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Burned by the Church

Truth in Love 65

Dr. Lambert and Dr. Mark Dever discuss how to handle situations when people have been burned by the church.

Apr 5, 2017

Heath Lambert: Our special guest on the podcast this week is Dr. Mark Dever. Pastor Mark is the senior pastor of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC, and he’s the president of Nine Marks Ministries. We’ve invited him on the podcast this week because every year, ACBC hosts an Annual Conference on a topic of biblical counseling. We also host a pre-conference on a topic related to that conference. This year, those conferences are happening on October 3rd, 4th, and 5th, and we are delighted that our pre-conference partner is Nine Marks Ministries. At that conference, we’re going to be talking about how theology finds its home in the local church and how the local church is the place where we can most fully care for people who are experiencing trouble.

One of the troubles that people often face is the fact of being burned by the church. This is an issue that I’m aware of in my own personal life because it happened to my father. My mom left my father when I was very young, and the leadership of the local church where they were attending at the time came and visited my dad and said, “we don’t want a divorced man in the church, and we need to ask you not to come back anymore.” This came out as I was becoming a grown man, had become a believer in Jesus, was sharing the Gospel with my dad, and was inviting him to attend church. He told me that story, and he said, “they told me not to come back, and I haven’t been back, and I won’t be going back.” I realized there, in a very personal way, that it’s possible for leadership inside local churches to really burn those that they are called to help. That’s why we’ve asked Pastor Mark to join us in the program today. Mark, we’re glad you’re with us.

Dr. Mark Dever: Glad to be here, man.

Heath Lambert: The first question I want to ask concerns a local church that would be doing ministry to somebody like my dad. I want to ask: how do we communicate in a caring and trusting way with someone who has been burned by the church?

Dr. Mark Dever: Well, when you say would, it’s not really very hypothetical; this happens all the time. We’ll get people who are beginning to come to church and feel that they’ve been poorly treated by a previous church. Now honestly, Heath, sometimes they probably haven’t been, and we’re probably just getting their perspective of that other church. That other church may well have been faithful, and we’re just having to kind of help them understand that as we get to know their situation better. But other times, they not only have been treated very poorly by either someone in a local church or even by someone in authority in that local church itself. We’ve had people coming to the membership at our church who have been excommunicated from other churches for the silliest of reasons, you know, as we looked into it. Those situations are comparatively rare, but in our own experience, there are lots of experiences like that out there, so it’s not hypothetical. While it’s a tiny percentage of people, a lot of people have that experience. You know, I’m so sorry that the very group that should be the personification of God’s holiness, goodness, rightness, justice, and love actually becomes in some people’s experience abusive, or people in authority become abusive towards them. So the first thing is just a real desire to listen, to understand, and for them to know that we understand that things like this happen and we regret it, and we desire ourselves not to be a part of that continuing story.

Heath Lambert: You know you mentioned something I want to follow up on. You said that sometimes they’re telling us a story. Sometimes they’re saying they’ve been mistreated, but they haven’t been. You mentioned that as you follow up on things, you’ve learned what has really gone on. If there’s a pastor or a church leader out there, and maybe they had a meeting last night with somebody who said, “oh my goodness, you’re not going to believe what this church did.” How can a faithful church leader start to get to the bottom of that? What would you encourage them to do to figure out what the difference is between the truth and a story?

Dr. Mark Dever: Well, first of all, that pastor needs to figure out, do they need to get to the bottom of it? Merely the fact that somebody else wants you to do something doesn’t make them lord of your schedule. They may want you to do it and, you know, you’re not their savior. You have to decide if there is a reason why you should—or your elders, somebody around you in your church—should involve yourself in that particular case. Because sometimes people can switch churches for the flimsiest and most carnal reasons, and we don’t want to be a party to that. So you just have to make your own assessment. Pray for the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom, pray that he gives you a canny-ness for sizing up people and what they say and the credibility of their claims.

Heath Lambert: We’re talking about being burned by the church, and we’re talking about what a local church might do to try to win some credibility with someone who’s been burned in the past, but let’s talk about that person who has been burned. That person that is thinking they need to begin to be restored in a local church, but that’s hard for them. They feel nervous and concerned about that. Somebody like my dad, maybe, who would say, “how do I do this when these horrible things have happened in the past?” What would you say to that person?

Dr. Mark Dever: Well, again, you just listen to their story, and you assure them that while you yourself may not have been in that position before, you’ve heard of others, and in that sense, you understand them, and you’re very sorry. You really don’t desire to be continuing part of something like that happening to him again. So please, as he considers joining the church and is attending regularly, please be reflecting with me at the door after church on the way out, just be reflecting with me. Asking how things were today. Was there anything you didn’t understand or that concerned him or that seemed like it was moving kind of in a dangerous direction? So be inviting that kind of feedback. Then you or just some other mature Christian just trying to walk through the process of him sort of integrating into the church, including formally joining it, to try to give him some extra care through that process. These situations, as we’ve said, are really difficult, but they’re not irredeemable at all. If you look at the way God in Scripture uses people who’ve been in terrible circumstances, Moses, David, and Paul, we should never despair and think that this person is a broken vessel, that this will just not work for them. No, the Lord loves to grab things like that and to heal those cracks and maybe even leave the cracks visible so that others who have been cracked in the way I can relate to them and could talk to them and minister the Lord’s grace to them. So, just know that God is victorious, and go with joy and confidence. While you won’t see every person that recovered, dear pastor, listening, you should expect to see people recover. That’s what the Lord does. He’s in that work, and your church is full of recovered people.