T.R.I.M. is a small group ministry for hurting people where they can share their burdens or needs in a safe place. Everyone is welcome regardless of your needs.
Creating a Safe Harbor for Hurting People.
IS THE CHURCH OF TODAY A SAFE PLACE FOR HURTING PEOPLE?
Just over a century ago hospitals were not a very safe place for sick people. Someone going into hospital for a relatively minor problem could very well end up contracting other diseases. It was ironic to think that the very people (doctors) who were suppose to help the sick were the ones spreading diseases from one patient to the next. The doctors didn’t know they were spreading germs by not properly washing their hands. Today, however, hospitals are much safer.
Is the church of today a safe place for hurting people? That is the million-dollar question I have been going around asking. Although the answers weren’t unanimous, it has become painfully obvious that many churches are not safe places for hurting people. I would say most churches are safe places for people who, “have it together” so to speak. People who are relatively stable would have little trouble fitting into most church settings, and they would most likely feel relatively safe there.
The same would not be true for a hurting individual, if they started attending a typical church they would most likely not feel safe enough to open up and share their real thoughts, feelings, fears or doubts. Their fear of being misunderstood or worse yet, judged and possibly rejected would keep them from opening up. The longer they have been a Christian the greater the fear they wrestle with. You see, Christians are much more tolerant of Non-believers who are having problems than they are of fellow Believers. The unwritten rule in many churches is that when someone becomes a believer all their problems should vanish away rather quickly. If it doesn’t that person’s Christianity and their commitment to Christ will soon be questioned. For a hurting person to be rejected by people in the church they will most likely conclude that God, Himself has rejected them. That fear alone will keep the code of silence from being broken.
Use your imagination and try, for a moment, to put yourself in this person’s shoes. His name is Harry and he was raised in a solid Christian home. He committed his life to Christ when he was about seven years old. He became active in his church and was the motivator for many of his peers. He was instrumental in starting a Christian Bible club in his public High School and was used of God to lead dozens of his classmates to faith in Christ. After graduating from a Christian college he became the Youth Pastor in the church he grew up in. He was an inspiration for the young people in his church and was instrumental in reaching many young people outside the church.
There was something about Harry that no one knew, not his family, not even his friends. No one but God knew about Harry’s secret life and inner struggles. He had a public life that everyone knew and loved. He also had a secret life that he was able to keep hidden. He had to invest a lot of energy to keep his secret life from coming out and showing its ugly head and interfering in his ministry. Inwardly he struggled with many insecurities and fears. He also struggled with intense lust. After he reached his mid twenties he found it increasingly more difficult to keep the two aspects of his life separate. Inwardly Harry was like a scared little child, plagued with doubts and insecurities wrestling with feelings of worthlessness and powerlessness. Yet, in his ministry he gave the impression of a man who knew who he was and where he was going. As each month sailed by, it became more and more difficult for him to control his secret life. His desire for lust grew as he began to experiment with soft pornography. By this time in his life he knew he was out of control. His fear of having his secret life exposed kept him locked into this downward cycle. Finally out of sheer desperation he eventfully overcame his fears and confided in his pastor. His pastor’s response was cold and distant. Within days Harry was relieved of his church duties.
Within a few months exaggerated rumors of his secret life spread within the church like a fire in a windstorm. The way he was later treated by his fellow church members and friends made it impossible for him to stay there. He was treated like someone with a contagious disease. Harry later dropped out of the church altogether. It wasn’t long before his secret life took over and destroyed his former public life and along with it what was left of his Christian testimony.
I must say, at least for Harry, things eventually worked out all right. He found a safe place where he could tell the truth without any fear of rejection. He also began to experience God’s healing touch in his life. For Harry, help had come through a Christ-centered support group meeting in a church about twenty miles from home. Today, Harry is walking with the Lord and no longer has anything to hide. If you talk with Harry now you will see a transparent, Godly Christian who obviously loves the Lord and is endlessly grateful for the healing work God has done in his life. Today, Harry is committed full time to helping hurting people. Think about this quote. “Wounded people will usually wound people, but wounded people who are being healed can help bring healing to wounded people. “You might want to look up 2 Corinthians 1 3-4. The sad reality is that many Harrys are outwardly still functioning in the church but are inwardly burning out. These people will someday self-destruct if they don’t get help. There are also many Harry’s who have already self-destructed and are wandering around outside the church with no hope or desire of getting back in.
What is it that makes a Church Safe? Before we can adequately answer that we must look at the elements that make a church unsafe. In Harry’s case there was an underlying belief system in his church that helped make that church unsafe. That system was maintained by an unspoken set of rules. These rules, if put into words, might have looked something like this:
1. Don‘t talk about your feelings, fears or doubts with anyone.
2. If you are a "real Christian" you will not be plagued with habitual sins.
3. You can get rid of any problem by simply praying harder, or studying the Bible more.
4. If you find someone in the church, who has a habitual sin, wrap it up into the package of a prayer request, then pass it all around the church.
5. Depression is a sin, so if you are wrestling with feelings of depression you are sinning by not having enough faith in God.
These rules in short are; “DON’T TRUST”, “DON’T FEEL”, DON’T TALK”, and “DON’T THINK”. If someone in Harry’s former church were to greet you at the door and ask you how you are doing the only answer that person will expect to hear is “fine” or “OK”. Many times, when I ask that question, I don’t want to know how the person is really doing either. You would probably say the same would be true of you, at least some of the time.
A while ago there was a girl who worked in an office with me. She came into the office one particular morning and as she passed by we exchanged greetings. I asked her how she was doing and her predictable answer was, “fine”. Somehow, however, the look on her face that morning betrayed her answer, suggesting to me that things were not fine. So after getting settled in I sat down in front of her, making sure I had made eye contact with her, than I asked her the same question but worded it differently. I called her name than asked, “How are you really doing?” When she saw that I genuinely wanted to know how she was doing, she came apart emotionally, her tear ducts opened, and the tears flooded her face. She began to share the pain she had been carrying around inside for weeks. That marked the beginning of recovery in her life. Today she is happily married, has children and is much healthier because she received the help she needed. Can you imagine what would have happened had I not asked her that question the second time. She might still be carrying that pain around inside as she smiles and says, “Everything is fine.”
There are many people who, like her, are keeping everything bottled up inside simply because they don’t feel safe enough in their church to open up to anyone. They have survived this long, (if you can call that surviving) by applying the “DON’T RULES” to their lives. Any church that is operating by the DON’T RULES will not be a safe church for hurting people. If there are hurting people in those churches they will either hide their problems and in doing so never grow spiritually, or they will run the risk of being further damaged by sharing their struggles within that unsafe setting. There needs to be a place for these people where the ‘DON’T RULES” DON’T APPLYand where they can meet people who really want to know what is going on in their lives. In the past century hospitals have made many changes to make that institution a safer place for sick people. My prayer is that in this century we will see the Church become a safer place for hurting people. It would be difficult for a whole church to become a safe nurturing environment because no one can possibly control everyone in a church. But it would be feasible to develop, within a church, a smaller group that could become a safe harbor for hurting people. A Christ-centered support group ministry set up within a church is designed to become that small, safe nurturing environment, an oasis in the middle of a desert, or a harbor in the middle of the storm, where hurting people can find help. In that safe nurturing environment they can be nursed back to health so that they can once again become a growing active ministering member of the body of Christ. Starting a Christ-centered support group ministry in any church will help make that church a safer place for hurting people.
