We were sitting in church a couple of months ago, and our new pastor spoke on church hurt. The whole sermon was emotional for me, but toward the very end, the pastor said this… he said, “if you’ve been hurt by a church, I’m so sorry. This institution God made was not meant to harm people but to help them”. He continued, “If you are here today and you’ve been hurt, again I say, I’m so, so sorry.
At that moment, I began to sob. These were the words I had so badly needed to hear for so long. This was the validation all people hurt by churches need to hear. These words from this pastor hit a place deep within me, and I couldn’t hold it together. This same man told me I didn’t owe him any respect or trust just because of his pastor title; he felt like he should earn it. This loving pastor told me that I most likely suffered from PTSD from church hurt and that he would work hard to show me that not all pastors were the same as the ones who had hurt me so profoundly in my life.
I didn’t even know what to do in this service but just cry out to Jesus in thanksgiving that He had led us to a place of healing. These words were the only ones I ever needed to hear. I AM SORRY. Not I’m sorry if I’ve done something, not I’m sorry you feel this way, not I’m sorry I’ve made you feel this way about the church… no if’s no but’s just I’m sorry. Those words broke something inside of me. The well was opened, the tears flowed, and I began feeling vulnerable and safe, something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I believe this moment was a turning point in my healing. It was the moment that I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I could attend church again, that possibly I could trust a group of people and a pastor one more time.
I initially thought to add this next part in the linear story, but I think it needs to go here instead.
I may revisit it later, but this particular part has been heavy on my mind and heart today.
It’s easier to write about the hurt I myself encountered at Tree Town Baptist than to write about what it did to my family, especially my kids. That part hurts on a whole different level.
I feel the urge to protect them. I have only mentioned the hurt my daughter endured in passing, but I haven’t gone into any detail. I think it’s time, and it’s painful. Please know that I have her permission to do this; she has given input and made all the changes she wanted.
We walked out of Tree Town Baptist as a family on December 29th, 2019. That was the last time I would ever sit in a service. My kids went back a few times after that, but, the last time they were there, they came home and declared they could never return to regular church again. I will tell you the details of that story later.
Regular church or Big church is how my kids referred to Sunday morning worship services.
As much as my daughter didn’t want to return to “regular church,” she was adamant that she would return to the youth program and activities. She didn’t want to lose her friends. She wanted to finish out her high school years with the people she loved at Tree Town Baptist.
Covid hit in March of 2020.
During that time, we hadn’t “officially” left the church. My husband was still teaching Sunday School via Zoom.
On a side note. my son was in the Sunday School class the pastor taught which, for the record, only met one time via Zoom, so he didn’t have very much connection with Tree Town Baptist after that. There was nothing put in place to make that happen.
The pastor was pushing the teachers of other classes to reach out to their members on a regular basis. I know this because my husband was still a teacher. It was a big deal to the pastor that teachers not lose connection with the people in their classes while the church figured out how to handle the pandemic, yet he himself wasn’t doing what he was asking others to do.
The youth program continued a weekly Zoom meeting for a few weeks. Unfortunately, it was attended by less than 10 kids, and the youth pastor decided that wasn’t enough to keep it going. However, it had been a lifeline to my daughter, so she was devastated.
The youth program geared back up early in the Covid season because this church took a passive stance on Covid. Let me riterate that this was in the full-blown, no vaccine, extremely dangerous part of the pandemic. This was just after the lock down. No one knew anything about this virus at the time. It’s easy to look back now and forget how scary this pandemic was for vulnerable people, but it was. It was something we as a family and many other families took seriously.
My mom had heart and lung issues, and as a family, we felt the need to protect her. So, before there was a vaccine, we were cautious about where we went and who we were around.
My daughter saw pictures of the youth program on social media during this time. No one was wearing a mask. They were playing games that required that they were in each other’s faces, etc. My daughter knew that if she attended any of these things, she wouldn’t be able to be around my mom without quarantining first. And can we just stop right here and realize that this isn’t something a church should ever do… my daughter never should’ve had to make a choice between church and her grandmother when a few safety measures could’ve been put in place.
Every week she would see the pictures, and every week she would cry.
She was able to see her friends a couple of times in 2020, but not much. We had a few “back porch” dinners with some of her friends during that time, but not enough to maintain the relationships she had before.
I had people tell me things like, you must choose faith over fear… involvement in a church is more important than your safety… you name it, I heard it. But for us, the decision we made was to be careful; to trust God, but also use common sense.
All of that to say that 2020 was when my daughter realized that remaining an active part of the youth group would be more difficult than she anticipated.
In March of 2021, things with Covid were starting to slow down. First, my parents both got their vaccines. After that, we began to feel a little safer.
So when my daughter’s 17 birthday came around, she wanted to have a party. She asked me if she could invite her best friend. She hadn’t heard from her in a while, so she started texting her.
They started chatting like old times. The text messages were no different between them than they had been before. Things seemed to be okay. My daughter was thrilled.
After lots of small talk over text messaging, she asked her friend if she would attend her birthday party later that month… silence…
She texted her the next day and asked again if she could attend her birthday party… silence…
My daughter sent the same friend a happy birthday message on her birthday… response… thanks…
On my daughter’s birthday… silence… and this was odd because they had always celebrated their birthdays in the same month. So this birthday exchange was something they had done for years.
Since the simple “thanks” reply to the Happy Birthday my daughter sent this friend, she hasn’t heard from her ever again.
This was gut-wrenching for my daughter. She realized pretty quickly that she had lost what she thought was her best friend. It is something she hasn’t overcome to this day, and honestly, that’s not the kind of hurt that ever goes away.
And there’s probably a reason this friend never talked to her again. This friend’s mom had been one of my very best friends. In fact, she was the one who applied for the secretary position at the church. The hiring I wrote about in an earlier post.
Lots of things happened during Covid.
One thing that happened was that this friend and I had a major falling out that centered around my not returning to the church, and other extremely complicated issues and she had completely cut me off… that’s a story that maybe someday I will tell. But our daughters remained friends, or so I thought. I can only speculate that this “friend” of mine decided to also make her daughter cut ties with my daughter. It’s a very sad day when parents punish their children for something they weren’t even involved in…
That was March of 2021.
In April, we were able to get our vaccines, and then a few months later, our daughter was able to get hers. So finally, we were beginning to feel safer. Like maybe she could go back to youth activities…
But it was too late. My daughter had lost all of her friends; the connections were gone. She was hurt on a deep level.
No one reached out to her.
Not the youth pastor, not the pastor, not the other adults that worked with the youth… no one… no one. Only a couple of her friends kept in touch occasionally, but her “best friend” didn’t contact her once.
She would see the pictures on social media every day. She asked me to unfollow the youth program on Instagram for her because it hurt too much to see it. So, I did.
Summer of 2021 rocked on, and still not a word from anyone.
In October 2021, my daughter received a text from the “Remind” app. This was a texting system the youth pastor used. It was sent to all youth group members to update them on upcoming activities and events. On this day, her message said…” you’ve been removed from the “Remind” Tree Town Baptist Youth Group messaging system.”
My 17-year-old daughter walked down the stairs with tears in her eyes and said this… “I don’t care if those people ever remember me again, but if the first time I came to their mind, their response was to delete me… that hurts on a level that I can’t explain”.
You might want to read that part again.
That’s real, fresh, raw emotion from a teenager.
The momma bear in me was livid. It’s one thing to cut me off, but this is my daughter, my child, the one you as a church are charged by Christ to reach. What is the timeline for that? She would be graduating in less than a year. You couldn’t keep her in the messaging system for a few more months? I sat down and wrote out a message to send to the pastor and the youth pastor. When I was done, I quickly realized my anger was too intense. I couldn’t send it. I needed to just let it go.
She wasn’t returning anyway.
Several months later, I received a call from a sweet lady asking me if my daughter would be participating in the senior activities at Tree Town Baptist. I politely explained that my daughter had been removed from the program. The lady told me that she had only been removed from the Remind app, which I realized at that moment that we were being discussed at Tree Town if she knew this information. I explained that to a 17-year-old, that meant the same thing. In my daughter’s mind, that removal text was the end. This lady profusely apologized and said she would call the youth pastor and talk to him.
At this point, I didn’t even care, so I told her I was fine with her calling him if that’s what she wanted to do.
For the record, this lady has been one who has kept in constant contact with us through everything. However, until this particular phone call with her, she knew nothing about the real reasons we left Tree Town. I had never told her.
She has remained a good friend.
Within the hour, the youth pastor called me. I hadn’t talked to him about church-related things in about 2 years. I didn’t answer. I had to gather myself before I could talk to him. So instead, I called my husband and asked him what I should or shouldn’t say. He told me we had nothing to lose at this point so just say whatever I felt.
I called the youth pastor back. He answered and began apologizing for the message my daughter had received about being removed. He said he didn’t realize the “Remind” system sent a text to the person when he removed them, and he knew how much that probably hurt.
Pause… would you have been sorry if she hadn’t received the message that she had been removed?
I told him how hurt she had been. How much she missed people. How much she missed her friends. How her plans all along were to return to the youth program. I told him she had reached out to her “friends” on many occasions to not hear anything back from them.
He told me that church just wasn’t the same without us there. It felt so sad and different. He said that my daughter’s “best friend” just seemed lonely and lost at church now without her friend there… Wait…What? Please repeat that one more time. Surely I didn’t understand what he had just said to me.
He also said that he noticed that my daughter had unfollowed the youth program on Instagram, so that’s one reason why he removed her. I was unaware that social media following trumped church membership, or anything else. I was the one that removed her because she asked me to.
I quickly informed him that her “best friend” had cut all ties with her, not the other way around. And her “best friend’s” mom, a person who had been one of my best friends, had cut me off as well, and I felt pretty sure she wasn’t allowing her daughter to speak to mine.
So just to be blunt, the story of these people being sad was crap to me.
He went on to tell me that when Covid was over, the church successfully pursued many people, and they had returned, but they had purposefully not pursued us. You can read that again if you want to, but you read it right.
I asked him just how those choices were made. How did a church decide who to pursue and who not to pursue? What were the guidelines for that?
He said they just knew how we felt about the church and that there was bad blood between me and some people.
I stopped him. I asked him to please tell me who there was bad blood between because the number of people I had spoken to about us leaving and why we left was very small, like really small. And no one had reached out to us to try to repair any of this presumed bad blood that was there. No one had reached out to us in the way the Bible teaches someone to do.
He said he just knew for sure that there was bad blood between me and the pastor.
Let me explain something here… There were only a handful of people who knew why we left the church early in the game. Like I can count them on one hand. The number of people who contacted us after we left is fewer than that, and for those people that called, we didn’t share the entire story with them… My close friends knew, and one deacon knew. And the pastor himself had never asked us if we were leaving for sure. When the pastor left our house the last time we talked to him, we “were good.” We NEVER had a conversation with the pastor about leaving. No one else in the church had any other way of knowing; frankly, no one asked. So, exactly where was this bad blood?
It begs the question… why we were not pursued by a church we had attended and faithfully served for 12 years. This decision had obviously been made by a select few. And even if they didn’t pursue my husband and me as adults, how could they treat a 17-year-old girl this way. She was actively involved. She led worship, attended camps, and worked at every event… she was what the youth pastor liked to call “in the core group.”
I told the youth pastor that the damage was done. My daughter wouldn’t be returning to the youth program; she didn’t have anything to return to. He asked if he could contact her that day, and I said no. She couldn’t handle that. It was just too much. She had been hurt too badly by this organization and its leaders. I wouldn’t make her endure anything else. The opportunity for him to reach out was over. It was too little, too late.
I begged him to consider what other youth might feel like when they were “removed.” To maybe not remove people until they graduated. Maybe realize that as a church, there shouldn’t be a timeline for people to return, especially youth, and perhaps they should reach out to youth who left or didn’t come back, not delete them.
I asked him how many more people he removed that day that may be feeling the same way… his answer hurt more than I can put into words…. “your daughter was the only one.”
So, sadly she was correct.
They had remembered her only to delete her.
Here’s the truth… this youth pastor did wrong, but he owned it and apologized. I would like to think he’s just a good guy trapped in a bad situation. I can’t help but think that the pastor was behind this whole thing in some way. I know how he is. I know for a fact that the pastor had ridiculed the youth pastor on many occasions because he said the things to me. I also know that I didn’t stand up for the youth pastor and I owe him an apology for that.
I pray that readers understand that people on staff at Tree Town are most likely still blinded and struggling to keep their heads above water. There’s no telling what they are enduring on a day-to-day basis. I can’t imagine that much has changed.
And if you were to ask them, they would probably answer positively just like I would have when I was on staff there. The blinders don’t come off until you step away and realize what was really happening and the inner turmoil and fear you experienced.
I appreciated this youth pastor’s honesty and transparency that day.
When my conversation ended with the youth pastor, I was spent. I had cried almost the entire time. The youth pastor seemed genuinely sorry. I genuinely accepted his apology. But the trust was gone, and the hurt remained. And frankly, it still does.
Reliving all this reminds me of what someone we loved and trusted told me when we left. I was told that I was holding a grudge, that I was unforgiving, and that I was punishing my entire family.
It turns out he was wrong, the church punished my daughter… because of me.
.
What kind of organization does that? God help us if this is what our churches have become.
The truth… I can get over what people did to me much quicker than I can get over what they have done to my child.
Maybe people saw the things that happened to me and decided that it was my own fault.
That’s okay, I can take it. I’m an adult.
But this church had no reason to not reach out to my daughter, or my son for that matter.
I guess I said all of that to say this…
You never know how hurt people are. You never know…
Sometimes, they need to hear the words “I’m sorry.” Not just say the words… but mean them…let it be shown through your actions… and I guess that sadly, sometimes it’s just too late.
We don’t need a sermon on how good God is and how the pain will go away and to consider it all joy and all the Bible things. Instead, we need genuine people to sit with us in our grief and say, I’m Sorry.
Sadly, this is not what we experienced, not even close. Not even from many people we thought loved and cared for us.
Jesus needed this too…. Think about when He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. He only wanted His disciples to stay awake and grieve with Him for what was coming.
They fell asleep…
Many people have fallen asleep… they are asleep at the proverbial wheel. They listen to pastors and people who they think are in authority over them and they have lost the ability to think for themselves.
We have become naive. We’ve blindly trusted these pastors. We’ve fallen prey to their charisma and ability to deliver a good sermon. We’ve put them on a pedestal that they don’t deserve. They are shepherds, not celebrities. Every pastor should have to earn the trust of those in his flock. But instead many churches find themselves pandering to these pastors that they’ve made into a celebrity and the church has begun to protect the organization and the pastor over the people…
Meanwhile, people are out there and they just need to hear the words… “I’m sorry.”
Thankfully we have found out who our real friends are. And you know what? They are better than the ones who we thought were our friends. They have sat with us through all the ugly and all the hurt, and they are still here. They stayed “awake” when we needed them the most.
I have one friend who finds joy in telling me “I told you so” because she realized what was going on at Tree Town Baptist way before I did and tried to warn me but I love her all the same and appreciate her friendship so very much. And I have another one who calls just to check on me and my family and always makes us laugh even when things are hard.
I can’t list them all, but I am thankful for each and everyone who continued to love us, even when we didn’t go to church with them anymore. They are real friends.
Friendship is more than just a word.
It’s also more than just attending church with someone…that’s called a club.
God has shown up in so many ways… He has let us keep some of our friends, and He has also given us new ones.
He has sent a wonderful friend to my daughter, a true friend. I’m overwhelmed with how good He is.
I’ve learned to trust Him over and over. He has never turned His back on me, not one time, and I’m so very thankful.
The memories of the hurt don’t just vanish. The grief comes and goes. And some days aren’t easy. My daughter still hurts, and when she hurts, she’s a lot like her momma, she gets a pen and she writes it down. She says it so much better than I can…
If you ever wonder how badly a church can hurt a seventeen-year-old, I’ll just let her speak for herself here…
This is a poem she wrote in the wake of all the things I talked about in this post, she was hurting, she still is…
Memories of that place warming up my heart and then the memory of memories being torn apart
A place that one day was my home and the next covered in a dark shadow.
I know that I can’t stay here, though the tight ties that I’ve made
And the darkness I’m now seeing through the years that we have stayed
As the tears of realization are pouring down my face,
I know the only thing I can do is look up to Your grace
And in this moment of sorrow, I only have one plea. Lord Jesus, just hold me
I know there is nothing that anyone can do;
I know that a lifetime of memories and plans I made are through
I had planned to wear my cap and gown there and eventually a white dress.
But the torment that place has caused me has shattered those dreams into a mess.
I know that I can’t change it. That He wants me to move on.
But I cannot explain it. The sun can’t set if it’s still dawn.
As the tears of realization are pouring down my face,
I know the only thing to do is look up to Your grace
And in this time of desperation, I only have one plea. Lord Jesus, please hold me.
Until Next Time,
Whitney