I’ve been thinking though about some of the things in our own church culture that, while well meaning, can enable abuse and create environments that are enticing to abusers and dangerous for abused. Put another way, how do we make our “hospitals” safer for everyone? I don’t have all the answers but I can think of a few things that might help.

Not too long ago a therapist friend sent me an article and said she’d thought about the church and mental health component of my blog when she read it.  The article, titled 7 Spiritual Ideas That Enable Abuse and Shame the Victim covers some of the basic cultural stances toward spirituality that, while well meaning, can be counterproductive when it comes to abuse and survivors of abuse.

Recently, megachurch pastor Andy Savage made the news when he publicly admitted to sexually assaulting a 17 year old girl as a youth pastor.  Pastor and theologian Ed Stetzer wrote an excellent article on the subject so I won’t try to re-hash it, just read it here.

To be fair, any problem we encounter in our culture we’re going to encounter in our churches as well.  The church isn’t a magical bubble that keeps “good people” in and “bad people” out.  It’s a group of broken, imperfect people being honest about that fact and finding grace, mercy, and forgiveness.  I’ve heard it said that the church is a hospital for sinners not a museum of saints.

With all that in mind, I’ve been thinking though about some of the things in our own church culture that, while well meaning, can enable abuse and create environments that are enticing to abusers and dangerous for abused.  Put another way, how do we make our “hospitals” safer for everyone?  I don’t have all the answers but I can think of a few things that might help:

Not talking about it

Ok, number one right out of the gate: our silence isn’t helping.  I do have to give the church in America (yes, I realize that’s broad) high marks for improvement in this area.  Most of the time I hear it talked about though, it’s in an article or sermon.  It’s good that church leaders and pastors are starting to really engage this topic meaningfully, but if we’re going to see real cultural change in our churches, it needs to come from the ground up also.  From small groups that meet in homes throughout the week to our day to day interactions with other believers, it’s on us to begin bringing this topic into the light so that survivors feel safe to open up about it and abusers don’t feel safe to abuse members of the church with impunity.

Reputation over integrity

At a conference once, I heard a pastor say to a group of other pastors: “be more concerned with the integrity of your heart than with the integrity of your reputation”.  Let’s face it, the church in America doesn’t always have it easy with how they get handled by the media and the culture at large.  Pastors want to protect the body of Christ from slander and unfair accusation.

Can I submit that one good way to accomplish this would be to be honest about our own house cleaning.  I’ve seen many pastors (including my own) do this very well and handle abuse in the church in a way that protects the abused and not the abuser, but it seems like there’s still some work to be done if the Andy Savages are getting standing ovations because their sexual assault is framed as some sort of story of redemption on their part.  This leads us to….

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