurt him, wound him, and not know him.

He knows what it’s like for you, and he doesn’t make light of it if you’ve experienced that. At the same time, he has a way of redeeming it and making beautiful things out of messes. And he loves the church. It’s his bride, and in the big scheme of things he’s doing something to make the church beautiful. That’s the picture of the end. Having gone through all of that trauma, he still found a way to have hope and see his bride as beautiful.

So in faith, that’s my hope: that if anyone listening has been wounded that way, Jesus can lead them and give them eyes to find the church in a new way. He knows what it’s like to be hurt and wounded by the people who should be safe.

John: Framing the work of Christ that way, as our traumatized Savior as well as our triumphant Savior, is startling and very gripping. And Dieula, thank you for what you said about people still being hungry for Christ and for God, even as they find community in different ways.

That makes me think about how healing trauma is always communal. It requires safe relationships, like we’ve talked about before, where you can receive an empathetic witness, where someone can attend to your hurt and pain. So for those whose core image of God has been damaged, I’d extrapolate that it won’t necessarily be healed in isolation. If that’s important to you, it will require journeying with other people. Maybe not at a large church, maybe so. But finding a space with people you can safely process with. And in that community, you’ll find the grace of God reemerging in fresh ways.

I see we’re about out of time. There’s so much more I wanted to touch on, but I knew we couldn’t. As we wrap up, any last words either of you would like to share?

Paul: There’s a lot more to be said. But please, if what John’s saying is creating some hunger in you, seek and reach out. Ask God for help finding where you could find those people.

Dieula: I would encourage people: don’t lose your hunger for God and community. And give yourself permission to reimagine the new thing God is doing in this season. I really believe God is in the midst of helping the church be reimagined. We need people who have been in spaces where it hasn’t been done well to help create it in a way where it’s done better.

I think we’ll always struggle with pain in the church, because where people show up together, we’re going to hurt one another. But my hope is that we would create spaces where, when there’s hurt, we can go to one another and heal together. We can listen to one another. We can forgive each other. That’s my dream: that the hurt and pain aren’t so catastrophic that they obliterate the church and the people in it, but that it’s repairable, and we can come together.

So don’t give up. I haven’t given up. I still love the church. I still have a great affinity for it, and I’m still reimagining and recreating, with friends and colleagues, what the church can be for my children and for the next generation. We still have work to do.

John: Thanks for sharing that, Dieula. I’m thinking about how each of us is seeking to do our own work so that whatever community we’re part of, whatever church we serve and lead in, maybe in some small way we can help steer the ship one degree differently. That’s the work. That’s where each of us listening has agency.

If you go to a church, you can’t change your whole church. The only one you have power over is you. And this whole conversation, our whole podcast, is premised on the conviction that God gives us agency to do the work within, so that we can pursue wholeness and connection. From that place of greater health, we can offer that gift to our community and make it a little bit better. And if a lot of people start doing that, that’s where the church can really live into its full, God-given potential.

Thank you both for your insights and for sharing your experiences, and Dieula, for sharing your birthday with us. We’re very grateful. As always, may God bless you and strengthen you as you do the work.

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