What Happens When Churches are not Havens of Healing

It is easy for most of us in church leadership to assume that our church is healing people. In fact, every church does have a measure of healing taking place all the time. After all, wherever Jesus is worshiped and his presence is celebrated, healing is likely to occur.

But what if, more often than not, the church we lead doesn’t heal? We must be willing to take a hard look and ask: Are there traits within our church that violate the basic principles for healing others? Have we set boundaries limiting the kinds of healing Christ will do?

The first step to becoming a church that heals is to pause and seek answers to these and similar questions. We must discover and address every attitude and practice that blocks healing. 

HIDE and SEEK

I’ve encountered many people who’ve felt they’ve had to hide in church, certain that if they were found out, they would be isolated and treated as freaks or worse.

Safety! It’s one of the most important words in healing. We ought to feel safe in church, but too often, we’re not. 

Who are the hiders? It could be the elder who knows full well that his drinking is destroying his home, yet he fears he won’t be accepted if he admits a problem. Or the Sunday-school teacher who doesn’t want the church to know that her husband hits her.

Or the pastor who is certain he knows how his board will react if he tells them his daughter is pregnant. Too many of us hide because our churches are harsh spiritual environments rather than havens of healing.

I have concluded: Give a group of humans a stressful and embarrassing situation, and nine times out of ten we will come up with an extremely creative, stupid way of handling it.

Churches that heal will strive to be trustworthy, to create an environment of compassion, trust, and acceptance that says, “You’re safe here. Let’s get you healed.”

Only in such an environment will we come out from our hiding places and deal honestly with our struggles.

No church is perfect. But churches that heal strive for integrity, and they practice acceptance. I mean just that: They practice. 

Acceptance is refusing to be the lord over others. That was Jesus’ point when he told the crowd standing around the adulterous woman that the most righteous one among them should cast the first stone (see John 8:3-11). The near-tragedy showed the danger of a group of people lording their “superiority” over a hurting person. It was an object lesson in the meaning of acceptance.

Jerry, a pastor of a moderate sized church, began to drink privately to ward off the stress of ministry.

At church, people began to notice that he was often irritable, and his sermons were frequently ill prepared. He had always been gregarious but now seemed to avoid contact with the congregation. Finally, several staff members began to notice the smell of liquor on his breath by midmorning.

All the elders of the church got together and lovingly confronted him with love and acceptance. 

How did it affect this pastor? “I knew right then that everything I had spoken about, everything I had taught, everything I had professed, was true. My church healed their pastor.”

May every pastor – may every Christian – find such a healing place.

Murren, Doug, Excerpted from Churches That Heal, West Monroe, LA, Howard Publishing, ©1999. Used by special permission Of Howard Publishing Co.