Church Trauma for the ministry leader is just beginning to be a conversation beginning to be whispered about in conversations in pastors’ families and leadership staff. After walking through my own healing journey (which is never “over”), this has become one of the topics I’m most passionate about.
As ministry leaders and wives, we must learn to pay attention to our needs because it is impossible to survive the inevitable devastating losses and heartache we’ll face in the Church when serving broken people. Without identifying and understanding what we’re experiencing, we remain highly vulnerable to the impact of our own personal traumas as well as burnout, compassion fatigue, and physical exhaustion that manifests itself in bodily responses such as anxiety, weight gain/loss, diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic inflammation, headaches, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and a whole host of other problems that we won’t go into today.
If you don’t pay attention to yourself – body, mind, and soul – you are setting yourself up for future disasters that will greatly impact your ability to love and serve others well.
Let’s Define Trauma
In its simplest form, trauma is any deeply distressing or disturbing event or series of events perceived as a threat to our bodies. There are three main types of trauma: Acute (one-time events such as natural disasters or car accidents),. chronic trauma (ongoing exposure to highly stressful events such as an abusive relationship) and complex trauma ( when both acute and chronic trauma are experienced at the same time). Two helpful ways of thinking about trauma are using the term “Big T” trauma (sexual assault, witnessing or experiencing a crime, etc.) and “small t” trauma (emotional neglect or abandonment).
Anyone who experiences such events will experience post-traumatic stress (PTS). It becomes post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), however, when the trauma isn’t processed with knowledgeable and supportive care and the trauma symptoms continue past 8-12 weeks. Trauma causes us to get “stuck,” unable to move past our body’s automatic trauma responses. We might experience this “stuckness” by having nightmares, being unable to think straight/logically, having physical “knee-jerk” reactions at small noises or touches, or experiencing panic attacks at seemingly random moments, etc.
Trauma changes us forever; it changes the way we think about ourselves, others, God and the world around us.
Trauma in the Church
Entire books have been written about church hurt so I won’t even begin to scratch the surface with one post. The two most common responses I receive when speaking on this are 1) curiosity and genuine interest or 2) complete dismissal. This post today is for those that are genuinely curious. (I’ll address dismissing this issue in an up-coming post.)
Here’s what trauma commonly looks like in the Church
- Dismissing sin and demanding that people just “forgive and forget” without taking appropriate measures to deal with the sin issue. This is commonly seen in cases of sexual abuse. Often those in authority want to cover up sinful behavior and let the Church “take care of it” without bringing in proper authorities and consequences. This is also experienced in cases of narcissism, manipulative leadership, and accepting immature emotional behaviors such as giving the silent treatment when someone doesn’t do what they want and allowing power groups to reign with destructive gossip and behavior.
- Spiritual shaming ~ Anytime someone uses the Bible and twists it to cause another to feel shamed for what they are going through. This is an abuse of scripture and, usually, of a position of authority. Sounds like phrases such as,
- “You’re just not praying hard enough.”
- “Your faith must not be big enough because otherwise …God would do such-n-such”
- “You must be in sin because you’re experiencing this”
- “You just need to repent and that anger will leave you.”
- “You need to read the Bible and pray every day to be a good Christian.” Anytime someone uses the Bible and twists it to cause the other to feel shamed for what they are going through, this is an abuse of scripture and, usually, of a position of authority.
- Dismissing pain and ignoring the grief process – In Western Christianity we have lost the ability to uphold God’s presence and the human experience of pain as two truths we can hold simultaneously. We believe if we truly loved God enough or were following Him faithfully, our lives would be free from difficulty. When we hit the wall of reality and find that pain still does exist, we feel we have to ignore it or dismiss it in order to make it fit with our view of God. Because we believe God doesn’t exist if there is pain, then having pain must mean God isn’t with us or that He isn’t pleased with us. This leaves no option but to feel better by just ignoring it. The problem is, pain never goes away without addressing it. So, our deeply felt wounds often fester and we become bitter and resentful Christians who spend our lives wondering if maybe we’re just following some distant God afterall.
- Expecting super human leadership and leadership families – This expectation looks like requiring your pastor to be on call 24/7. It looks like expecting the pastor’s wife and kids to be in line with whatever imagined image you have conjured up in your mind. It looks like expecting the pastor to go to every hospital visit, every community event, and be there every time the church doors are open. It looks like requiring him to be counselor, wedding director, funeral director, and Bible teacher all the time without offering the cover of regular mental health visits. Yes- every pastor should have a counselor and should be seeing them throughout the year. (Side note: a study completed in 2016 found that pastors experience PTSD at a rate of 35% which is higher than policeman, firefighters, and EMS workers combined.) Often, IF a pastor seeks counseling, he is looked down upon and there is a leadership-wide meeting to determine if he’s now fit to actually serve as their pastor anymore. This is ridiculous and harmful.
- Using dramatic scare tactics to usher people into heaven. I’m going to step on some toes here…as one who works with people who have been traumatized in the Church, I know that this tactic is mentioned again and again. While I believe hell is real and will be full of anguish, mourning, intense pain and the “gnashing of teeth,” just as the Bible says, the way this is used to scare people into heaven has been a source of trauma for many, especially young children. This approach also damages the way we ought to view our Abba God by keeping us AFRAID to approach God rather than how He wants us to see Him by “boldly coming before the throne of grace.” The hell, fire, and brimestone message of the past is mostly gone from our churches today, but there are many adults who have been affected by it who still need to know the love of God and be freed from their intense fear.
- Insisting on marriage contract above all else – Yes, I’m going there. One of the most harmful ways the Church has led to trauma in women, especially, is by allowing abusive behavior to continue to rule in a marriage even when help as been sought. Most often, this harms the woman and children as the man keeps his power through physical, emotional, or mental abuse. All the while, the Church leaders stand by and send the message that things will get better and be “right” if the woman just continues to “submit” to the man, be patient, and loving, and gentle toward him in order to win him over. Again, entire books are devoted to this subject, but I could not talk about trauma in the Church without bringing this one to light even a little. The absolutely devestating results of this philosophy that exults submission of the woman (or man, in rare cases) over her own safety and wellbeing (and at the exclusion of the truth that the man should be loving her as Jesus loves the Church, sacrificially), will be accounted for by God Himself.
These are just a few ways the Church can promote or be the source of trauma in a person’s life. It’s usually inadvertent or a lack of understanding of what’s harmful to a person’s soul. There are many other ways not talked about here, but even as I write this, I need a break! This is not an easy topic to address, but it’s so needed. If you’ve experienced this or have begun to identify your own church body among the list given here today, I invite you to reach out. Let’s chat so you can begin your own healing journey today.
