Touré Roberts - When Church Hurts

You’ve been hurt too badly; you’ve been hurt in church, and I want to address it and deal with the hurt. I laid the foundation that church is a hospital, so although I am sorry that you got hurt, I am not shocked. There are all sorts of ways to be hurt in church, and we’re going to address them tonight. I’m going to list my staff and try to identify as many areas of hurt in church as we can. Our PMTs and our deacons will hand you this card, and they’re going to pass them out to you now. I’m going to read down the list of these things. If you have been hurt in any of these ways—this is completely anonymous—don’t look over at your neighbor’s paper; you too, girl. We’re going to pass these out to you because we are going to deal with some things tonight. Our staff got together, and we racked our brains to try to figure out the ways that you or someone you know may have been hurt in church. We had very emotional moments as we gathered and shared because the reality is that not one person in our immediate core leadership team has been untouched by church hurt. We tried to think about you because I believe that God will bring some healing tonight; in fact, I know God will bring some healing tonight. But we cannot heal; He cannot heal what is not revealed. So I’m going to go down the list of these things, and you’re going to check this off. Don’t put your name on it; we’re not necessarily interested in that. I’m just going to read off the list of these things—there are about 20 here—so just check if you have been controlled by people in the church, controlled by people with a controlling spirit. If you felt controlled and this identifies with you, I want you to check all that apply. You have been deceived, manipulated, or lied to. You thought people presented themselves to be something that they weren’t; they were thespians, actors, and you bought into who they were pretending to be. As a result, you got hurt because you were deceived; they manipulated you based on the image of themselves that they presented, or you might have been lied to. Perhaps some promises made to you were nothing but lies. You were discriminated against in church in some way, or you felt rejected. You were judged; someone looked at you and made a determination about you. Emotional or verbal abuse: someone spoke against you negatively, hurt you emotionally, or manipulated you in the church. How about this: you were hurt by age biases in the church—“Oh, you’re too young to be a part of this, ” or «You’re too old to be a part of this experience.» Hurt through age bias. I’m going to add something that is not on here: there was some authority figure that abused you; they used their power over you, and you were abused because of their position. They threw their weight around. You were hurt by other people; they weren’t in leadership, just people in the church who talked about you, gossiped, or what have you. Racial bias: someone made a racial slur or you felt like their attitude towards you had some sort of racial tone to it. You were misunderstood in the church—just misunderstood. You had good intentions; I’ve been there before—I can probably check most of these—but you had good intentions, and all of a sudden you found yourself misunderstood. You tried to stay humble, yet you were too proud. All you had was a dream, and you felt misunderstood by leadership. How about this: not being heard in the church. You cried out, and no one responded; you felt devalued as a result of it—not being included or feeling excluded in the church, not a part of the clique, not a part of the tribe; as a result, you felt rejected and left out. Physical abuse: you were literally physically abused. This one is really near and dear to my heart, but we put it on here: pressure because of your parent’s ministry position—so, PK, so to speak—or you felt pressure, or people put pressure on you because your parents were in a leadership position in some way, or your grandparents, or some familial affiliation. Then this one was interesting: serving in the church hurts your relationships. A husband complained because his wife was at church all the time, or vice versa; just your busyness in the church hurts your relationship. The person who was not busy got hurt. You may be mad at the church a little bit because the church broke up your family, took your best friend away from you, etc. Sexual abuse: you experienced some sort of sexual abuse in the church. Spiritual church abuse: that’s when somebody, you know, and I believe in prophets, but one thing that I’ve noticed is that most people who have to put «prophet» in front of their name need to be watched out for because if you have to demand that people respond to you that way, I’m going to watch out for you. Jesus was just Jesus, the Son of God. Paul was just Paul, the Apostle. He never put his rank in front of his name because the power wasn’t in his rank; it was in his anointing, and the anointing will speak for itself.