Healing From Church Hurt

Church hurt can hit so hard it rewrites how you see God. We’re going straight at that wound and naming what it is: a significant, sometimes traumatizing experience tied to church life, most often caused by people who mishandle people. As a PK who grew up inside multiple church cultures and denominations, I share how I’ve seen it happen, how I’ve felt it, and why blaming God for what a leader did keeps you stuck. 

We also draw a clear line between a church experience and an encounter with God. Great music, lights, and charisma can be a powerful experience, but an encounter is what actually frees you, convicts you, and lightens what you carry. When we idolize a leader or the vibe, our expectations get built on the atmosphere, and disappointment starts to look like spiritual betrayal. That’s where discernment comes in: learning to ask “Does this feed my feelings or my faith?” and “Am I being developed or just entertained?” 

You’ll hear practical ways to heal from spiritual trauma without isolating: zooming out to examine the full story, taking responsibility where it’s yours, refusing to excuse abusive leadership, and finding a good church that prioritizes real growth over popularity. We talk about wise counsel, trusted community, and the mindset shift from victim to victor so your pain becomes protection and purpose, not shame. 

If this helped you, subscribe, share it with someone sorting through church hurt, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation. What part of your church journey needs healing right now?

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Question

SPEAKER_00 0:05

And we're back with another episode of the Carlos Speaks Podcast. Um, first of all, thank you so much to everyone who has tuned in, who has liked, shared, commented. We have had some great dialogue as it pertains to healing from broken relationships, what it means to be a present dad, um, a plethora of things, if you will. Today's conversation. I got, let me just say, I have had a lot of great questions. Some not so great, because some of y'all just nosy. But one of the questions that really stuck out to me this week was one that I did not foresee coming. Usually, people ask me about my experiences in relationship, growth, emotional intelligence, communication, those things. This week's conversation is going to be about church hurt. Yeah. Yeah. Again, this podcast is designed to be versatile, multifaceted. Um, so the question was: you speak a lot about being a PK and growing up in the church. Have you ever experienced church hurt? And if so, how did you heal from it? Phenomenal question. Um, I think it's important to frame a conversation before you lean into it, right? Words have meaning. I'm really big on understanding what the words I use mean so that I convey what it is I intend to express. For me, church hurt is having a significant or traumatizing experience in with or pertaining to church. That's it, right? And I think that that's a very broad definition for a lot of people because I think that a lot of people frame it wrong. Number one, let's let's say this. I am a PK. Um, I grew up my entire life in church. I was almost born in church on a Tuesday in 1990. Um, been a part of all the auxiliaries, all the ministries, praise dance, usher board, junior usher board, bible studies, Sunday school, all the things. I have uh been a part of a number of denominations, Presbyterian, non-denominational, holiness, Pentecostal. Um, so I think that it is fair to say that I have a broad experience when it comes to church. Um, a lot of the experiences that we call church hurt is a result of being mishandled by people who lead the church. Let's start there. So it's not necessarily that you had a bad experience with God. You had a bad experience with someone who mishandled you as it pertains to relationship or religion as it pertains to God and church. We're gonna lean into today, um, which is why it's very important to have corporate growth where you grow with and in a church, but also have individual growth where you begin to build your own relationship with God, where you lean into your own word and you have try to seek your own understanding as it pertains to what your relationship with God looks like. It is unhealthy to lean completely into a collective understanding of what relationship with God means for you. We might have to have a part two for this. I think that in my experience, I've seen a lot of people maybe join a church and get thrown into activities, get thrown into ministries, get thrown into things that the church does without having an understanding of what it means to build your faith, your relationship, and to understand what it means to be set aside and sanctified. I do not mean to be churchy, but it's in me. So throughout this episode, we might have a little churchiness. That's not my intent. I just want to make sure I try to speak as plainly as I can. So what happens is sometimes we join a church where we feel good. The energy is dope, the the production, the the lights, camera action, right? The the leaders are charismatic, and sometimes we quietly idolize the experience and not the encounter. I'm talking good. And when I say encounter, I mean what it I mean as it pertains to experience God. That thing that you feel when you cry and you feel free and surrendering the weights that you carry, right? The Bible says that that God has a peace that surpasseth understanding. So sometimes when you go to church, right, and you have an encounter, not just an experience, there are two different things, right? In this sense, the encounter is a thing that makes your heart, soul, and spirit feel a little lighter. The experiences, church was great today, the scene was good, and the and and and everything just just just it was just a great time. We connected well, all the people are nice. That's a great experience. But I need you to understand that encounter is important, right? So going back to church hurt, when we idolize leaders and we idolize an experience, we begin to set expectations. So I expect for the experience to be here all the time. So when it's not, I feel some type of way because maybe I miss God. No, baby, you missed the experience. Something wasn't happening for you in a natural way, so you feel like it was off because there is a disconnect between the encounter and the experience. Now, let's get back into what it means to have a traumatizing experience. Going back to the charisma that comes with the experience. I love the people at this church, they're great leaders, and you begin to form relationships with the leaders or the people you look up to. It's very important to remember that just because they're leaders, they're still people. So we have a spirituality, which is the experience that we have as believers, and then we also live in the natural, which is why there is a duality to what it means to our existence. Right? So if I do something that hurts you, that doesn't necessarily invalidate who I am as a believer. It means that I had a human moment with you. It's it's it's very, very sensitive to always operate above the line. Because we have emotions, we get angry, right? We get sad, we feel provoked, we feel offended. And sometimes when we operate in those feelings, we do things that are not Christ Christ-like. And when you are a when you are affected by something that somebody's that does that's not Christ-like, your feelings are hurt, but you still associate it with Christ because you idolize them as a leader. So now not only do you take offense to them, you take offense to Christ because in your mind you know the experience, not the encounter. So I can't give you grace or I can't try to understand because I idolize you as a leader. Why would you do that to me? And if we're gonna be honest, there are bad people in leadership roles in churches, and that's where your discernment comes in. There are people who use their power, their authority, their position to do bad things and call it Christ and call it church, call it believing, call it faith. And so it's very important that we move new believers, old believers with a sense of discernment. Not only does this feel good, but is it good for my spirit? Is there any part of this that convicts me? Let's talk about what convicts me. Is there any part of this that that feels uncomfortable in a small space inside me? Something that says this might be too good to be true. Something that says, Oh no. And usually, in my experience, that's the Holy Spirit trying to give you a warning to say, hey, this might not be in your best interest. And I want to make sure that I am speaking very plainly because I think that a lot of times when it comes to building a relationship with Christ through the the means of church, right, or the means of your leaders, it's very easy to be influenced again by what feels good, by people that feel good in the moment. And it's important to remember that people can be fickle sometimes in their faith, and it doesn't invalidate them as a leader, it makes them human, just like you. Everybody is somewhere on this journey to get where we're called to be. So we have to separate church hurt from God because church hurt is you being mishandled by people in the church, is not a reflection of God or Christ. So sometimes we have to sit back in our offense and say, okay, why am I hurt? Why am I offended? Can if I change the perspective of my experience, can I understand that maybe they had a bad day? Maybe they're dealing with something and they had a moment where they operated from what they're feeling and not out of their faith. Did I do something to provoke them? Because it's easy to shift the blame and disregard or disassociate your actions. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. And it's very unfair sometimes to put the burden of responsibility on your leader or on someone that you know is a believer when you are intentionally operating under a spirit of provocation. I didn't like them anyway. And let me show you why, because when I did da-da-da-da-da, they did that, that wasn't godly. The initiation of the experience wasn't godly, and you initiated it. So when we talk about church hurt and what it means to call yourself a victim, because words have meaning. And when you say, I have experienced church hurt, the insinuation is you have been a victim of something at church. And again, I'm not disregarding or invalidating that there are bad people in high places in a lot of churches. What I'm asking you to do is zoom out a little bit. Have discernment. Discernment means to have a higher level of awareness. This feels good, but is it good? Does this feed my feelings or does this feed my faith? Am I learning more about what it means to be a believer? Am I learning more about what it means to lean into a relationship with God? Am I learning and being developed, or am I being pacified and entertained? So, in my experience of growing up as a PK in the church, church culture, all of the things, um, there were some things that I witnessed, some things that I experienced that have caused me to say, okay, I don't like that. And because I don't like that, I need to understand what about that hurt me, what about that bothered me? What about that I contributed to? Did I lean too far into somebody and not enough into relationship with God? Do I need to zoom out and reevaluate the relationships I have with people to see if they align with the relationship that I'm growing with God? Can I rightly divide the word for myself, or am I learning to do that? Am I being entertained or am I being encouraged to have an encounter with God? Those are questions that I need you as a believer, new, old, in out, whatever, to ask yourself to ensure that your relationship is being framed in a loving, godly way. And correction can be uncomfortable, but it's never traumatic. The next thing I need you to do is get you a good church. Get you a good church. Hey, and and shameless plug. If you live in the Dallas Fort Worth area, the Life Center is a great starting point for you to join a biblical faith-based church where you're gonna learn, grow, and experience what it means to have new life. Love my church and my pastors. Love y'all. Um find you a good church. And good doesn't mean production worthy. Good doesn't always mean that it's popular, good doesn't always mean that they church got 5.2 million followers. I need you to understand that good means that there is something I get here that stirs up my encounter with God and not just the church experience. Are you surrounded by people and leaders that truly love you, that are truly concerned about you and your journey, that encourage you to be further developed? Have conversations with people you trust, people that you have discerned for, people you vetted. I have conversations all the time with my inner my close circle about what it means to understand the Bible better, about what it means to have my struggles as a believer and leader at my church, to be encouraged, to be poured into, to be reinforced, to check me when I'm wrong. The Bible speaks well of being surrounded by people who provide wise counsel in the book of Proverbs, so church hurt, by definition, is real. But I want to make sure we frame it right. I want to make sure that we have an understanding because I think that a lot of times people who are victims of church hurt they blame God and they turn away from the church, they turn away from God, they turn away from the idea of a relationship. And you were mishandled by people who said that they were representative of God. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry that was your experience. I'm sorry that you were mishandled, but I encourage you, I encourage you to use that experience to propel you forward into growing in God and growing in your relationship and being pushed forward to find a safe faith-based place. Because you know what the hurt feels like now. You you know what shakiness and and and uncertainty feels like, and that feeds your ability to discern moving forward. Oh no. Nope. I've had this feeling before. So because I've had this feeling before, let me zoom out real quick and take a good look at the big picture. And when you get to a place where you begin to heal from your experiences as it pertains to church hurt, talk about them. You'd be surprised by how many people have had the same experience that you've had, and they just don't want to talk about it because for some of them it's painful, or they don't think that there's anybody that can understand what they're dealing with. Sometimes we're ashamed of the hurt we experienced because we were taken advantage of. We were vulnerable, and our vulnerability led to us being a victim of somebody's malicious intent. And the the difference between that victim and that victor is mindset and growth. We're not called to be victims, we're called to be victors, and I want to be the one to contribute to your encouragement to say, I oh, oh, you're called to get up, not lay down, not to be broken in pieces, not to be ashamed, but to take those things and wear them like pieces of armor moving forward to say, look what I've overcome, look what God has delivered me from, look what God has healed me through. And because of that experience, I stand before you ready to have the conversation, ready to lead, ready to encourage other people who have experienced the same hurt that I have. We gotta go from hurt to heal. And there are numerous examples in the Bible of people, watch this, who went from hurt to heal, who went from being mishandled by people who wanted to ill position them and put them right where God needed them to be. Yeah, ex Joseph. So, and again, I know that this is a different kind of conversation to have on this platform. I know that this is a hard conversation for some people, but this platform is open to versatility and all kinds of conversations, the hard conversations that we have quietly in ourselves, because I believe that one of the things that I'm called to do is to connect with people and encourage them through the things that they think are shameful. Yeah, I'm a baby daddy. I'm an ex husband. I've experienced church hurt. I've been a victim of a number of things, been, past hence. I'm a victor today. And I'm not gonna be selfish in this. Things that have helped me grow to include God, to include changing my mindset, to include being brave enough to love again, to trust again, to be vulnerable again. So, zoom out. Let's look at our experience. Were we mishandled by people we trusted in church, at church? Do we have the courage to say, God, I'm sorry I took this out on you? Because God don't leave us. He's right where you left him. Even when our perspective is wrong. My bad, Mike. They hurt me, and I put your face on them. So I blamed you. And ran away. Find your good church. Discern well about that church, about the leaders in that church, about the people in the church. Surround yourself with people who want to grow in God, who want further relationship. Get you some wise counsel, some good friends, not yes people. And I'm gonna do something I never do because I feel compelled. God, I thank you for the opportunity to help people find their way back to you, for the opportunity to facilitate encounters with you. God, I thank you that you love us even when we don't love you, that you love us even when we're unhealed, that you love us even when we're angry, we're offended, when we run away from you. God, I thank you that your loving for us endureth forever, that your mercy endureth forever, that your grace still covers us. I thank you now for the opportunity to always come back to you. And even now, God, I pray and I ask that you begin to heal the hurt that people have experienced, that you begin to restore them, that you begin to mend the broken pieces. Even now, God, I pray that you strengthen them, that you dissolve the spirit of fear in them, that you remind them that you've never given them that, that you've given them the spirit of love, that you've given them a sound mind. And I pray now that you begin to pour your peace into their lives. Restore them. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. I love you. Have a great day.