Church Hurt

 This is a story about my church hurt. Now before I get started you need to know this is not a gossip session & this is not about pointing fingers or putting someone in their place. So if that is what you are expecting sorry, you’ll have to go somewhere else. This story is about church hurt and in particular church hurt that happens when God is in the process of doing something new. 

So my church hurt starts back in 2016 a time when our church was embarking on a new journey & our Central Campus was growing in size literally by amount of people & by size of the building. My story begins here because this is when I realized God was in the process of doing something not just with me & my family but also with my church as a whole. During this time God had been dealing with me about stepping out of the Tech Booth & going home for a season, but I wouldn’t have it. God kept talking & pushing heck God even used my pastor at one point in a bypass conversation to try to get me to go home but I still wouldn’t listen. So just like what happens with any stubborn person that won’t listen I had to learn the hard way & God had to hurt me & He had to hurt me in a way that I knew without a shadow of doubt that He meant business. 

Now I could go on & on from here about what took place in order for me to get hurt, how mad I was, who hurt me, how I wish I could’ve gotten back at them but I won’t. I have no right because I was the one in the wrong, the person who hurt me was simply being used by God to send my butt home where God wanted me. 

So once I got home after being let go from my position I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I was lost, I was confused, & their was a little bit of hopelessness there too but one thing I did know was that God had me there for a reason, I just needed to figure out what it was.

During this time period which was about a year I was pretty quiet & stayed in the shadows for a lot of it. There were times I wanted to walk away & say forget it all. There were times I wanted to lash out because of all the pain that was being bestowed on my family & the church as a whole. There were times I just laid in bed & cried my heart out because I was hurt, my kids had gotten hurt, my husband had gotten hurt, & the church as a whole was getting hurt. There were times I couldn’t say anything to God except WHY?! (Now when you ask WHY you need to be prepared for an answer.) & answer He did! 

During this time period through all the hurt, pain, & suffering is when my relationship with Jesus went to a whole new level. He allowed me to see that the reason He pulled me out of the Ministry was for several reasons; 1: I had put the ministry over my family & didn’t realize it, 2: He needed me to realize that my greatest ministry is not the church but my husband & my children, He needed me to realize their will always be someone to take over my position in the church but at home I’m it & if the ministry is doing great at church but my family is suffering & my children don’t know Jesus then I’ve not only failed the church but I’ve failed my children (believe me, that was a hard one to swallow), 3: Jesus knew I would answer His call & that He knew that He could show me what was happening & that even through my pain I would still seek Him out & pray for my family & my church. 

You see God had also allowed me to see that He was doing something new. He allowed me to see that when He wants to move satan wants to move too. He allowed me to see that their were a lot of people going to get hurt (this included every staff member from the top down & this would have a ripple effect through every volunteer), He needed me to see that a lot of people needed to be moved either to a new position or to a new church, & that the church as a whole would be brought to it’s breaking point, but through it all He still needed people on the sidelines to watch, observe, pray & in the midst of all the pain still love and I was one of those people.

In January of 2017 God started talking to my husband & I about possibly moving to our campus in Cabot & in June of 2017 what God was talking to us about came to fruition. One day while I was walking through our worship center at Cabot, it was like God just through open a curtain & revealed it all right there, He said all that pain you went through, all that pain your family & church went through this is what it was for. He said I needed you out of the ministry for a season so that you could learn the importance of your entire family being called into the ministry so that all of yawl could do it together. He said I needed you & your family to go through some pain & I needed you to see the gruesome side of ministry so that when I made you a Leader you would be a great one & so that you could love the people in your ministry from the get go & not have to learn the hard way. He said I needed you to understand that your team of people is not your team but their mine. He needed me to understand that when the church hurts every part of it hurts (from the very top staff member to the very last person who will walk through the doors.) & finally Jesus said, I needed you to have a broken heart for my people so you could understand my heart.

So am I thankful for the church hurt? Um well it hurt to say the least but yes I am thankful for it because I am not the woman, the mother, or the leader I used to be. I am much wiser, understanding, loving, & compassionate for my family, for my church family, & it’s leaders. I learned that people are not meant to be placed on a podium because they will fall. I learned that you can’t be mad at someone & hope they will change, you have to pray for them. I learned that no matter what stage of leadership you are in, you’re gonna mess up, you’re gonna make mistakes, your gonna hurt others, & you’re gonna get hurt yourself. I learned how desperately important it is to pray for your leaders because if you think satan is trying to turn you the wrong way just think of what he is trying to do to your leaders because if he can turn your leaders the wrong way, he can turn an entire church the wrong way. I learned there is no such thing as no church hurt because at some point it will happen, it just depends on what you do with the hurt that sets you apart from others. I learned that you can never know the true hurt someone is going through unless you ask or unless walk in their shoes. I learned that a simple smile can mean the world to someone & that an unspoken word at the wrong time can be detrimental to a broken hurting heart. I learned that you can ask God anything. I learned that you can come at or to God anyway you want to whether broken, excited, angry as crap, or lost & He’ll still answer & love you because He can handle it. I learned in the midst of a battle that when all seems lost and everyone else is running away, stay put, wait & pray because God’s already won you just have to be patient! & lastly I learned if you will stay put & let God move, one day God will rip back the curtain, throw open the gate & say go!