Set your eyes on eternity. This is not a means of ignoring reality, but the only way of truly facing it. There is a day when all the pain you suffer from the presence of sin and Satan will vanish. Focus more on your future accounting before Christ than on those who fail you on earth. Above all, trust in the Lord who promises never to leave or forsake his children (Heb. 13:5). Local churches hurt people. Thankfully, the Lord of the church will one day wipe away every tear, including yours.

Dear Brother or Sister,

Local churches hurt people. People hurt people, of course, but since churches are people, churches have the capacity to inflict severe relational pain.

By God’s grace the reverse is also true. The local church is designed by Christ to function as a spring of encouragement and joy to its members. I hope that you have experienced the blessing of walking in fellowship with a body of believers that Jesus used, or is now using, to strengthen your faith and envelop you in covenantal love.

But despite Christ’s gracious provision, you may find yourself experiencing heartache in the context of a church for which Jesus died. Ironic, isn’t it? By grace alone the risen Christ is gathering out of the nations a people for his name (Acts 2:38–39). He forms us into a new humanity, uniting us to himself (Eph. 2:11–22; Gal. 2:20). We are adopted as his children and chosen as his holy bride (Rom. 8:14–17; Eph. 5:23–32; Rev. 19:6–8). He sovereignly places us in the body to complete one another (1 Cor. 12:12–27). How ironic, then, that relating to God’s people can result in such deep heartache.

Ironic, but not mysterious. The closer the human relationship, the more pain one suffers when that relationship falters. We routinely witness this in families. It’s why divorce, child rebellion, family feuds, neglect, and the like are such bitter heartaches. The closer the relationship, the greater the potential not only for joy but also for sorrow.

In the spiritual family of a local church, such heartache often stems from personal offense—one member wrongs another. At other times the problem is more corporate in nature—the departure of a leader, a change in policy, an altered ministry direction that seems to betray much of what you once loved about your church, and the like.

It’s not hard to identify the source of the pain we suffer in the context of a body of believers. It’s considerably harder to respond to that pain in God-honoring ways.

Don’t breeze past that “God-honoring” bit. Expressive Individualism programs us to feel our pain while avoiding hard questions about our responses to it. Hurt feelings are as natural as shivering from cold on a wintry day, we are assured by our therapeutic world. Therefore, how I feel about someone’s ill treatment of me or how I feel about a hurtful ministry change becomes not only my responsibility to own but everyone else’s obligation to affirm.

The Bible does not counsel us in this direction. Rather, it calls us to respond to such pain with a devotion to love others and glorify Christ in his church. This means that despite how terribly I may feel, Christ’s renown remains of supreme importance. Therefore my affections for his honor in the assembly must never fall below affections for my own. If they do I am likely to cause as much damage in the future as I’ve suffered in the past.

Our Redeemer is never surprised by sin, nor has he ever promised us a church that’s free of it. Every church family hurts people one way or another. What the Lord has done is to arm us with wise, Christ-honoring habits of response. While not an exhaustive list, consider the following disciplines.

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