An autobiographical reflection on the reality of church trauma, the joyful yet difficult path of finding belonging again, and God’s good purposes in and through it all.

The Church. The Bride of Christ. A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession. One body with many members, working together in unity and joy for the glory of God and the good of His people. That’s how the church should be. That’s the ideal God commands us to strive for. Shepherds caring deeply for the flock God has entrusted to them. They are eager to pursue the restoration of the wayward in truth and gentleness. They point to the glorious, redemptive majesty of Christ and His Gospel and call all to find their greatest joy in Him.

There are many, many churches that, though imperfect, embody these realities well. They aren’t perfect, but they are healthy. But, sadly, that is not always the case. Dysfunction and abuse in a church can leave a wide swath of relational, emotional and spiritual damage and destruction. Church trauma is real, and it is devastating. But even in the rubble and ruins of church hurt, God promises His saints a hope and a future. And often, it is precisely through the very suffering we endure that He makes us more like our Lord, and in so doing increases our eternal capacity for joy in Him. And, for those of us who have endured such pain, it also grants us an opportunity to serve those who are going through such valleys now.

For the Christian, there’s few things more painful and unsettling than church trauma, but by God’s grace, we who have been carried through the fire by the Lord can be a beacon of hope and promise, pointing to the One who is, even through such heartwrenching trials, “able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy.” (Jude 1:24)

It’s been two and a half years since I sat in our van, alone, in the early morning hours, overlooking the picturesque fog-blanketed harbor of Lubec, ME.  The weather was perfect, the view was sublime, and though I should have been reveling in the beautiful dawn scene unfolding before me, all my mind’s eye saw was the sheer walls of the deep valley I was walking through.  Though 1,500 miles from my church home, I was wrestling with the increasingly clear conviction that the church our family had called home for over two decades was no longer a place where we were welcome.  It was disquieting – almost surreal – like a twinge of vertigo that set my spiritual equilibrium off kilter.  I didn’t know what to think.  Was I that off base about my concerns? Was I that blind to the sin which my elders so clearly saw in me?  Were my spiritual convictions and my conscience really that far off the mark?  

In time, I would find encouraging God-given answers to these fears.  Our family would find community and healing in a new church home. We would gain perspective and clarity about what we experienced.  The veil covering God’s good purposes in and through it all would slowly be lifted.  Brothers and sisters in Christ walked alongside us in our recovery.  We found trust and encouragement in church leaders. And praise God, there have even been some concrete steps toward reconciliation with many involved.  And, though I have hesitated for some time to write this article – both for fear of harming or hurting those we have left behind, and a concern that our own hurt would unfairly color this account – yet now I find myself convicted by both Scripture and experience to share my story and the God-given hope that sustained our family in and through the toughest event of our lives. It is my prayer that this article will be a balm of Godward encouragement for those walking in similar valleys today.  

Why Now?

“8 For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it; though I did regret it—for I see that that letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while— 9 I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us. 10 For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death. 11 For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you: what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter” 

2 Corinthian 7:8-11, NASB1995 

Recently, the above passage reminded me that not all grief or hurt is bad.  Indeed, in light of 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, there is a sense in which, for the Christian, no hurt is ultimately bad hurt, because of God’s good, joy-producing eternal purposes in and through it.  Proverbs 27:6 counsels us that “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”  And so, my prayer – now a few years removed from the epicenter of my pain – is that this article would be used of God, in His perfect timing and measure, to bring about godly, restorative grief where needed, including in my own heart.  I also earnestly pray that this recounting of my experience would not cause undue or unhelpful grief.  To that end, I especially seek the Spirit’s guiding work in this writing, that it might be fair, equitable, appropriate, humble and contrite.  My aspiration is reconciliation and not retribution, and according to 2 Corinthians 7, the very path to that can require redemptive wounding. My earnest hope is that ultimately, healing comes out of this article – healing in my own story, and healing for many of you.

Why now, you might ask. What finally tipped the scales in favor of writing this article?  It flows from a realization that my own story might be a means of providing sympathy, comfort and hope to those experiencing similar church hurt.  Such a purpose was made clear to me recently when I had a providential Facebook encounter with a brother in Christ – a person I had never met – yet who was struggling through his own dark night of the soul in an experience that was eerily similar to my own.  I feel compelled to be a voice of hope and encouragement to those going through this struggle – pointing to the God who is daily sustaining and refining us in and through the especially fiery trial of this sort of friendly fire from within the church.

So, with that, I share with you my own story in hopes that the Lord would be pleased to bless you through it.  May He be pleased to strengthen our weary souls and renew our joy as we focus, not on what is seen, but that which is eternal.    

But Before we go any Further…

There are a few things that bear noting before we dig into the meat of my story.  First and foremost, I know that I am a sinner saved by grace alone.  That means at least three things in regard to my story:  First, it’s just that.  My story.  It’s my perspective of what happened, filtered through my own unique lens with its own scratches and distortions. It is my perception of reality, but that does not mean it is wholly right.  No matter how much care I give to being balanced and fair, nevertheless, my story is going to be biased.  Second, it means that I am not entirely a victim, nor are those who were on the other side wholly perpetrators. My sin contributed to the suffering and dysfunction I experienced and added unneeded hurdles to understanding and reconciliation.  Third, I should (and have) given care to paint all involved in as gracious and charitable a light as possible.  All of these realities should impact how you read my story.  

Likewise, In general, I have chosen to withhold the name of the church and individuals from my narrative. My intent is not to create some sort of exposé, but a thoughtful examination of what I experienced for redemptive purposes – perhaps even among those with whom my story revolves.  One of the hardest things about our experience is that I know the men we served alongside for all these years. I have seen firsthand their passion for the Lord and His church – their selflessness and kindness. It would be a lot easier if I could just dismiss them as evil men, but that simply is not true. So, with all this in mind, I have also attempted to be relatively brief and general in my story – I don’t believe rehearsing the seedy details of my story will help accomplish redemptive ends.  Therefore, it is my aim to merely provide what is needed to clearly and generally tell my story for the reader’s benefit.       

Happy Beginnings

My wife and I, when we were engaged, were invited to go to this small but growing reformed baptistic church plant in our city. I was still in college, she had just graduated, and the year before I had been introduced to the doctrines of grace. I had fallen in love with this picture of God’s sovereign reign, as I saw it unfolding in the Scriptures, over all things, including the human will.  As Bryn and I began to embrace this paradigm-shifting understanding of the Bible, we began finding it harder and harder to remain at the church in which we had met two years earlier.  When that church began a sermon series on The Matrix in the spring of 2001, that was the final straw.  We could no longer remain, and began attending this reformed church plant instead, waiting a few more months, until we were married, to transfer our membership.  

For us, this church plant checked all the boxes – even boxes I didn’t know I had at the time. We put our roots down deep.  Over the next 22 years, we became parents and would plug our growing family into the life of the church. I would eventually become a deacon, and then an elder of the church. Among other roles, Bryn and I helped and/or led our church’s children’s and youth ministries. We have so many fond memories of our life there; of friends that became closer than family, of wonderful ministry experiences, of the men who chose to invest in an unreliable, lazy, self-assured and arrogant college student – and how God used them to slowly but surely shape me into a flawed yet sincere servant leader in His church. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the Lord for calling us to this church and for the men and women He put in our lives there.

The Ebb and Flow

Over the course of those first two decades, our church was not immune to the ebb and flow of ministry in a fallen world.  There were many sweet moments of life together, but there were also what feels like abnormally frequent major crises in our church’s short history.  For both of the two major crises involving our pastors, I was in leadership – once as a deacon and then as a newly minted elder.  These were incredibly difficult times, both personally, and for us as a church.  Yet each time, the Lord taught us so much in the midst of the pain.    Through these valley seasons I learned the value of patience, the importance of listening, the need to foster trust and the realization of how easily it can be lost, and the beauty of elders who hold each other accountable and are invested in one another’s’ spiritual growth.  I learned through experience the high calling of sacrificial leadership and what it meant to have a shepherd’s heart for your congregation – and all the more so during seasons of crisis.      

Thankfully, the last four years of my time on the elder board were largely looking up.  We were slowly growing again, people were being baptized, children were being born, ministries were healthy – by all those sorts of metrics, as well as by softer measures, things were going well.  In 2019, as our church’s bylaws required, I rolled off the active elder board after my 6 year term, and stepped into the newly created role of elder emeritus, with the specific charge of guarding the doctrine of the church and providing writing assistance as needed.  During this time, our pastor would often introduce me as the elder’s canary in the coal mine, though neither of us knew just how true that analogy would soon become. 

A Growing Separation

As my time away from the day to day shepherding work of the church grew, so too it seemed, did the frequency of resistance to the occasional doctrinal concerns I would raise to the elders. From where I sat, it seemed the church was subtly but clearly changing course – moving away from some of the precious distinctives that had drawn us to fall in love with the church so many years before.  

Initially, my concerns centered on mostly secondary doctrinal and ministerial choices that didn’t seem to align with the foundational values and emphases of our church.  But as time went on, my concerns shifted to what, at least to me, appeared to be more significant and foundational matters.  Though there still is a part of me that’s very tempted to go through my litany of concerns and rehash all the ways I feel we were mistreated and ultimately discarded by our leaders (in fact the first draft included some of those details), I am convicted that such an exercise is unlikely to produce redemptive benefit to you, and might in fact endanger further efforts toward reconciliation in the future. However, I do think there’s true value to some degree of sharing – specifically in how I went from a good standing as a respected leader in our church, to a perceived threat who could not be trusted in the eyes of the elders. So the following is a very high level account focused more on how things felt than on events and details themselves.

To give some context, I longed for a return to many of the foundational distinctives, both theological and practical, that first drew us and so many others to the church. But over our last ten years there, many of the things I held dear were eroding away. These desires were not mere preferences to me, but Biblically rooted practices and positions that I saw as marks of a healthy, God-centered church. However, in large part because of the crises that had shaped the church, I do believe there was a general tendency among leaders to throw the baby out with the bath water, making me one of just a few voices who sought a return to our foundational distinctives. I would come to realize much later that the church had changed in that decade, but I had not – and that this difference in emphasis and understanding would be one key factor in what would soon unfold.

So, broadly speaking, among church leadership, I was the most vocal, and at times the sole church leader who desired a return to some of the foundational distinctives of our church. While I was on the elder board, this tension was felt, but I believe it was relationally inconsequential. But, as my time away from the board increased, so too did the relational cost of advocating for this vision of the church. At the same time, I was increasingly finding myself questioning, if not at outright odds with some of the major decisions that were being made. This was compounded by the decision to bring on a new pastor whom I could not in good conscience affirm, and whose ministry emphasis at times felt to me to be the antithesis of my own desires and passions for the church. It felt as though the very ethos of the church I so loved was eroding away.

The result was an increasing sense of urgency and desperation that occupied my thoughts – something that overflowed in my varied communications with our elders. Simultaneously, my relationships with the elders as a whole was eroding as more and more of our conversation revolved around these concerns. This happened at different rates with the different elders; with those whom I still spent the most regular time with being slowest to be relationally affected. For the new pastor, with whom we had no past relationship to pull from, my concerns were increasingly seen as a threat – which in some ways are understandable. But what I still deeply struggle to understand is why his voice of concern ultimately outweighed the decade-plus-long relationships I had with the other elders – men I had labored alongside in some of the church’s darkest seasons.

The fallout was twofold. The ministry I had so loved serving in was slowly being removed from me by the elders, piece by piece and without much explanation as to why, and second, the willingness of my leaders to engage with me in any form steadily dwindled to the point that they refused to respond to me entirely.  I felt like a child that knew he was in trouble but didn’t really understand why.  It was incredibly painful.  To give you a sense of the raw emotion I was feeling then, and perhaps as a means to put into words your own suffering, here’s an excerpt of the letter I penned that summer morning in Lubec, ME: 

As I sit down to write to you on a gorgeous summer morning, looking out over a beautiful fog-blanketed harbor scene in Lubec, ME, I should be enjoying the view and looking forward to a week away, exploring and reveling in God’s creation with my family.  But that’s not what I am doing, and it hasn’t been for quite some time.

Like nearly every day in the last six months, I spent this morning both dumbfounded and dismayed by how events have unfolded. I know my perception is only half of the story, likely skewed in ways I do not now recognize, and obscured by my own flesh. I acknowledge up front that I am not blameless in all that has transpired, either. But nonetheless, I hope you will strive to understand how Bryn and I are feeling. I hope we can do the same for you, as well.

It is a devastating thing to feel forced out of the church you intended to spend the rest of your life serving. It is a painful thing to have your passion and excitement for ministry suppressed and denied – having the joy in serving drained from you in the face of ongoing conflict and opposition. It is emotionally draining to have your motives and character questioned and even maligned, judged in absentia by brothers you have served alongside for over a decade – to be viewed as a threat to be managed instead of a ministry partner to be encouraged, shepherded and equipped to serve God with all my might.  It has been discouraging to find myself often on the opposite side of the decisions of my elders, and then, when I come to my brothers with heartfelt, carefully presented concerns, it has often felt that instead of those concerns being heard, valued and considered, our concerns seem to be often met with annoyance, dismissed and criticized, or almost as bad, met with prolonged silence.  It has been alienating to feel as though we must do nearly all of the reaching out, pursuing and initiating communication throughout this ordeal.  And despite all of our best efforts (yours and ours) and countless meetings, calls and conversations over the last six months, it seems it’s only getting worse, and more people are being hurt.  

Simply put – none of this made sense to me – to the point that I was legitimately questioning my sanity.  Could I really be that delusional?  If they saw sin in me, why were they not pursuing me to restore me in gentleness (2 Timothy 2:25)? It felt as though I was an annoying problem to be written off, not a sheep they were seeking to rescue. We felt unwanted and unloved. Even now, so far removed, I struggle to make sense of just how it all went down.

As best as I can tell, the causes were at least twofold. First, my minority vision for the church was increasingly at odds with our leaders’ vision, which led to a mutual erosion of both common ground, and eventually, trust. By the end, I was advocating for a church that no longer existed – and that created interpersonal tension with our leaders. And second, the new, young pastor was convinced I was a danger to the flock, and instead of deferring to those who knew me best, he persisted in insisting that I be removed from the ministries I served in to protect the church. Initially, other elders stood up for me, but over time, his voice won the day and door after door of ministry and communication was closed to us.  In the absence of proactive communication by my leaders, my increasingly desperate pleas for help and understanding were interpreted as controlling and manipulative.  Like one who keeps ratcheting up their volume when speaking to someone who doesn’t know their language, my fervency was not seen as care and love, but was taken as an offense. For me, the crisis felt all-consuming.  It was the first thing on my mind when I woke up and the last thing on my mind as I drifted to sleep.  My world felt turned upside down. For two years, and especially in the last six months, our world was spinning and we felt powerless to do anything about it.

Hope in the Valley

“But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! 2 “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you. 3 “For I am the Lord your God, The Holy One of Israel, your Savior;” 

Isaiah 43:1-3a, NASB1995

And had it not been for God’s sustaining grace and the assurance that He was sovereignly working it all for my good and the good of His church, I fear I too would be numbered among those who have deconstructed and abandoned the faith they once claimed.  

But the Lord was faithful.  He carried and provided for me.  When I felt as though my church family was pushing me away, I felt the Lord drawing me close – it was an unexpectedly sweet and precious grace.  As the waters and flames of rejection and abandonment threatened to overcome me, my Redeemer ensured that I would not be consumed.     

The Lord did His preserving work through a whole host of means – through friends and family who pointed me to the undeserved mercy and grace of the Gospel, through articles and blog posts and sermons that reveled in the sovereign goodness and joy-producing purposes of God, and through God-centered music that provided truth-rich salve for my weary soul.  You can find links to many of these resources at the bottom of this article. 

“16 Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. 17 For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, 18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 

2 Corinthians 4:16-18, NASB1995

One moment that’s especially sweet in my mind’s eye was a tear-filled drive home after an especially hard Sunday at church.  I was overcome with sorrow at what seemed lost, and frustrated over decisions that I could not make sense of.  Yet as I drove home, tears streaming down my face, the song, Father of Light by Celtic Worship was a sweet and precious balm to my soul.  Its chorus, in particular, reminded me that the darkness is not permanent, that the sun of God’s good purposes is rising, and there is a day coming when the glory of God will shine evermore as the noon day sun.  This struggle, though intense, was temporary – not even a blip on the radar compared to the unending joy, peace and glory of eternity. 

When did we know it was the End?

For the next few months after that fateful summer morning in Lubec, ME, Bryn and I wrestled with whether or not it was time to leave.  We still desperately wanted to find a path forward, but any hope of a resolution that could keep us at our church home seemed to be fading fast. 

So, in hopes that distance would grant us clarity, we asked to take a sort of sabbatical from the church.  During that time, we intended to visit at least a few churches, but as Providence would have it, the first church we visited proved to be the place we would remain.  It was a sweet breath of fresh air in so many ways.  Unlike our church, with major crises at least once a decade, this church has been free of the large crises we had become accustomed to.  Here, the founding pastor was still serving some 40 years after the church was planted.  Children who had been born in the church were now members with their own families growing up under the church’s ministries.  The sermons, the music, and the congregation ministered so kindly to us in those months, and it brought us joy and clarity.  

Even still, this was a time of vacillating convictions and decisions.  Either Bryn or I would be ready to leave, but the other would not be.  We felt like leaving was abandoning our church family and resigning ourselves to failure. And so it went back and forth for nearly six months.  It wasn’t cut and dry at all. 

Ultimately, after our sabbatical, we prepared our departure letter and asked to meet with the elders, yet as the meeting approached, we were still hopeful that this meeting would provide a turning point with us finally all gathered in the same room. Indeed, it was this hope we expressed as the meeting began, but to our dismay, it became clear that this would not be possible.  The elders had their perspectives and no effort on our part was going to consequentially change that now.  

Overall, this meeting provided the clarity we were searching for. The elders no longer trusted me, and we no longer felt we could confidently trust the elders.  There wasn’t a path forward for us to continue to serve.  The trajectory of the church and our own convictions were increasingly at odds, and for the sake of the church and our family, it was best to part ways with hopes of reconciliation and restoration sometime in the future, as the Lord willed.

Yet even after the decision had been made, our meetings were had, and we moved on, we found ourselves second, third and fourth guessing our decision for many months to come.  Even now, a few years removed, there’s something like PTSD that occasionally flares up. If a leader in our new church asks to meet, my tripwire response is to fear what I might have done wrong – to assume I messed up somehow. If I email out a question or suggestion, I’m tempted to second guess myself and fear the worst response. And while my fears are regularly proved wrong, nevertheless, that’s where I am tempted to go, even now.

Hope over the Horizon

But friend, know this – God has been so gracious!  God is always faithful.  Even in His discipline, His sustaining love was and is at work for our greatest good and His unending glory.  

Out of the rubble of our own experience, God’s given us a biblically faithful, warmly welcoming church home that reminds me a lot of the early days of my previous church.  I’ve been given the opportunity to serve in my giftings – giftings that have been appreciated and shepherded by my pastors.   Communication with the pastors is healthy and things are going really well.  It’s not a perfect church – no church is – but it’s healthy and free from the dysfunction I had come to presume to be normal.       

And more encouraging still, over the last year, I’ve been able to pursue reconciliation with many leaders from my former church. The Lord, too, used this valley to purge and shape me into someone more like Christ, to reveal idols in my heart and to do redemptive work on them, and I trust He is doing the same for most if not all of those who had a part in these events.   Through it all, God has carried me and my family through this – helping me to know and experience a taste of the truth found in 2 Corinthians 4 – that God is at work in our suffering, preparing for us an eternal weight of joy-filled glory, that we might not lose heart.

Lessons Learned through Sovereign Suffering

“4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; 5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him; 6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives.” 7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” 

Hebrews 12:4-7, NASB1995

I have every confidence that the Lord was lovingly disciplining me through this experience – correcting the residue of pride, presumption, control and idolatry that still clings all too strongly to my soul.  As with all discipline, it’s not pleasant at the moment, but it’s what a loving Father does.  I needed – I still need – my Father’s gracious hand of hard correction in my life, lest the advances that have been made against that old man might be erased by ease, comfort, praise and success.  By its very nature, His refining work is always going to sting this side of eternity, but I’m learning to embrace the process, that I might rejoice in the purifying fire more than the dross which it is burning away.  I don’t think I’m there yet – I may never be – but I know I’m closer to that reality now than I was three years ago.

Another observation that comes to mind is how difficult it was, especially in the moment, to separate out the chaff of my sinful heart motives from the wheat of God-honoring intentions. For example, I knew then, in general, and much more clearly now, the fact that there was a prideful presumption that I could and indeed had to save the church, and especially the ministry in which I served. I donned the armor of the white knight and assumed that I alone must save the day. That was sin, plain and simple. But what so complicated it were the good, God-honoring desires that, even now, I believe were my primary motivations – a desire to rescue, grow, and guard for God’s glory and the joy of His people. Further compounding matters, this impulse to rescue flowed out of genuine, measurable concerns about the health of the church and her ministries.

But as I found belonging and ministry at my new church home, this sinful impulse of pride followed me. I had to prove myself – not just to my new church family, but, in some convoluted way, to my old church as well. It became one subtle but powerful driving factor in seeking the good of the ministry in which I now serve. I was (and honestly in some ways still am) desperate to prove my worth and value because of what I experienced. I have had to remind myself again and again that any good thing I do and any ability I have is a gift of God’s grace, and of grace alone, purchased for me by the cross of Christ (1 Corinthians 4:7, James 1:17).

“3 And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; 4 and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; 5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” 

Romans 5:3-5, NASB1995

One thing I’ve noticed over the last few years is a sort of grab bag of lessons I’ve begun to learn, and would likely not have learned nearly as well apart from walking through this valley of suffering.  Often, these lessons pop up out of the blue, when I am tempted to act or speak in such a way as would actually emulate the very actions of others that had hurt me so deeply.  

For example, as a guy who has some pretty heavy gauge people-pleasing wiring, I’ve been reminded again and again that the loving thing to do is to keep short accounts with others.  It’s unloving to keep a false peace by allowing my concerns to fester.  It’s unloving to be willing to talk to others about a problem I have, but not take those concerns to their source.  Because of what I’ve been through – there is a fierce resolve that I must not allow myself to do to others those things that so deeply hurt me.

Had I to do it all over again, I really wish I would have been able to see more quickly that I was fighting for a church that was no longer there. The church had changed. It wasn’t just our leaders that had changed. The theological makeup of the congregation was different, as were many of their passions and emphases. The change was slow and subtle, but the net result after a decade of transition was significant. Not all of the changes were bad – some were very good and much needed – but what I found in the last two years at the church was that not only were the church’s foundational distinctives continuing to erode, but even the good changes that had been made were now, very swiftly, also eroding away. Had I recognized the interpersonal implications of this sooner, it very well may have spared both my family and our leaders from much pain and frustration. But we loved our church home, we were passionate about what was best for her, I felt obliged in my role to protect her, and despite toying with leaving now and then, we just could not bring ourselves to leave our church home until we found we had no other choice. In all of this, I must remind myself that God’s ways are higher and infinitely better than my own. He ordained these events for His good purposes and for our eternal enjoyment of Him, so it is neither wise nor safe for me to question the Almighty’s ordaining hand – but to rest in it, assured that His purposes will ripen into something beautiful in His perfect timing.

And finally, this valley of sovereign suffering has given me a deeper view of my own sinful corruption and the blazing-white glory of the Gospel. This crucible has forced me to take a long, hard look at my sin in a way that I probably would not have done otherwise.  When things are going well, it’s so easy to put thoughts of our sin on the back burner – to diminish their wicked darkness – to simply ignore them and focus on everything good that’s happening.  It’s a lot harder to do that in the midst of crisis.  Yet, graciously, again and again, the transplendent glory of the Gospel pierced the darkness of self-loathing and despair and caused the burdens that lay so heavy on my back to fall from me at the sight of the cross. In those moments, worship is all the sweeter because of the enlivened realization of the gravity of my sin.

Resources for the Valley

One of the most present means of grace to me during this season of suffering was music and messages that reminded me of the glory of the Gospel, the sovereign care of the Lord, and the promise that there is a certain-sure day coming where I will evermore taste of the sweet fruit of unimaginable joy which the bitter buds of suffering in this life will have produced.  Below are a handful of messages from John Piper and songs from a variety of musicians that have especially ministered to me during the darkly-shadowed valley moments of this life.  I pray they bless you as well!

John Piper – God’s Sovereign Care in our Suffering – https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/why-was-this-child-born-blind  

John Piper – Pastoral endurance through suffering as seen in 1 Corinthians 4  https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/jars-of-clay 

John Piper – How we can rejoice in our suffering as seen in the life of Paul: https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/countless-dangers-continual-joy  

John Piper – Excerpt – None of our misery is meaningless https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-glory-of-god-in-the-sight-of-eternity/excerpts/none-of-our-misery-is-meaningless 

John Piper – APJ – Sustained through Hardest Suffering – https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/sustained-through-the-hardest-suffering  

I’ve also put together a playlist of a dozen or so songs that point the suffering soul to our sovereign and loving God who purposes all things, even our greatest pain, for His glory and our good.  

Playlist – Songs of God’s Sovereignty for the Suffering – https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJqdUbuudaTypZ1U7XLXMJa9I2FBCkRTt&si=MpNdPD5c3TBnCpjF  

I know how hard the road of church trauma can be.  I’m here for you.  If you need someone to talk to – someone to help you process what you’re going through and point you to the goodness and glory of our loving God – please do not hesitate a moment to reach out.  In the end, it’s for this very reason that this article came into being at all.  We’re all in this together – even if we’re states, countries, or continents apart.  Friend, there is hope on the other side.  Hold fast to the one who is holding you fast all the more!

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
– Jude 24,25, NASB1995