To be healthy as individuals, we must be in a community. To be healthy as Christians, we must be part of the community of believers. God did not create anybody to be alone. Every child that is born is brought into a family. How would a baby survive without its family in those early years? It is not possible. The same principle is true in the spirit. When you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you get born again into the family of God; the church family. Therefore, church is essential.

Jesus and His Church

• Jesus is building the church – Matthew 16:18
• He loves the church – Ephesians 5:25
• Jesus died for the church – Ephesians 5:25

• The Church is Jesus’ bride – 2 Corinthians 12:2, Revelation 21:17
• As the Church, we are the body of Christ – Colossians 1:8
• The Church is the family of God – Ephesians 2:19

A simple truth is that life happens to us all, and things happen around people, whether they are in a church setting or otherwise. Christ loves the church and we must love the church.

The Church

The word Church is derived from a Greek origin word that means a public assembly or gathering (ekklesia – Greek: ἐκκλησία). In the Christian context, it means a congregation or assembly of believers in Christ. This is why you are not the church but you can be part of it. It is not right to say, “I am the church”; We are the church. Separately we are members but when we come together, we are the church. A table leg cannot say it is a table but it definitely is a part of the table.

A local church is an assembly. If a church never assembles, it is not a church at all. The meeting and gathering together isn’t just something we do but it is what church is. God has saved us as individuals to be part of a corporate assembly. The body does not consist of one part but many. It is the togetherness of individual believers that makes up the church in its entirety.

Modern Day Extremes

Sadly, we see an epidemic of people who refuse to assemble, go to church, or be with fellow believers yet they claim they are the church. This gives rise to two extreme views both of which are not healthy and are focused only on the self. The first is an extreme need for attention and secondly, a feeling of absolutely no need for fellowship or community because ‘I am the church already.’

The church is a community of believers who are not all on the same plane of maturity. Share on X

I was in the second extreme. I felt my cup was full; I had family and friends that I spent time with. But one day, the Holy Spirit convicted me that this was self-focused and prompted me that I should step out of my comfort zone and be a friend to someone else. If we don’t come together and provide the love for a person who needs it, we are not doing out job as the church. Many people come from broken or dysfunctional families and don’t have the personal community the way I do. This is how, as the body of Christ, we can come together and provide comfort and healing for that person.

The Compassion of Christ

This will require you to grow into the next level of maturity where you take your eyes of yourself and your own contentment to look out for others, like Jesus did. You learn to love people. Jesus was moved with compassion for people. He was always surrounded by His disciples and people who needed Him. Jesus allowed Himself to be spoken to and touched by the crowd. Even though Jesus spent a lot of time in prayer with the Heavenly Father, He was not a loner or a lonely person. God so loved the world that He gave us Jesus. I challenge you to let the love of God rule in your heart so you can give to serve and fulfill a need of other people.

Worship Jesus Together

“Not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, as in the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much more as you see the Day approaching.” – Hebrews 10:25

Worshiping Jesus together is very powerful – Mathew 18:20. It causes the presence and power of God to be in our midst. If Jesus is there, healing will be there, compassion will be there, deliverance will be there, and community will be there. Why wouldn’t we want to be there?

Apostle Paul instructed the churches to do things that were only possible by meeting together. These include teaching, singing spiritual songs, hymns, psalms, reading the scripture publicly, encouraging one another, and sharing the Lord’s supper.

Church Statistics

In Acts 2:41, we see that believers were added to the church daily.

• “Frequent churchgoers had a 55% reduction of all-cause mortality risk compared with non-churchgoers” – Vanderbilt University.
• “A 14-year study shows that regular religious service attendance is associated with 50% lower divorce rates in later life” – Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University
• “People who regularly attend religious services appear to have a healthier immune system than those who don’t” – Duke University Medical Center
• “Religiously active older adults tend to have lower blood pressures than those who are less active. This applies to attendance at religious services and private activities, but not to religious media.” – International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine 1998

I found this interesting that physical presence was so powerful. Media and online presence, while very good, can only go so far.

Church Hurt

Don’t leave a church because the church is not perfect and don’t let church storms shipwreck your faith. Some people get hurt at church and this leads them to close their heart off and often, causes them to abandon the church as a whole.

Getting hurt at the church doesn’t mean your focus was on people and not on God. You can be focused on God and still get hurt; that happens. Usually, we are not hurt by the church but by people in the church. We have expectations that Christians live at a higher standard because they are being conformed to the image of Christ but we are all still human beings and have weaknesses.

Entering Maturity

Different people mature at different paces and therefore, we have people at different levels of maturity. The church is a community of believers who are not all on the same plane of maturity. Sin and misunderstanding are likely to happen. Don’t forget, the devil is actively trying to attack us, blindside us, and shipwreck our faith through any opportunity that he can. A common tactic the devil implements is to use the sin of someone who legitimately hurt you at church to cause you to hate the body of Christ altogether so that you will isolate yourself. When you isolate yourself, he has the greatest access to you.

Getting hurt at the church doesn't mean your focus is on people and not on God. Share on X

Churches have never been perfect but Jesus is busy perfecting His Church. Apostle James addressed class distinctions, misunderstandings about faith, and careless gossip among others. Legalism, heresy, superiority, abusing communion and sexual misbehavior, are all dealt with in the epistles to the churches. There was even a church in the Book of Revelation that was so bad it made Jesus want to vomit it out of His mouth. Yet with all these issues and imperfections, Christ still loves His bride, His body, His church.

Causes of Hurt

There can be many ways such hurt can happen but I will list three main causes:

• Our own fault.
• Sin committed against us.
• Failed leadership.

Offended people get hurt everywhere they go (John 6:66). People even got offended at Jesus’ teachings and left Him. Our generation is so easily offended and hurt by every little inconvenient thing. We have become so cowardly that we don’t resolve our offences or face them. It is just easier to tap out and walk away with a grudge rather than fixing them. The same happens in relationships and marriages.

Some people in the church are evil and will cause evil. Judas was evil and caused evil during his time as a follower of Christ in John 6:70-71. If it happened to Jesus, it can happen to us. Not every person in the church has good intentions and this is one of the reasons church hurt exists.

Wolves Among Sheep

Not all leaders are shepherds; some are wolves.

“But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.” – John 10:12

If church hurt involves misunderstanding then understanding will solve it. If it involves intentional abuse, staying away from that environment will help. Discern between the Peter’s and the Judas’. Both Judas and Peter hurt Jesus. Peter had a bad day while Judas had a bad heart. Peters you restore, Judas’ you release. There are people who will cause us hurt and we need to be discerning to understand their heart and intention.

Don’t get blindsided with the issues that you forget prophesies, promises, purpose God has for you. Keep your faith in God even when you’ve lost faith in people. 

6 Practical steps to overcome church hurt:

1. Go to God in prayer. Get God’s perspective on the situation.

2. Deal with personal offense and sin. It’s easy to see the sin in others, it’s harder to deal with sin in ourselves.

3. Confront the offender. We are better at talking about the person who hurt us than talking to them (Matthew 18:15).

4. Confide in a faithful friend! But please don’t fall for gossip. If the issue is not resolved, get someone else to help you navigate the situation. 

5. Forgive the person who hurt you. Don’t harbor bitterness, it will make things worse for you.

6. If the person who caused the hurt doesn’t repent and the church leadership didn’t deal with the offender properly, it might be wisest to find a different church.

Keep your faith in God even when you've lost faith in people.  Share on X

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