Facing Church Hurt and Not Losing Faith
Facing Church Hurt and Not Losing Faith
What if you're disappointed with your church?
Listen in: Facing Church Hurt and Not Losing Faith
Jesus intended the church to be the body of believers, each person playing a role to uplift, serve, and encourage. While that is usually the case, too often the church can be a place where people feel overlooked, misunderstood, and disillusioned. When this happens, people may end up leaving the church altogether and even abandoning their faith.
In the next episode in our series, Facing Reality and Not Losing Faith, we’re joined by Trevin Wax, vice president of research and resource development at the North American Mission Board and a visiting professor at Cedarville University. Trevin also oversees a team that does research and resource development at the North American Mission Board, which includes church planting, disaster relief, and evangelism.
Trevin talks with Austin about his church experiences, addresses the topic of betrayal within the church, and shares some ways we can help our kids keep the faith.
My Church Experiences
There’s never been a time in my life that I was not at church. My parents were independent Baptists, so I was raised in the church from my earliest years and taught that the Bible was the most important thing. The way I learned about the Christian faith as a little kid was from Sunday School and my parents. I came to recognize my need for Jesus at a very young age.
My biggest takeaway from my first decade in life was that in the realm of Christianity, what’s being preached about and what we’re reading in the Bible needs to be taken very seriously. Sin and salvation are real, and heaven and hell are real.
In my teen years, my parents helped start a church that was Southern Baptist. We met in a high school cafeteria. That church grew to several hundred people within the decade that I was there. I had great relationships within the youth group and felt welcome there. The preaching and teaching were very solid, and the church was mission-focused. So that was my second foray into church life.
Navigating Church Betrayal
I’ve been in one situation where the pastor resigned because of a scandal, and I had to step into leadership and help that church maintain its stability. My initial thought in that situation was not, how am I going to respond to this betrayal? Instead, I wondered how I could use my influence in the church to help it maintain its stability. The other thing that was really important to me was that I wanted the people in our church to be able to feel what they needed to feel. If they felt angry at the injustice of the situation and the sin that was there, good. Sin should make you mad.
But I also wanted to warn them away from where things can go wrong. That holy sense of righteous anger, if held too long, can begin to strike at the heart. I also wanted to guide those who fell on the other extreme and wanted to forgive and move on too quickly. So it was about finding a healthy balance and safe place for them to process it well over the months that came.
The Sunday morning when everything went down and we knew this was going to be a trial for our church, there were a lot of tears, confusion, and heartache. I was encouraged seeing the people that were down in front praying and thought, we're going to be fine because the pillars of that church weren’t the pastor, the pillars were these godly men and women.
If this kind of situation happens to you, you've got to be aware of the influence that God has given you. Sometimes the regular, faithful churchgoers are unaware of how much influence they have on the people that are in their circle. Take your words seriously; you can be more of a force for good or ill in your congregation than you realize. Don’t just think about what you are feeling or going through. Think about how your influence can either be a source of hurt or a source of healing.
Take your words seriously; you can be more of a force for good or ill in your congregation than you realize. Think about how your influence can either be a source of hurt or a source of healing in the face of disappointment in a church.
Going to Church and Losing Faith
I’ve seen young people go to church and then take on alternate views in their college years. Often, they’d grown up in church. I’d meet with college students when they’d come back home. They’d take divergent paths that they’d find out about in college. I also noticed that people often drift in and out of church when they’re involved in immorality of some kind.
Another source of frayed faith is when people confuse core issues with peripheral issues. For example, believing in the Virgin Birth is essential to our faith. But whether or not you listen to contemporary music or use a certain Bible translation is not. Many times, a child will believe everything their church teaches. But then they get out into the world and see that there are faithful Christians who disagree on some of those issues and that can cause a crisis of faith. These questions should be welcomed and wrestled with in the context of healthy relationships.
One last thing I’ll mention is the “questions beneath the questions”. For example, students will ask whether or not they should believe in predestination or free will. You’re not truly a college leader until you’ve had to answer that. The more I’ve talked with students about that, the more I wondered, “Okay, what’s at stake for you?” You’re not going to come up with a solution to something that people have debated for 1600 years, so getting to the deeper question is a good exercise. We need to accept that there are always going to be debates, but I try to bring everything back to the Bible.
Keeping the Faith
Our oldest is a sophomore in college, and we have a 15-year-old and a 10-year-old. When it comes to parenting, I do have to admit that I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But a few good things I’ve done come to mind. One is having conversations with them about deep theological issues. Some of our deepest conversations have been in the car, just in the day-to-day of life.
My kids are curious. I'm not surprised by anything anymore. I'm just kind of recognizing, oh, we're going to talk about this now, and they often ask really good questions. Part of it is the openness of talking about Bible stuff a lot when it comes up and it’s got to be part of the everyday conversation.
I think modeling is important. I want our kids to see me and my wife reading the Bible in the morning and see that we pray. We also want to have other people be able to speak into their lives and say the things that we might like to say. As a parent you need a support system, whether it’s the youth pastor or someone inviting them to a Bible study. I want some good peer pressure to come from their own peers in the youth group.
Lifeway Research did a survey of the characteristics of families where young people did not drift away from the church during the college years and in their 20s, but actually stayed engaged with their faith. Bible reading on their own was the number one. Knowing how to pray was on there. The third thing on that list was kids serving in the church, not just going to church, but feeling like they have a stake in it. Listening to Christian music was on there as well.
Closing Thoughts
I'm really grateful for people who are not looking at the Christian church simply in the space of consumers, but who really want to contribute with the gifts that God has given them. I think we are healthier as churchgoers when we are walking into a situation and not saying, “Where are the weak spots in this church so I can expose them?” But asking, “Where are the weak spots in this church so I can help here? Where can I help strengthen some of those areas?”
That fundamental shift in attitude is super important. Otherwise we will be disappointed in the church. If we don’t want to be perpetually disillusioned with the church, we have to recognize that God may be showing us some areas where our church is weak so that we can be part of strengthening that.
That's why it's possible to go to church and not lose your faith: realize the agency that you have and the stewardship that you have been given. Wherever you find yourself, whether you're working for a church or leading a small group or just helping on a Sunday morning, your role in a church - big or small - actually matters.
We appreciate Trevin taking time to be part of WYITW! You can find him online here: