Recently, two of my brothers in Christ, who live in two different states, experienced church hurt in two different ways. The first brother was fired from his Associate Pastor position because he told a teenager the truth about the evils behind Ouija boards and communicating with the dead. Unfortunately, the teen who became upset was the daughter of influential parents who donated money to the church. Sadly, the “church” cared more about money than the Truth; consequently, my brother was fired and asked to leave the church. In his experience, the church told him that he was responsible for youth, outreach, and worship. However, the deacons ended up ruling over the senior pastor and my brother wasn’t allowed to do the very job he was told he was responsible to do.
The second brother was not fired, but he voluntarily quit his position as Youth Pastor because the “church” operated as a secular business, the leaders were manipulative, and the environment was unhealthy. Thus, this incident of church hurt also came from religious hypocrisy.
In addition, I have recently received quite a few private messages from people who confided in me that they follow my messages, but they don’t go to church because the church had wounded them deeply. And because of all these collected testimonies that were revealed around the same time frame, the Holy Spirit prompted me to share my own church hurt experiences and then teach what GOD’s Word says about the topic.
The purpose of this article is to showcase the false church known as the “Religion-Monster-Machine” and then reveal the true church known as “the body of Christ.”
There have been many people who simply haven’t gone to church in a long time because the church hurt them. Some people recently left church. So, church hurt is a real thing. But because it’s real, we need to have a real relationship with the Lord so that mere humans don’t cause our faith to flounder. Finite and fallible people should never cause our faith in the infinite and infallible GOD to be wrecked.
To help you better understand a true Kingdom relationship, I’ll share with you the short version of my story and how GOD helped me overcome every step of the way despite my own personal failures and the failures of others as they hurt me. Through it all, GOD was faithful even if humans were not.
For the longer version of my testimony, click this link. But the short version is that I grew up agnostic. That simply means without knowledge. I didn’t know, I didn’t care. Religion wasn’t a part of my immediate family’s life. I remained agnostic for a long time. I eventually moved to California at the age of 15. At the age of 16, I decided I was an atheist. Not only an atheist, but an angry, nihilistic, suicidal atheist. At the age of 17, going into my 18th birthday, I wrote out my suicide letter. That didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. Suffice it to say that I ended up hitting rock bottom, but then the Lord revealed Himself to me through five supernatural occurrences. And after battling for 12 months of the Spirit reeling me in, I finally realized the Truth and committed my life to Christ at the age of 21.
Fast forward: After I committed my life to Christ, I eventually got to the point in my relationship with the Lord that He called me to full-time ministry. Immediately after that, I had moved to Florida. I went to several different churches before I found a church where I believed I belonged. I made my calling known to the pastors at that church. They used and abused my help, but they never cared to invite me into the team or help me grow. They didn’t care to train me up and launch me out. They weren’t interested in what I believed I was specifically called to do, they were only interested in me filling roles simply because there had been a need there. They wanted me to help out in the youth ministry. And so I did. I ended up serving faithfully, never leaving, but never doing what I was called to do.
Fast forward. I got a job offer. I moved to Alabama. I found a church I thought I belonged in. It was a new church plant, much smaller than the one in Florida. Again, I made my calling known to the pastors. And again, they were eager to have me serve. I served, but it was never in what I was called to do. I worked as an usher, I worked the parking lot, and I even sang in their band. This pastor made me believe he was going to truly disciple me, show me how to pastor a church, etc. But one day, he announced to all of us during a Sunday service that he was moving quite a distance away and was going to pastor a church in that location. I knew nothing about it. And I couldn’t just follow him. So, I felt abandoned. And then the new pastor didn’t know who I was nor did he care.
Fast forward. I ended up moving to Indiana. (I never had a good secular job. It caused me to move a lot.) Again, I eventually found a church I believed I belonged in. This one was much bigger than the one in Alabama. But again, I set up a meeting for the pastor and I to go to lunch and then I shared my calling with him. And again, they were eager to have me serve. I served in their drama department, doing plays. But yet again, I never did what the Lord was calling me to do. They wanted me to perform in their plays because they knew I had once been an actor in Hollywood. But the pastor never discipled me or taught me anything I would need to know in order to pastor a church, like I felt GOD was calling me to do.
Fast forward. I ended up moving back to Alabama because of a better job offer. However, I wasn’t there long before a pastor called me up and told me he had gotten my information from some Christian website I apparently put my resume on. We talked for a while, had video chats, etc. He seemed like a real cool guy, like his heart was in the right place. And after a while, this pastor asked me one day if I would be willing to move to the state of Washington to help him plant his new church and for me to be the youth pastor. Well, not knowing the difference between a good opportunity and a GOD-appointed divine calling, I left everything in Alabama and moved to the state of Washington, pulling my travel trailer behind me as I drove there. This pastor ended up not paying me for being youth pastor, but I knew that going into it. I knew I would have to try to find work when I got there. But I was excited for him to plant that new church and I had faith GOD would provide that income for me. And GOD did. But meanwhile, that pastor even charged me rent to keep my travel trailer on his property while I was trying to help him start his church. But yet again, I endured. I served. But I eventually discovered that the pastor wasn’t who he led me to believe he was. Not that he deceived me, but that maybe I had deceived myself and convinced myself that he was someone he was not. But there eventually came a time when I knew he was not my mentor. He did not end up showing me how to pastor a church the right way, but he did teach me quite a few things to never do. And one day, I heard clearly from the Holy Spirit that He was releasing me to leave. And so I scheduled a meeting to tell him in person. After I told him GOD was prompting me to leave, he told me I was just afraid because I didn’t think I could do it. In his defense, he had a good heart behind that comment – he was trying to address any fear I might have and help me overcome it. But I knew that GOD allowed me to go there in order to experience everything I thought I wanted but ended up being nothing I needed. I should have prayed a lot harder and a lot longer before ever moving there. However, I’ll never forget my departure out of there for as long as I live. I drove as far as I could that day until evening and spent the night in my travel trailer that night. In the morning, I walked to the coffee shop to get some matcha green tea and on the way there I found $100 bill on the ground. I looked around. There was no one around. GOD blessed my journey.
After I left, I visited my parents in Texas. And then Covid-19 closed everything down. And so I ended up living in Texas. And I did not want to be there. However, if I had remained in Washington state during the pandemic, I know I would have ended up being homeless. And so GOD took me to Texas for my own good even though I didn’t want to be there. Meanwhile, I found another church. I wasn’t sure if I belonged at this point. I pretty much lost hope that a church could be the true body of Christ. But my mom somehow got my dad to go to this church. And I thought to myself, if they would invest into my dad and help fill my dad and help him grow, then I would serve that church. So yet again, I made my calling known to the pastors. And yet again, they were eager for me to serve. I ended up being the one to get the donuts, make all the coffee, help set up the presentation tables, and clean up afterwards. But they never cared to disciple me, show me how to pastor a church, etc. And about about a year after serving there, they even launched a new church plant that I knew nothing about until they announced it at a Sunday service. And so they could have trained me in that process, but they didn’t. And by that time, my dad stopped going to church there and so I didn’t feel obligated to be there anymore. I prayed about it, and the Spirit released me. And so I left.
I then searched for a church, a place where I might belong. Again, I eventually found a church where I could belong even if I was unsure if I actually did belong. But the same process happened yet again. I asked the pastors to lunch, explained my calling, and then they wanted me to serve in an area I wasn’t called to serve. But I did. I worked the slides and operated the cameras for the live service. And I did that for about a year. And when I had brought my calling up to them again later on, they wanted me to complete some type of discipleship program that would have taken about two years to complete. I’ve already graduated Bible College & Seminary at this point. I’ve already served in so many churches. I wasn’t getting any younger. And so I knew at that point I had wasted another year of my life.
And then one day, I had enough. I was fed up. I had it out with GOD in prayer. I vomited all of my emotions into His ever-hearing ears. After praying to GOD for a long time, I felt led to quit my good paying job, leave that church, and to move out of Texas to go start my own church.
Now, all throughout this long ordeal of faithfully serving other churches, I had always been obedient to do the ministry GOD called me to do on whatever free time I had, whether it was posting videos on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or publishing articles on my site, or even responding to people via email. While the “church” had neglected and sometimes outright refused to sow into me, I spent my time sowing into others and answering questions for people, discipling others. I was even doing homeless outreach that none of my church “family” had time to do with me.
Oh yes— I have experienced a lot of church hurt since the day I became a Christian in 2004. And what I’ve already mentioned isn’t even all of my church hurt experiences. For 18 years I’ve experienced and endured church hurt. But do you know what has never happened in those 18 years? I never blamed GOD for humans refusing to live like He commanded them to live. It’s not GOD’s fault that people claim His name just so they can acquire wealth for themselves, focus on their titles, while they neglect to train people up and launch them out. GOD commanded them not to do those harmful things. Don’t you realize that if Christians actually did what GOD told them to do, we wouldn’t have corrupt churches who hurt people.
Psalm 118:8-9 says, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.”
And just so you know, that applies to me as well. So, don’t put your faith in me. I’m not impervious to the enemy’s attacks. I’m not perfect. But I’m going to do my best to live in faithful obedience no matter what my circumstance. But you have got to have a solid relationship with the Lord. This world is going to fall apart and people will hurt you. And you can’t be saved by someone else’s faith. What we need to understand is that church hurt is not a valid excuse to ignore GOD’s calling on our lives.
In conclusion, yes— church hurt is real. But you need to realize that not all churches are bad. There are many good churches out there. I just happened to be blessed enough to find the ones that hurt me. But I’m thankful for it. All my past experiences of church hurt led me here to this very moment so that I can now share with you just how much GOD loves you and that GOD does see you and He does care about you. And He will never leave you nor forsake you even if the humans hurt you.
I want to challenge you and call you to action. If you have been hurt by the church, I challenge you to spend every day this week to forgive whoever hurt you, and to spend time in prayer for that person / people. Pray that GOD would bring them back and that those people might learn from the past and use those experiences as lessons for correction. We need to forgive them and pray for their restoration. Don’t allow what they did in the past to change who you are in the present or who GOD is calling you to be in the future. Pray for them at least once a day, every day this week.
Lord, I pray, may the Holy Spirit call to remembrance those people we need to forgive and pray for all throughout this week. Thank You for all the future breakthroughs we’re going to experience. Amen.
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