Whether or not it’s a real thing, church hurt is something that people genuinely talk about. I’m not here to debate those semantics. Things happen and people disappoint. Especially leaders.

For all intents and purposes, I should be a statistic.

I’m gonna tell you my church hurt story. This one’s a bit longer, but if you’ll hang in with me you’ll get some more of the background. None of this is sob story. Mine is a story of hope and hurt and bitterness and redemption.

I’m gonna tell you why I’m still there.

But first…

Oh boy, is there ever a clash on this tide.

I really should have left the church and it’s a miracle I didn’t

I grew up in the church. My parents are Bible-believing Christians, they’re Bible-reading Christians, and people of prayer. My family went to church and my parents made it a priority we would be there. They taught Sunday school and everything.

A lot of times I would sit in the service with them. I wasn’t always listening to the sermon. Often I would have something to read, which is showing my age by telling you that it was probably a McGee and Me book. Even though I wasn’t listening to the sermon, I knew it was important.

All chugged along pretty much fine until I entered the ever wonderful teenage years. Perhaps the even more wonderful youth group. Excuse my sarcasm. A few things I remember was the older youth pastor who I remember cared for me as a young person. He took the role as assist pastor, and then a new youth pastor and his team came in. The cool new youth pastor brought in cool new acronyms, dimmed the lights, and fired up the smoke machines in my perception of what was making the youth group the hip place to be. Like a churchy Spencer’s Gifts without the fake vomit.

In my observation, it seems to be the case that hip places tend to develop inner circles and outer circles. Two interactions from my time in the youth group stuck in my memory. Making new friends as a kid was not my strong suit. It’s tough to talk to new people as a kid. That kind of skill comes with growth, but I hadn’t gotten there yet so I sat by myself most nights. There was one guy who I would usually sit with if he was there, but I did sit on my own many nights. The first interaction was when I wore a Green Day Insomniac shirt to youth group one night and one of the Inner Circle guys came up to me just to tell me how much it sucked. Thanks bro. After about a year of going to youth group, and sitting by myself most nights, another one of the inner circle guys came up to me and asked me if this was my first night at youth group. That’s when I was done and I told my parents I refused to go to the youth group anymore.

As time ticked on, it came out that the senior pastor of the church was embezzling money and the cool new youth pastor was blackmailing him to get more money for the youth department. The church split, and in the fractured remains, the man who was the original youth pastor was left with the mess - including the bill for the then $1.8M building when only ~$750k was pledged - as the hip team left the church. I suppose there will always be a faithful remnant of sheep when the goats leave, even if the goats do start their own new church and call it something outrageous like City of Hope.

There was a couple other hit or miss churches in between until we moved to South Carolina. Once we got here, we stayed in the same church from the year we moved here until over 13 years later. God did a lot of good in that church, and though I have wrestled through bitterness over some of my experiences there, God did still use it.

I learned a lot of what actually was in the Bible and what wasn’t, doctrine and theology, songs that were intended to make God look good and not just appeal to our emotional fancies. All that was good.

Not all was good, though. We lived on the outskirts of the area that could still be called local, and nearly our entire outpost small group left the church in one fell swoop. Not slowly but surely, our group dissipated and ceased functioning like we had known it. They cited issues with leadership. The splintering had begun.

We joined another group and that was good. To be honest, some of the closest friendships I maintain to this day came out of that group. However, conflict and hurt feels splintered there, too.

Another downside was that as chronic illness entered my family, my perception was we could no longer “keep up” with the rate of expectations. Child care rotations, serving positions, events, etc. I understand a situation like that’s difficult comprehend unless you’re in it. I did feel spiteful at the time and a while after. I don’t want to come across as vindictive, because while I may have loved to go scorched earth in the past, God has helped me to let it go.

When our closest friends relocated to a church revitalization in the northern part of the county, we felt alone. When I was entertaining following our friends, well… I will leave it that it became apparent it was time to move on, because I believe we were all sinning against each other even through attempts at resolution. That is not ideal and I 100% don’t recommend it.

Before I move on from there, I do believe God worked in our lives during our time with that church. I do believe we had grown. I don’t regret the time invested. Immediate needs were met with heroic levels of meals provided. That was good. Ongoing needs and the long, slow suffering that requires presence outside of gatherings? The kind of care that remember shut ins? Not so much. I do believe it went off the rails. Hopefully, in the time we’ve been gone, courses have been corrected.

I was massively and sinfully bitter when we left, though. I tried to talk it out and couldn’t make any forward progress. If we didn’t leave, I was so ill and conflicted, I was on the edge of leaving the Church forever. God had other plans.

We joined the church revitalization and all seemed good. Until the world screeched to a halt in the 2020 pandemic. In what was a true microcosm sample of the rest of the world, there was conflict in opinion about what to do and when to return and masks and social distancing. The church once again split, half leaving. To me this felt like, I can’t believe this is a replay of the small group from a few years ago. We came back for the first in-person meeting, and I was so hopeless over the situation I did not have the heart to join my hands with the plow, and we left, too. I joined my own disappointment. My faith and even what I believed about God and the church was in shambles at this point. This is the same time period as the opening chapter I describe in Pray Then Plow. I was a miserable person to be around.

We visited a few churches and finally landed at the closest one to us. As Providence would have it, several other families, including ones who had left the revitalization, showed up at this church on the same Sunday. I’m happy to say that we were able to talk things through, confess our sins and letdowns, forgive one another, and reconcile. To this day, these remain some of my closest friendships. Some of you are reading these words even now. Andrew Peterson’s words do ring true: it’s only when the straight line breaks and heals a little crooked that you ever see the grace. I’m so imperfect at the way I show it, but I do love you and am grateful for how you’ve been instruments in our Redeemer’s hands.

This reconciliation began to heal wounds. The relationships became deeper. They say shared suffering binds people together tighter. I would add that when that suffering looks like one party sinning against the other, relationships torn apart, and then forgiveness healing the wounds between them to full reconciliation, all based on Christ’s work on the cross to reconcile us to the Father? Nothing like it. There is no comparison. A lot of people talk about it. Some people actually go through it. The bond feels unseverable, as if it will continue on throughout all eternity. I believe it will.

I became genuine friends with this pastor. We had many breakfasts together, shared stories, my opinion mattered to him, but I still had such a long way to grow. It was a joy to experience this healing and learning how to trust again.

It was just as I was feeling nice and settled that one of the members passed away and, having long ties to the revitalization church we were at, his funeral was held there. This was a man I didn’t know well, but I knew he loved me and my family and he loved seeing and greeting us at church. When we went to his funeral, which truly was more of a celebration of his life that was characterized by mourning but unlike mourning of those who have no hope, we saw many familiar faces. This was two years after leaving. They greeted us, and welcomed us, and made us feel like we never left. Weird.

My wife told me, “I think we’re supposed to go back to that church.” My response was a hard and fast, “No way.” My heart softened toward it and I began to seek if there was wisdom in it. I spoke to my pastor and told him what was going on. I spoke the new pastor at the revitalization church we had left. I wanted to understand vision and doctrine and direction and leadership structure and all kinds of things. As the conversations went on, I didn’t get any red flags. My pastor knew I loved being at the church, but he told me it was better to follow God and be where He would have us than to stay where He didn’t. The chapter closed and a new one started, but it was weird to leave a church without bad blood. I do believe I dropped the communication ball and didn’t tell others the story like I should have, but as far as I know, those conversations have all happened in hindsight.

So, now we’re back at the revitalization we had left. It was like we had never left, and we don’t experience any bad blood coming in. Nobody gave me grief when I confessed about how I didn’t have the heart to stay after that first meeting. There has been a lot of different ideas. Different doctrines held to. Generally, it’s southern Baptist, but I think the congregation is pretty diverse in secondary matters. I brought a lot of my own strong opinions and was even feeling familiar frustrations boil up. Misplaced zeal, I guess. I’m not sure what right zeal looks like, at least in my life, when it comes to faith and practice within the church. Regardless of the strong opinions I had, I began to see God work in the lives of the church around me. It didn’t have to be my way, and slowly, God began to soften me. We’re not an echo chamber. We’re not perfect by any stretch, but I do believe we’re honest. It’s not always put together or impressive, but God is growing us in ways I’ve not experienced before. I still have a long way to go. Our pastor and elders and deacons are normal, approachable guys. They don’t have everything together, and I don’t think they pretend to. God’s using it all, outside the rigid walls of what I believed to be the only way to do church. They miss you when you’re gone and motivate by keeping our eyes on Christ and the grace of God, challenging us to evaluate our relationship with God while not doubting everyone’s imperfect faith. I really do love it there.

I bring my fair share of conflict to situations, and God has worked in me over the years. I’m not going to pretend I haven’t contributed, and my time as a mechanic has not shaped me to be the most diplomatic person in the congregation. An absence of conflict isn’t an indicator of health, though. Perhaps we don’t know each other well enough to where we can uncover conflict. If we sweep conflict under the rug and pretend everything is fine, that’s an indicator of poor health. Stable relationships can sit down and chop up a conflict without chopping up the relationship. Not every relationship is strong enough to withstand that, though. For some, it’s a forging process and the individuals come out stronger. For some, it reveals how brittle the relationship was, and it crumbles. As long as we breathe, we won’t truly escape conflict. We may be experiencing conflict or peace today, which brings along its understandable waves of grieving, but as we set our eyes out to the horizon, we can be prepared that today won’t be the end of either peace or conflict. We must take the hopeful long view.

In some ways, life has left me reeling and I’m not quite sure on what terms to engage by any more. The old me of a couple years ago isn’t the me of today. I’m softer, less sharp, more quiet, a bit more tired, slower to push myself out into either surface or deep conversation. Maybe that’s weakness, maybe it’s a sin of omission, maybe it’s that I work all week long as a teacher and my social energy level is low so I don’t challenge it much on Sundays. All that being said, I know I can appear and act standoffish at times. I’m bringing my own brokenness into the local church body I’m in. For as much as I do hold affection for my church, I also think I receive way more than I give. I’m trying to find new ways to give of myself. In my mind, I’ve always thought of this newsletter as serving my church, especially the men in it, but maybe it doesn’t serve as much as I think it might. Maybe it’s time for me to start letting my words be few. That’s something to consider. Feel free to share your thoughts.

I should have been a casualty. A statistic. One more person who deconstructed their faith by focusing on all the ways people had let him down to come to the conclusion the object of their faith wasn’t real. But here’s the thing: when we put our faith in people, they will crumble under the weight of it. We’re not strong enough to sustain never being a disappointment and forever faithful. At some point, I am going to absolutely let you down, just as others have absolutely let me down. I’ve become 100% convinced that the church is the organism through which God works in the world. Even as good as families and marriages are, and though I believe God will work through them, it’s the Church that God works through to change where the front lines of dominion are against spiritual darkness. Then its work begins in families.

Considering this, I also believe these will be the central points of spiritual warfare. To rail against the church, and to divide a family against itself. The devil is a roaring lion and prowls about seeking whom he may devour. The verse begins by telling us to be sober and vigilant. (1 Peter‬ ‭5‬:‭8‬) Guess what, sailor? You are square in the hungry eyes of the prowler.

I don’t know what the future holds for this world, other than I don’t believe God will abandon it. I believe He will continue to push back all the dark evil in this world until they’re completely under His feet. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, and there are captives to the dark all around us. The church, for all her warts and failures and imperfection and whatnot, is the city on the hill. Not in existence for its own glory and power, but as a monument to the work God is doing in the lives of people He calls His own.

I’d also be mistaken if I believed I was out of the woods. As long as there’s life left in this mortal shell and I bear the name of Christ, the powers of hell will be at war against me. If you’re a Christian, you can count on the same for you. He will strike at the center of all you hold dear. This doesn’t mean you have to be a victim about it. It means the path to take is joyful trust in the waves of hell’s onslaught. It means not trying to be God yourself. It means forgiving even when others won’t forgive, letting go when others still want to hold onto their throat to demand payment for what you deem is owed, releasing a record of wrongs because your record of wrongs has been released in Christ. If you’re His, He will hold you. Let go of your grievance.

All the forces of hell were pulled in for my destruction. Hypocrisy, lies, slander, blackmail, covetousness, blasphemy, division, betrayal, bitterness, gossip, slander, neglect, abdication, and pride. Of all the reasons I thought I’d stay at the church… the people, the doctrine, the programs, the methodology, the convenience… I didn’t expect that it would simply be because God did not let me go.

I truly am an object of mercy.

We are in a daily battlefield. It’s easy to think that it’s merely geopolitical, whether locally or larger, but this is a spiritual war we’re in. The devil and his angels would love nothing more than - if they cannot claim you as theirs due to the wages of sin - to see you become ineffective, sloven, and capsized. To see you distracted. To see you giving up hope or giving up on the bride of Christ. She isn’t perfect; the bridegroom is.

I hadn’t always pursued peace. I haven’t always repented of bitterness. That old root of bitterness will absolutely hollow you out and destroy you. Once the worm starts in you, it won’t be satiated with only you, either. It will spread to those around you.

None of this is written to grind against the past. In His Providence, God has used all of these events to draw me closer to Him and leave behind the rigid and insufferable ways I held to what I believed was right. Misplaced zeal. Misplaced contending for the faith and for practice. Like my friend Jeremy, I had grown into my own unique flavor of being the eunuch oarsman.

Before I close, I want to add in an additional thought: It’s through the Church that God works. I’m not saying it can’t or doesn’t happen, but parachurch ministries are not the church. Radio ministries, influencers, newsletters and authors (like the one you’re reading right now), homeschool co-ops, local camps and organizations that include sports or theater or the like, they are not the Church. Those things are all negotiable and take them or leave them. I’d even go as far to say that “online church” or streaming services would be included in this unless someone’s actually missing you for not being there. That’s my opinion. But, the Church, that’s a non-negotiable. The woods isn’t church. The mountains aren’t a church. A park or downtown or outdoors or hobby isn’t church. God may bless you through those, and they may testify about Him, but His real work occurs within the organism of the church of which He is the bridegroom.

For all of her faults, for all of her blemishes, or all of her weaknesses, for all of the tares among the wheat, the Lord has still made it abundantly clear that He loves His church. The church is His bride, and they will have their wedding day.

As we will find out over the next few weeks, the stories were told and tell ourselves and others have an impact.

Stay Anchored and keep fighting the good fight,

~ J.P. Simons ⚓️

As I’ve mentioned, we are in a real spiritual battle. This battle is the great commission, though I had never seen it in that light until Dr. Michael S. Heiser connected the dots for me.

I linked to part 1 of this lecture back on the post It’s Easier to Keep Your Footing Than Find It Again.

Check out part 2 and prepare to have your mind blown.