Prayers after church hurt

Loading…

Bible verses about church hurt and bad leaders

What each passage meant where it was written, and what it does and does not offer you now.

You haven’t strengthened the diseased. You haven’t healed that which was sick. You haven’t bound up that which was broken. You haven’t brought back that which was driven away. You haven’t sought that which was lost, but you have ruled over them with force and with rigor.

Ezekiel 34:1–16

Ezekiel was writing to people already scattered and a long way from home. What God says here is a charge sheet, read out item by item, against the men who were meant to be feeding them. Notice where the scattering is never laid. Verse 5 gives the reason without hedging: they were scattered because there was no shepherd. Judgment does fall inside the flock by the end of the chapter, but read which way round it goes. The same sentence that binds up the broken and strengthens the sick is the one that goes after the fat and the strong. When this chapter is used to warn people against leaving a church, it has been turned round the wrong way.

You have scattered my flock, driven them away, and have not visited them.

Jeremiah 23:1–4

Jeremiah said this about the religious leadership of his day, as a class, with nobody let off for seniority, in a country that was about to lose everything. The verbs matter. Scattered, driven away, not visited. People often assume that criticising a church leader is off limits for a believer. Jeremiah did it with God's own words behind him, and the promise that follows is that God will go and gather the people those men drove off.

But it was you, a man like me, my companion, and my familiar friend.

Psalm 55:12–14

The psalm is not describing an attack by an outsider. It is describing someone he worshipped alongside, which is why he says he cannot simply endure it and move on. If you have been told that what happened to you was just people being people, this verse disagrees. Betrayal by someone you prayed with is treated in Scripture as its own kind of wound, worth a psalm of its own.

His mouth was smooth as butter, but his heart was war. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords.

Psalm 55:20–23

This is charm described as a weapon, which is often the hardest part to make anyone else believe. He was warm. He was funny. Everybody liked him. The verse just after it, about casting your burden on the Lord, gets lifted out of this psalm and handed to people as a way of ending the conversation. In its place it comes after the accusation, not instead of it.

whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him if a huge millstone were hung around his neck and that he were sunk in the depths of the sea.

Matthew 18:6–9

Jesus is not measured here, and he is not talking about the person who was harmed. He is talking about the one who did the harming. This verse is regularly turned back on people who speak up, on the grounds that telling the truth might make others stumble. That reading requires the sentence to mean the opposite of what it says.

For they bind heavy burdens that are grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not lift a finger to help them.

Matthew 23:1–12

The complaint is a double standard, not doctrine. Rules for you, exemptions for them, and a set of titles and seats that keep the arrangement in place. Christians have long disagreed about how far the lines on titles reach, and this page is not going to settle what any church may call its clergy. What the passage is plainly doing a few verses later is levelling the room, by making the greatest the servant. If you have been told to submit to a standard the person teaching it has never had to live under, you have already understood this passage.

He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who doesn’t own the sheep, sees the wolf coming, leaves the sheep, and flees.

John 10:1–15

Jesus separates the shepherd who stays when it costs him from the hired hand who is gone the moment there is trouble. Both were standing in the same place last year. Earlier in the same passage the sheep flee from a voice they do not recognise, and that is described as ordinary good sense rather than rebellion. Walking away from a voice is allowed here.

We don’t control your faith, but are fellow workers with you for your joy.

2 Corinthians 1:24

Paul had as strong a claim to authority over that church as anyone in the New Testament, and this is the line he draws. Not your faith. Not yours to steer, grant or withdraw. It is a short verse and worth keeping somewhere you can find it, because the whole logic of a controlling church depends on the opposite being true.

not as lording it over those entrusted to you, but making yourselves examples to the flock.

1 Peter 5:1–4

This is written to elders, by an elder, so it cannot be dismissed as an outsider's complaint. The same few verses rule out coercion and money as motives. What you were told was strong leadership is named here as the thing leaders are specifically instructed not to do. You were not imagining the difference.

Quoted from the World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain. Every reference on this page was checked against the text.

Questions people ask

Is it a sin to leave my church?

Nobody can answer that for you from the outside, and anyone who does it quickly is not paying attention. What can be said is that Scripture does not treat the scattered sheep as the guilty party. In John 10 the sheep flee a voice they do not know, and it reads as sense rather than sin. Leaving may turn out to be the safest thing you ever did, or something you later see differently. Take the decision slowly, with people who gain nothing from your answer.

Do I have to forgive my pastor?

Forgiveness is real in Christian teaching, and it is also not the same thing as trust, access or reconciliation. You can forgive someone and still give a statement about them, still refuse to be alone with them, still never set foot in that building again. Anyone telling you forgiveness means restoring the relationship is describing something else and calling it forgiveness. There is also no deadline. For many people it takes years, and God is not standing over the calendar.

Should I report it, or just move on?

If a child was involved, or anything that may be a crime, it is not a private matter and it goes to the police or the statutory safeguarding body, whatever the church says about handling things internally. Beyond that, reporting is your decision and it can cost a great deal. Talk to someone outside the organisation first, a solicitor, a therapist, or an independent support charity, before you talk to the church.

Can I still pray if I have not been to church in years?

Yes. Praying has never required a building, a membership or a leader's permission, and Paul told a whole church that their faith was not his to control. If the only praying you do this year happens in the car or lying awake at two in the morning, that is praying. If you want to be among other Christians again one day, that possibility does not close because you took time out.

I am angry at God, not just at them. Is that allowed?

Yes. Anger addressed to God is still addressed to God, which is more than most people manage, and there is a prayer on this page for exactly that. Psalm 55 is not quite the same thing. The writer's anger is at a man who betrayed him, and he brings it to God without tidying it up first, then tells God plainly what he trusts God will do with deceitful men. Even that is more honesty than most of us say out loud. Nobody can promise you an explanation for why it was permitted to go on as long as it did. You are allowed to ask, and to keep asking.

Prayers after being hurt by a church

When you cannot walk back in

For sitting in the car park

When Sunday comes round again

Meet me where I am

For a body that says no

When the anger will not go

Say it plainly to God

When you want them found out

When rage wakes you at three

When the anger is at God

When you have to report it

Before making the phone call

When nobody seems to believe you

For the wait afterwards

When your faith is tangled in it

When the words feel borrowed

When you cannot open the Bible

Keeping hold of God alone

When you doubt it was real

For someone else going through it

For a friend still inside

For the children who were there

For the ones who stayed

Bible verses about church hurt and bad leaders

Where these verses get misused

Questions people ask

Writing for this subject

Can You Still Pray If You Left Church Years Ago?