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Reconnecting with the Church, Overcoming Hurt, & Rediscovering the Joy of Fellowship
62 Plays1 year ago
Welcome back to Grove Hill Church, where we explore the experiences and challenges faced by believers in their journey with the church. In today's episode, Pastor Ridley Barron and Dan Sanchez delve into the topic of "Come back to the church," addressing the impact of church hurt and the reasons behind individuals stepping away from their church community. Together, they consider the importance of fellowship, accountability, and the potential consequences of not addressing church hurt. They also discuss the necessity of finding a church that aligns with individual values, the impact of social media within Christian communities, and the importance of seeking support and making amends. Join us as we navigate through the complexities of church relationships and explore the significance of reconnecting with the church community.
Timestamps:
00:00 Bible emphasizes fellowship for growth and unity.
03:11 Small church or large church, both are beneficial.
07:22 Refusing to address bitterness will harm you.
10:19 Appreciation for small things affects sensitivity.
13:45 Discussing future can lead to commitment fears.
18:53 Church hopping due to entertainment-focused mentality.
20:53 Stay loyal to church, leave ethically problematic situations.
25:45 Connect with small groups for church growth.
28:37 Raised in church, proactive in staying committed.
30:15 Congregation welcomes those who have left.
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Transcript
Introduction: Dealing with Church Hurt
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the Grove Hill Church Podcast. I'm Dan Sanchez, and I'm here with Pastor Ridley Barron, and we're following up on his sermon on church hurt. Now, he went through exhaustively on all about church hurt and what to do about it and how to think about it, how to pray about it, and how we should respond to church hurt as Christians. So we don't want to repeat that here, but I do want to be diving into an element of it, as we always do with this particular podcast episode.
00:00:29
Speaker
And
Re-engaging with Faith: Returning to Church after Hurt
00:00:30
Speaker
that's, Gareth Ridley, giving you ground to speak to those who aren't going to church anymore because of church hurt. So they're probably not listening to this now. So if you're listening to this now, this is kind of you, hopefully not for your future self, but it's for
00:00:46
Speaker
those who you know have stopped attending church, who you would like to see attend church again, whether they're part of Grove Hill or maybe family members who have stopped going, but still believe in Jesus. This isn't the people who have deconstructed their faith, but those who are still ardent believers, even read their Bible a lot and pray, but have somewhere along the line created an idea that they don't need to be part of a local body anymore. To kick it off, what would you say to those people?
00:01:16
Speaker
I
The Role of Fellowship in Spiritual Growth
00:01:17
Speaker
go back and start with the fact that I believe that the Bible is very intentional with every story and includes every command it gives, every principle it teaches us. And I think that one of the principles that you can pick up consistently, especially in the New Testament, is the encouragement that fellowship with other believers is essential for your growth as a believer. It's a part of the faith. I mean, Hebrews tells us, don't
00:01:43
Speaker
forsake the assembling of yourselves together on a regular basis. 47 different times in the rest of the New Testament it says that we are to love one another, encourage one another, pray for one another. Those kinds of one another things are done best in the company of other believers. Paul describes the church as a body. Bodies don't work well when they're pulled apart. So I think there's just a precedent that's set there that says be very cautious about pulling yourself away from the body.
Church's Role in Accountability and Discipleship
00:02:11
Speaker
Can you be a Christian and not go to church? Sure. Can you be the best Christian you want to be? Probably not. I think the church is there to hold us accountable, to give us encouragement, to help disciple us, to refine us. You even go back over into the Old Testament and it says the court of three strands is not easily broken. There's something about being in the company of other believers that gives us strength and courage for the journey we're on.
00:02:39
Speaker
So I know some people would be listening to this and think like, well, I've read the Bible on that, but I actually do have fellowship with other believers in my life. We even study the Bible together on occasion or maybe we watch a video sermon.
00:02:54
Speaker
It's
Home Churches vs. Traditional Congregations
00:02:55
Speaker
essentially like a life group. I think there's a whole different topic like local congregations versus home churches, but they're not doing home churches. They're just loosely practicing some parts of church but with Christian friends. What would you say to them? Well, you might be surprised to hear this.
00:03:14
Speaker
I'm not so dead set against that kind of thinking because I do think it kind of gives shades of what the early church was really like. People gathering together in houses, encouraging each other, studying the Word of God, admonishing each other, those kinds of things. I think in the church, and I think I've even said this before here on this podcast, in the church we try so hard to be an either-or kind of people.
00:03:40
Speaker
We operate in complete extremes, and I think much of the Christian faith is a both and kind of mentality. I don't think that everybody has to be in a large church to be a successful Christian, but I do think being in a large church makes it easier to be a Christian.
00:03:56
Speaker
I also think having a small church environment like a life group, a community group, a home group or something like that makes you even stronger because of that close compatibility. You don't disappear in a large crowd. There's somebody who knows your heart more intimately.
00:04:11
Speaker
And so I would say one of my things as a pastor is while I do want to grow a large church to create greater opportunities for ministry, I also want to make the church smaller so that we don't lose that intimate personal feel of brother against brother, sister against sister encouraging one another.
00:04:31
Speaker
There's two
The Importance of Sacraments and Church Discipline
00:04:32
Speaker
thoughts as you said that, and there's two different pieces of church that I think you miss if you're just fellowshipping with Christian friends. One is you're probably not doing the sacraments, which I find to be an important part, but maybe you are doing the sacraments. The other big piece, and this is probably, it's sad, but it's missing from most churches, even like brick and mortar churches is church discipline being under an authority of some kind, because that's kind of where the rubber meets the road sometime.
00:05:01
Speaker
They can call you out on different things. You can call them out and maybe that's where some of the church herds have come from. Yeah. Again,
Confronting Church Hurt to Prevent Spiritual Harm
00:05:11
Speaker
I think that element of accountability there, making sure that we're protecting false theology from seeping in. If you're sitting at home, just having home church, not very likely your kids are going to speak up and go, dad, your theology is bad.
00:05:25
Speaker
But you are going to have that camaraderie when, uh, when you've got other adults who are against, again, just kind of iron sharpening iron rubbing up against each other, doing life on life. Uh, and I think that's important. I think sometimes you can, you can trick yourself into saying, well, why do I need the church? I'm doing okay. Well, the answer may be that the church needs you.
00:05:46
Speaker
Maybe it's your wisdom that God wants you to bring to the church so that you can be the next Bible study teacher or small group leader or deacon to serve. So it's not just a one-way street. Yeah, you're going to get things from the church, but you have much to offer the church as well. And when churches don't have people engaged in them, then the church suffers because people withholding their skills, their talents, and their passions.
00:06:08
Speaker
And a healthy church is a lot like a healthy marriage. Marriage is hard. It's refining. But it's also one of the most life-giving things I've ever participated in.
00:06:18
Speaker
I'm probably going to get this wrong. I'm glad you mentioned this, but other days, I think it was my wife who read this to me as part of my talking about this sermon that was coming up, but she said, people who do not engage in the church are like people who get married and never go home again. They disconnect
The Impact of Avoiding Church Due to Hurt
00:06:34
Speaker
themselves from things. Are they still married? Yeah. Is their marriage strong? Not a chance because they are not in the company of the people that make them who they are.
00:06:45
Speaker
What happens if people continue just to run away from the church instead of addressing the hurt that they might've experienced from the church and they left the church because of something happened to them? I could think of a friend that went and helped plant a church, but because of the fallout with that pastor, things didn't go well with the plant. And church plants are hard, kind of like business startups. There's so many different things can go wrong for it to not flourish, right?
00:07:11
Speaker
And then it's people, and people hurt people. And I know this person hasn't gone back to church since then. What happens if you continue to stay out of it? Well, we've already talked about the fact that a church can suffer of it because of it, but there's no doubt in my mind that
00:07:28
Speaker
you suffer because there's this bitterness that's seated in your heart and the scriptures are clear. You can't harbor that kind of bitterness without it hurting you. You can't inject cancer into a body without the body feeling that and being corrupted by that presence. So I do think that running from the problem instead of standing and addressing the problem hurts you on
00:07:54
Speaker
the spiritual, relational, mental level. But then also there's this sense of it's just true disobedience. Look at Matthew, Jesus was very clear, look, if you've got a problem with somebody, you're never supposed to run. You're supposed to stand and turn and then love, try to restore the relationship, try to fix those things that have gone wrong. So if you run from the problem, you're actually disobeying what Christ has commanded.
00:08:18
Speaker
So you might
Emotional Responsibility and Oversensitivity
00:08:19
Speaker
want to get back in the game because it's, I don't know, people, it's kind of like that way with most forgiveness, right? And then you've talked about this, like people go to ask forgiveness and that person's like, oh, I didn't even realize that was a problem anymore. It was the one hurting you all along. And I thought it was interesting too. We talked about the story in John chapter five where the guy had been laying for 38 years by the pool of Bethesda waiting for the opportunity to be healed. And Jesus comes along and asks that question, do you really want to be made well?
00:08:48
Speaker
And sadly I think we've got a lot of unhealthy people walking around in our culture who if they were honest with themselves would say no I really I really don't want to be made well I'm kind of enjoying where I'm lying in the dirt and it's gotten comfortable for me and they have this convenient for lack of a better illustration it's kind of like a get out of jail free card for them if I act ugly towards you oh here's my anxiety card.
00:09:15
Speaker
or here's my depression card, here's my church hurt card. And we wave those around like they're excuses for not being the kind of people we're supposed to be. And I think Jesus says, look, you got to take responsibility for your emotions. You can't be responsible for the other 100 people in your church, but you absolutely are responsible for yourself and you don't get a free pass.
00:09:37
Speaker
There are certainly times when churches hurt people, not churches, but people within those churches hurt people. And they are horror stories. And you're just like, I'm so sorry that this happened to you. That person was so far out of line. That person is wrestling with all their own sin. That was a horrible story. So there are some bad leaders in churches, but there's a lot of great churches out there. Yeah.
00:10:01
Speaker
But I do find that there is a person who stops going to church because every church brings up this problem in them. And they're just tired of churches treating them poorly. What do you say to that person? It's not just one bad church experience, it's that they're getting consistent feedback from the church. Yeah. I think the best thing I can think of illustration wise is one time I broke my pinky.
00:10:27
Speaker
And you think about a pinky just being no big deal, you know, it just kind of hangs off the end of your finger. Yeah, we know it serves some kind of purpose, but it can't be too bad. But I realized over the next several weeks as my pinky was healing, how many times you touch your pinky a day or something involves your pinky, whether it's opening a jar or shaking a hand or turning a dial. And it's like, I became really, really appreciative of the fact that I had a healthy pinky at once.
00:10:52
Speaker
So as human beings, when we carry those things around inside of us, we become more sensitive, more aware to that portion of our heart, and we become a little, I would even argue, oversensitive to every time somebody does something like that to us.
00:11:09
Speaker
And again, if you don't go back, if you don't get the thorn removed, if you don't take care of the infection that's there, that bitterness now suddenly makes it where nobody has a chance to win with you because you're going to react and respond every time it comes up. What if somebody is avoiding the church because they kind of prefer living in a specific sin and they think it's okay? Oh yeah. Yeah, that happens a lot. One of the areas that's very common today is
00:11:36
Speaker
Lots of lots of young couples want to test the waters before they commit to each other in marriage And how'd you know that's the first my person I'm thinking of I'm like, that's the thing All the time, I mean there are lots in in the five and a half years of our church There have been numerous young couples that have come to our church Thankfully many of them chose to go ahead and follow through with that commitment get married
00:11:58
Speaker
But many of them would come in and suddenly disappear and you'd go, you know, what's going on? Well,
Addressing Sin within Relationships and Encouraging Marriage
00:12:03
Speaker
they didn't want to give up living together. And they knew that if they stayed in our church, they would be lovingly confronted with the reality that that's not acceptable according to God's plan for your marriage. It's really not even healthy emotionally for the marriage. It's a lack of commitment because of a lack of courage to follow through with something. So yeah, I think that we, again,
00:12:24
Speaker
that whole get out of jail free card. I've got my personal sin over here. And if anybody gets a little close to it, I'm going to fill up that card and say, I'm leaving. I'm not going to take this anymore. Well, the confrontation of sin is something the Holy Spirit is going to do in your life one way or another. It's best to deal with the sin instead of trying to run from the Holy Spirit.
00:12:44
Speaker
Because that's a reoccurring theme, like how do you usually address those couples? Are you on the page of like, they need to start over and break up completely, get right, and then come back together if they've been living together? Or do you feel like, hey, like no stay together, but stop living together and sleeping with each other and then continue on the track? I usually try to deal with it based on the
00:13:08
Speaker
the conversation I have with them, because it's part of the premarital counseling when they're actually talking about marriage or whatever. If they're close to being married, I will take the approach of, hey, go find a place to live for four months. You know, go split up, keep this thing clean, make a pledge that you're not going to become sexually involved any more than you already have at this point, and ask God to forgive you for what you've done to this point so that the marriage starts out the right way it should.
00:13:34
Speaker
If we're talking with a young couple who really doesn't have marriage on the future, the horizon yet, maybe they're just in the church together, those kinds of things, then I start trying to encourage them, hey, let's start talking about what a future might look like together. What I find actually strangely enough is when you start forcing them to talk about a future, one or the other will back out of the relationship because they're scared, they're fixing to be asked for a commitment.
00:13:58
Speaker
But if it's a couple, for instance, we had a couple that came to our church a few years ago. They were about two months away from being married. They were new in town. They needed a pastor to do their marriage. And I just simply said to them, I will do your marriage on two conditions. Number one, you're going to come get premarital counseling with me, which is always a prerequisite. But number two, you or her, one of the two is going to have to go find some place to sleep for the next two months until we get this thing taken care of and get you pledged to one another in the right way. And of course, the premarital counseling was
00:14:28
Speaker
unpacking why that was such an important step in their health going forward as a couple. They move forward with it? Yeah,
Challenges Faced by New Church Plants
00:14:35
Speaker
they did. That was great. Yeah, it was one of the rare occasions where they did. Yeah. I was usually the best ones, the ones that actually take the advice because usually the people that need the advice don't want it. And the people who ask for the advice are usually the people who don't need it so much. You're exactly right. You know, you brought up church plants a minute ago in a special challenge that they are.
00:14:58
Speaker
A lot of people don't know this, but church plants, typically in the first year to two, church plants will lose up to 50% of their original attenders. And they will come in and what happens is many of them come in with expectations of what the church is going to look like, what its values might be. And they'll come in and they'll stick it out for a while and then go, it's never going to be that. So they'll wind up going somewhere else.
00:15:24
Speaker
And instantly the 50% that remains goes, oh, what did we do to hurt them? What did we do to harm them? You know, that kind of stuff. Well, you didn't do anything. That's just a natural attrition.
00:15:33
Speaker
When people come into a church, especially a new one, they have a decision to make. Do we align with who they are or do we have a different set of values than they do? And so that's kind of a normal thing, normal process. And the first church plan I did, we had such a turnover the first year, it was hard to even keep a healthy Deacon board together because so many of the guys said, no, this, this isn't what we thought it was going to be. And they took off.
00:15:56
Speaker
which in the long run is better for your church because you want people who are aligned and see the same values and passions that the church has. But it hurts in that moment. I mean, church hurt goes both ways. I mean, if you're really a genuine, compassionate church of Jesus Christ, you don't want to hurt anybody. You don't want to see them leave, but it happens both ways and both parties have a responsibility to heal from their emotions in that.
00:16:21
Speaker
Never consider that about church plants and that you're essentially forming a new community and that community has a sense of ties and people have to find out if they're in that crowd. One of the other dangers happens too is that if a church planner doesn't do a good job of casting a clear vision,
00:16:41
Speaker
creates lots of confusion and people don't get behind it because they're like, I really don't know what this is all about. And so sometimes that'll cost you a lot of people right on the front because they're going, I need a little bit more direction from the guy who's leading this thing. And so, um, that's an area where I think church planners are doing a much better job these days, but sadly there's still a lot that they, uh, they just really don't know what it is they're trying to plant.
Overcoming Church Trauma through Counsel and Forgiveness
00:17:04
Speaker
So that creates confusion.
00:17:06
Speaker
somebody's on the fence about this and they realize they have church hurt and it just feels they could feel it like every time they think about going back into church, you know, they're just like, oh, like it just hits them in the chest. Yeah. Like how do they, how can they overcome that? So when they even just think about going back to church, it's not like this huge painful thing. You know how we all have trauma and every time we get reminded of the thing, it just like brings you right back to it.
00:17:30
Speaker
How does somebody overcome the trauma of past church hurt in order to actually get back to being part of a body? I think a healthy starting point is another believer, probably not one that's in the church that hurt you. Maybe it's a family member that's close or maybe just another church across town, maybe even another state where you just pick up the phone and talk to somebody, but that's a place where you begin to unpack what really caused the hurt.
00:17:56
Speaker
What you've done since that hurt to try to address it And even to invite a brother or sister to pray with you in that as you begin that journey Eventually though you're I think you're gonna have to go back to the source of that pain and address it in some form It may be hey I want to have a face-to-face Conversation with the Sunday school teacher that hurt my feelings are the deacon that didn't do what I thought he should have done and
00:18:19
Speaker
Other times it may be just simply sitting down and writing a letter of forgiveness to somebody you may never see again, but you need to do that because it sets you free from the bitterness that you're holding on to. Like you talked about a minute ago, many times the people who've heard us don't have a clue they've heard us because it wasn't their intent. They just simply didn't do the right thing or say the right thing. My last question is to talk about those who church hop.
The Consumer Mindset in Modern Churches
00:18:43
Speaker
as a church hurt, which happens probably more often than anything else, probably more often than people leave all together and then Christian circles. So church hopping is more of a 21st century Western mentality that we have developed. And it comes, I think, primarily because of the fact that many of our churches sadly have gotten away from just teaching the gospel and teaching the word of God and have turned towards this entertainment kind of mindset.
00:19:12
Speaker
If we have another big event, if we bring in another big Christian artist, if we put on this big Easter play and those things in themselves aren't bad, but if you're entertaining people to get them there, then you're tasked with the responsibility of keeping them entertained while they're there.
00:19:28
Speaker
because they've come for the wrong reasons in the first place. And when the sole reason for somebody being at your church is entertainment value, then what they have become is not a participant in the faith, they've become a consumer. And consumers, as you and I both know here in America, consumers, we're looking for the next value, the next good thing, the next best product, those kinds of things.
00:19:51
Speaker
If I come to Dan's church because they had this great picnic on the 4th of July and it seemed like a bunch of great people and they had this big artist there and I started attending that church. Well, then suddenly my mindset is, okay, what are you going to do for me next? What are you going to do to make me feel that feeling again? And oh, by the way, if you don't do it, if your preacher doesn't do it every Sunday, the preacher down the road that I've been watching on the internet will.
00:20:18
Speaker
And so now it becomes almost a competition between churches. Which one of us can be more like Disney World to keep this person engaged? Would you say that a believer should generally try to stick to one church?
00:20:31
Speaker
almost no matter what, or are there some appropriate reasons to go and find another church as well? Do you think you should shop around and find one that fits like you said, the reason why people stick to or leave a church startup so they didn't fit the values or whatever is going on in that church? Or should you just find the closest local church they could find?
Valid Reasons for Leaving a Church
00:20:53
Speaker
I think there's something to be said for obviously the commitment and loyalty of sticking with a group of people, a community of believers, even in those moments where you don't necessarily see eye to eye. I think there's some acceptable times when you should pull away from a church.
00:21:09
Speaker
If something ethically or morally wrong is going on and they refuse to back off of that, then I think absolutely that's a reason to leave. Or if it's not a clear cut, they're doing wrong, but they're just not doing what you personally feel you should be passionate about. I think in that moment, there's a time of prayer just to say, okay, we're going to go find a church where we can invest ourselves and feel comfortable about it.
00:21:35
Speaker
I would I would underline this highlighted bold face it so you hear this though. There's never a good time to leave a church and burn it down on the way out. You don't have permission to treat Jesus's bride that way. If you really feel like something morally ethically wrong has happened there, you just leave quietly and let Jesus take care of bringing down that church. That's his job, not yours. And man, especially with social media today, we
00:22:00
Speaker
We wanna get on the church, I mean on the Facebook page and we wanna bash that church because they did so and so or they didn't, whatever. And man, that is scary ground to be on because I think you're gonna walk into heaven and Jesus is gonna go, what in the world were you thinking? Who gave you the authority to act that way? As
Kindness over Social Media Attacks
00:22:19
Speaker
somebody who's managed social media for three national or international ministries. The amount of mean things I've seen Christians say on social media is too many.
00:22:30
Speaker
Listen, I just, I just recently heard of a church won't tell you where or anything else. Cause I don't want to reveal too much, but the church that their deacons decided to do a survey about things that were going on in the church.
00:22:41
Speaker
And one of the guys that was responsible for taking in and tallying the votes and the comments and stuff like that said some of the comments on those responses were so evil, he couldn't believe it was Christian people who had written it. He said, I was floored that people, because of anonymity, had the courage to say some of the things they said. And I said, well, it was probably a bad idea to do a survey like that in the first place, because you're opening up a can of worms.
00:23:06
Speaker
But yeah, it's a scary world we live in because we have lost our fear and reverence of God. And because we have so many of us, our approach to God, to Christianity, to faith, and of course to his church has just become very callous. And we don't consider the repercussions of some of the choices we make and the statements we make.
00:23:29
Speaker
We still need to be kind. Oh, yeah. We still need to be gentle. Yes, we do. We still need to be peaceful. There's a reason why the food of the Spirit contains all those things, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's an easy trick that Satan pulls on us to cause us to hold on to hurt when it does us no good.
00:23:50
Speaker
But for some reason, so many of us want to or maybe just cannot seem to get beyond it. So I would throw this back out there because I've said it before. I'll say it again. The presence of biblical counselors, man, I encourage it very strongly. But as I have said before, make sure they're biblical.
00:24:08
Speaker
A lot of them will call themselves Christian counselors, but Christian simply means they know how to talk about Christianity. It doesn't mean they necessarily believe Christianity. So I would say make sure that they truly adhere to the biblical practices and principles of the scripture if you're going to reach out to a counselor. Counselors are a wonderful gift. Even Proverbs talks about the wisdom of counsel from brothers and sisters.
00:24:34
Speaker
And I did think of one more thing. I've certainly heard a lot of people stop going to church because nobody reached out to them. Nobody made
Building Community through Active Participation
00:24:41
Speaker
connections with them. Now, some churches are better at this than others. There are certainly times I've walked into a congregation as a first time Sunday goer. No one noticed, no one mentioned anything.
00:24:51
Speaker
And many churches where I have, you could tell because they systematically had a way of finding you and then approaching you and then making sure you got invited to lunch afterwards or something like that. And Grove Hill is pretty good at this. But for those who don't feel like people have pursued them enough, and that's why they don't go to church anymore. Because they're like, well, nobody really cares. So I'm just going to spend time with Jesus alone. What would you say to them?
00:25:17
Speaker
Well, I think you're talking about two different kinds of people there. Some of them are people who go out and they literally test the church. They stay away for three or four weeks and go, okay, let's see if anybody calls me. Uh, that's an unhealthy practice. Uh, that's a self-esteem issue is what it is. Really. Uh, I do think there are legitimate cases where, uh, somebody has long-term illness or maybe they have a family member, they have to go to out of state and take care of, and they miss three or four weeks. And then they go, okay, you know, it's strange. I haven't been there and nobody's really contacted me.
00:25:47
Speaker
I think that's the place where we were talking about a minute ago is your church grows. It's important that it grows small as it grows large. The small group is where those best contacts come from. Your D group, your community group, the people who are going to say, hey, I haven't seen him in a few weeks. Where is he?
00:26:04
Speaker
It doesn't mean that the whole church doesn't have a responsibility to stay on top of it. It just means it's a little bit easier when it's your family and your peer group that's connected with you. So I would encourage you, if that's a concern, if that's something where you might have more sensitive feelings than somebody else, then make sure you're in that small group of believers who can be that encouragement for you. I think it's important. I personally, as a pastor, and I hope this doesn't come across sounding
00:26:33
Speaker
not compassionate. There's a point where you have to weigh, how far do I chase somebody who knows where they need to be versus how far do I chase the lost? Because you can spend a lot of hours chasing somebody down, trying to make sure they're okay, trying to make sure their feelings aren't hurt, trying to make sure they've been talked to, those kinds of things. But the Bible says for those who know the good to do and they don't do it, it's considered sin.
00:26:56
Speaker
So if you're a believer, you know where you're supposed to be, help us out and try to be there. I'll just have it at you. If you're a lost person, then absolutely, I would expect you to not be there. And I would expect that somebody in our church should be chasing you down to save you from the hell that you're headed to.
00:27:11
Speaker
Remember once we knew a person in our same church. This was years ago, different state, different church. And they were almost offended on our behalf because Amy had, we just found out that Amy had a brain tumor and the church surrounded us. And a comment she made told me that she had suffered a lot of hurt. She said something like, it's too bad that it took such a tragic moment for the church to finally like come out. And I'm like,
00:27:41
Speaker
Do we go to the same church? Because we've been actively a part of this community for years now, and I thought you had too, but apparently your expectation or participation in the church is very different. Same
Proactive Engagement to Avoid Church Hurt
00:27:54
Speaker
church, one service church. Maybe it's just because Amy and I get pretty involved in a congregation, but I almost feel like people just need to
00:28:03
Speaker
be a little bit more proactive or expect that they need to go make the friends. Sometimes people, you know, like Amy, my Amy's pretty good about reaching out to others and making lots of friends, everybody's friends with Amy, where I'm a little bit more reserved. So I'm like not shaking hands, but there's a couple people in our congregation that are those people. They like, they will chase you down, but still you have to be proactive in building the relationships.
00:28:29
Speaker
And once you do, you know, you end up with a really tight community that you can be there for and that are there for you. Yeah. That word that you just used a couple of times proactive.
00:28:40
Speaker
I can honestly tell you I've been in the church literally since I was born. From the time I was old enough to be taken to church, my parents put me in the nursery and I've been in church ever since. Never, ever took extended lengths of time away from the church, even in my rebellious years of college. I was still in church most Sundays. But I've never, never been hurt by the church. And I think that's because I was taught to be proactive. You go to church, you go do what you know what you're supposed to do. And if you do, then you're going to find yourself in the place where nobody's going to have to look for you. You're going to be there.
00:29:10
Speaker
Dan and Amy are the same way, right? I mean, you're engaged in church. You're, you're loving on people. You're talking to people. You're meeting people. There's a real good chance. If you miss one Sunday, people are going to wear Dan and Amy because they were the people who are not like the wall huggers against the wall at the dance, you know, waiting for somebody to come ask him, you're out in the middle of the dance floor and joining life with the people who called me brother and sister. And that's the way it should be.
00:29:33
Speaker
So if
Addressing Hurts and Returning to Church
00:29:34
Speaker
you're listening to this, and it's been a while since you've been to church, if it's been from a hurt, let's deal with that hurt. If it's because you just decided that maybe you don't need it, pray about that. Pray about that again, talk to some believers, and maybe try it out again.
00:29:50
Speaker
Maybe it didn't go so well for you in a past church. Maybe you need to change churches. Maybe you need to go back to that church and find restoration with the specific relationship there. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's God's bride. So let's come back. Let's figure it out. And if you're listening to this and you're a part of our congregation, send this to somebody who needs to hear it, who needs to come back, come back to the fold and come back to the body. And if you're somebody who has
00:30:18
Speaker
walked away from our congregation? Give us a call. You'd be surprised how loving and willingly are just to bring you back into the fold. You need to be at church. You just need to. 56 years as a human being and 48 of those as a Christian, I can tell you I'm a stronger Christian today because of the people God's put in my life.
00:30:40
Speaker
So thanks for listening to the Grove Hill podcast where we try to impact the life of every person with the whole gospel by any means possible. And again, share this episode and we'll see you on the next one.