Persevering Love for the Local Church

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"One Another"

"How to Get Over Church Hurt (Without Walking Away)"

"How to Make Real Connections"

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Dannah Gresh: How do you keep showing up to church when it’s just plain hard?

And sometimes, it really is. I mean, relationships are complicated. Sometimes people you trust let you down. Sometimes you feel invisible, like no one sees you or knows your story. Or maybe the hurt came from a leader. And now just walking into the building feels like a battle.

If that’s you, you’re not alone. Today, we’re talking about why staying rooted in the body of Christ still matters, even when it hurts. Author Megan Hill reminds us that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood. 

Megan Hill: I think of going to church as sort of an act of defiance, like saying, “You would like to keep me away, but not today. I'm going today, get out.” And so, I think it's encouraging for us in a weird sort of way to think there's something going on here that's even beyond the realm of what I can see. And it's the evil one, and by God's Spirit, he's not going to win.

Dannah: Hey there fellow church-goer. Is there ever a time when you don’t love it? The church, I mean. Me too! I’m your host Dannah Gresh, and you’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. 

This month at Revive Our Hearts has been all about fortitude. We’re learning to stand firm in God’s grace by persevering through challenges in his strength. It would be a really big miss if we didn’t include today’s topic: getting to church when it's hard.

Maybe getting all the kids into the minivan on Sunday morning seems a feat too great to overcome. Maybe you’re traveling from one sports tournament to the next with little soccer players in tow. Or maybe you have been hurt deeply by someone. This conversation today is for anyone who feels a tug away from weekly fellowship. 

To give you a little roadmap of where we’re headed, we’ll start with a word from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth on the dangers of staying away from church. Then Megan Hill—the pastor’s wife you just heard—will speak to the woman who’s experienced church-related pain. (Yes, she’s a pastor’s wife and yes, they get hurt, too.) Finally, Erin Davis will close us by speaking to the joys of showing up. Let’s dive right in. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Isolation and division in the body of Christ is a tactic that Satan uses to bring believers down. If we don't have accountability, if we don't have encouragement, if we don't have our roots intertwined with each other, if we get isolated or if we get divided, we're going to fall.

As you read through the New Testament, you find a lot of instructions that talk about how we're supposed to deal with one another. They're sometimes called the "one anothers" of Scripture. Among other things, we're to:

• greet one another
• comfort one another
• forgive one another 
• build one another up
• serve one another 
• bear one another's burdens 
• encourage one another 
• meet with one another 

These are all things you'll find in the New Testament.

• be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving toward one another
• receive or welcome one another as Christ received us
• care for one another
• minister to one another
• show hospitality to one another 
• pray for one another

And those are just some of the "one anothers" of Scripture.

Now as you hear that list, wouldn't you love to be a part of a group of believers that functions that way, that really lives out the "one anothers" of Scripture? I think the fact that we fall short of that in our churches is what makes some people give up and leave the church or just withdraw. They say, "It's not working." What we need to do, instead, is not wait for others to do these things to us or criticize our churches because people aren't doing these "one anothers" to the extent that they should. We need to get on the ball and do them ourselves. What you would have others do to you, do to them.

So begin praying for others, showing hospitality, caring, being kind, meeting with others, encouraging others, bearing others' burdens. You do it. Don't wait for others to do it. So many people on the church rolls today, so many people who call themselves believers are reaping the consequences of a lack of this kind of community, of having roots intertwined with each other.

There was a tragic story that appeared in an article of MacLean's magazine. It took place in Winnipeg, Canada. One November day, fifty-three-year-old Jim Sulkers, who was a retired municipal worker, got into bed, pulled up the covers, and died.

Nearly two years later, on August 25, 2004, police who had been called by concerned relatives . . . (once you hear this, you'll wonder how concerned they were or how related they were) . . . police who had been called by concerned relatives entered Sulkers' apartment and found his body in a mummified state. Everything else in his tidy one-bedroom apartment was intact although the food in his fridge was spoiled (no doubt) and his wall calendar was two years out-of-date.

Mr. Sulkers' death went undiscovered for several reasons. This is what struck me as we're thinking about who needs the church. He was reclusive, the article said, estranged from family members, and he had a medical condition that prevented his body from decomposing and emitting odors. In addition, automatic banking deposited his disability pension and withdrew utilities and other expenses as they came. So no one knew the man was dead! No one knew there was a problem. No one knew there was a need.

When I read that story I thought, That reminds me of so many church members. Their names are on the church roll, but they disappear from the life of the church. They end up in a crisis, but nobody notices. Nobody knows until it's too late. Why? Because they weren't connected to the community. They were reclusive; they were estranged from the family.

Here's a situation we end up with. In some cases these people may not have physically disappeared from the church. They may be sitting in church every Sunday, but inside they're dead or nearly so.

Their marriage is dead, but nobody knows. They're not functioning spiritually, but nobody knows. Why? Because even though their body is there, they're disconnected from the community. They're estranged. They are lone rangers. It's like being virtually alive but not really alive. Nobody comes around and says, "How are you doing? Really, how are you doing?" We're just bodies walking past each other—and some of us in mummified states. What a picture of so many of our churches.

I think of Revelation 3:1 where Jesus said to the church in Sardis, "You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead." Listen, when you're in a community, when you're connected at the roots to the people of God, the family of God, you can't fall over as easily. But you have to contribute to that. You can't be reclusive; you can't be estranged, and neither can you blame it on everybody else. You've got to be willing to get involved.

Larry Crabb says this:

Community matters. That's like saying, "Oxygen matters." As our lungs require air, so our souls require only what community provides. We were designed by our Trinitarian God who is Himself a group of three persons in profound relationship with each other. We were designed by that Trinitarian God to live in relationship. Without it, we die. It's that simple.

It was in July of 2002 that we heard the story of the nine miners who were trapped for three days in Quecreek Mine in Pennsylvania. They were 240 feet underground in a water-filled mineshaft. One news report said that they decided early on that they were either going to live or die as a group. The 55 degree Fahrenheit water threatened to kill them slowly by hypothermia.

So, according to one news report, when one would get cold, the other eight would huddle around the person and warm that person. When another person got cold, the favor was returned. As the nation sat and watched the rescue efforts, those nine men faced hostile, life-threatening conditions together. They all came out alive together.

What a picture of the body of Christ. We live in a hostile world with life-threatening conditions. There are all kinds of forces that are threatening to destroy our faith, to strip us of our heart for God. That's why like those tall redwoods, like those Quecreek miners, we need to stand, suffer, live, grow, function, work, endure together. We need each other. It's not an option; it's a matter of survival.

Dannah: That was Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth reminding us that the church is as necessary as oxygen. We can’t survive without it. 

Now you might be thinking, I wish church felt like oxygen to me. But honestly—it’s so hard to show up right now that it feels more like suffocating. 

Oh friend, you’re not alone. I’ve been there, and so has Megan Hill. Megan grew up a pastor’s kid and then married a pastor. She’s gone through some painful experiences, and she gets it—sometimes, church hurts. She wrote a book about that. It’s called Sighing on Sunday: 40 Meditations for When Church Hurts. If you relate with that title at all, I think you’ll be encouraged by this conversation Megan and I had. Persevering love for the local church might be hard, but it’s not impossible. Let’s listen to part of that conversation now.

Dannah: One question I want to start with is, why should we trust God if church hurts? What would you say to that? Take us to the Word. 

Megan: Yeah. We are Christian women; we know we should trust God. Something hard happens and we say to ourselves, “Oh, I should be trusting God.” That can be kind of empty if we don't actually know what God is like, and we don't know His character, and we don't know why we should trust Him. 

And so, you're so right that we need to go to the Word of God. We need to go to where He tells us about Himself. And so, you know, when you look at the Psalms, I just love it when the psalmist says, "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and He saves those who are crushed in spirit." That's Psalm 34. That Scripture shows us again and again that the Lord is One who cares about people who are hurting and He's gentle and kind and tender with them. I think that's where we start when we're feeling hurt in church. We go to the God who cares about the brokenhearted and the crushed in spirit.

Dannah: Yeah, run to the Lord when the church hurts you. A lot of women tend to back away from church when they're feeling hurt. I know a woman who still trusts God, she loves the Lord. But she's been very hurt by the body of Christ. So, she's currently attending a church that is not her home church on a regular basis just to avoid the hurt. If there's hurt happening, do we need to keep showing up?

Megan: I think that we do. I think there is sometimes a place for going to a different church. If you find yourself in a church where sin is not being addressed, and God's Word is not being taught, and Jesus is not being followed. Then I think, absolutely, there are times when reluctantly and with much prayer and counsel, that we might go to a different church. But to just not go to church at all, I don't think we see a place in Scripture for that. 

I think it can encourage us that throughout Scripture we see examples of people who were hurt in the church and yet who continued to persist. 

You think even of somebody like Paul. You know the number of times that people slandered him and spoke poorly of him and didn't contribute to his needs and didn't pray for him. And yet, as you read Paul's writing, it's very clear that he's committed to seeing the Church through. He has what Erin said, that vision that he wrote in Ephesians of the Church made perfect. And so the testimony of scripture is that we persist with the Church until we get to see her holy and perfect on the last day. 

Dannah: Persisting is a key word. I really do believe that's important. And here's why: Many years ago when my husband and I were experiencing a lot of church hurt, he had stepped down from a position of leadership because he had confessed to some sin in his life and felt like he needed to address that. He wasn't caught. Nobody fired him. He just said, “I'm below the standard of leadership right now. I want to step aside.” 

Well, that got really painful really fast because people started making up all kinds of extra stories that made his sin far worse than it actually was. 

We went to another pastor in town and said, “We can hardly go to church, it just hurts too much. It was months into the process. We still feel like we have spiritual leprosy.” 

And he said, “You have to keep going to church. You have to persist. But what I want to encourage you to do is come to my church in the evenings. We're gonna nurture you and we're gonna encourage you and fill you back up with love. That's where you're gonna get the healing, but then you have to go back. You have to show up and do the forgiving and the healing of those hearts that are hurting you,” which was unthinkable to us. 

But it gave us a different perspective. I'm so glad we did. Some of our richest friendships came out of persisting in that church where we were experiencing hurt. I'm so glad that pastor didn't say, “Just come to my church, we'll take care of you.” He knew that we need to stay there. God wanted forgiveness. He wanted reconciliation. He wanted healing in more hearts than just the hearts of Bob and Dannah. 

What do you do when you meet someone who has experienced pain caused by the body of Christ? What's the first thing you should say to them?

Megan: I'm so sorry. This is really painful. I'm so sorry to hear this. I think being hurt in a church is one of the most painful things that can happen to us. Because we have not only friends and people we have a relationship with, but we have a relationship at the deepest level, which is Christ, which binds us together. 

And so, it's extremely painful to be hurt in the church. So yeah, the first thing I do is listen and say, “I'm so sorry.” Before you offer any counsel or any encouragement, just to be the person who comes alongside and listens.

Dannah: It goes back to the Scripture you were just mentioning. "Jesus is near to the brokenhearted." Sometimes our job isn't to fix what people think or believe about what's happening. Just be near them. Save the advice for later and just say, “I see you. I understand it hurts. I've been there.” Megan, you've written a devotional for those who've experienced church hurt. I think it's very interesting that you didn't write a how-to book. Why a devotional?

Megan: Yeah, I chose to do a devotional because I do think when you're hurt, sometimes it's hard to read 200 pages in a row. But what you need is maybe a little bit at a time, and definitely what you need is God's Word. 

And so, a devotional is going to take you to the Word of God, give you a passage to read, something to reflect on from God's Word. And it's just one page long. And then the next day, you can go back to God's Word and think a little bit about it and pray through it. And the next day, you can go back to it. And so, it doesn't require a long stretch of reading. But it does require you to read God's Word, which is where our hope really is.

Dannah: I love that, that's so helpful. Because sometimes, depending on the level of church hurt, there are times when you have trauma brain and you can't think clearly. So, a little snippet of truth and little snippets of God's Word are so helpful. As you were writing the book, what was the most groundbreaking thing that you learned from the Lord?

Megan: I think that I was made aware of the fact that Satan hates the church, and that behind your church hurt, there is people’s sin, there's people's weakness, there's just plain old life in a fallen world where things break and things are disappointing. But there's also the evil one who is the enemy of Christ and His people,  who is trying to stir things up, who's trying to cause her to sin, who's trying to tear down the Church. 

And honestly, that gave me some courage. Like now, I think of going to church as sort of an act of defiance, like saying, “You would like to keep me away, but not today. I'm going today, get out.” And so, I think it's encouraging for us in a weird sort of way to think there's something going on here that's even beyond the realm of what I can see. And it's the evil one, and by God's Spirit, he's not going to win. And so, I can be aware of his tactics here.

Dannah: “Going to church is an act of defiance.” What a good word from author and pastor’s wife, Megan Hill. I’m reminded of Ephesians 6:12, which I mentioned earlier in the program. It says, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” At the end of the day, the church is not our enemy. She is the bride Christ loves. The devil—HE is our enemy. And when we keep showing up, even if we have to limp through the doors, we’re declaring that he will not win. We’re declaring, “Greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world.”

Individuals may hurt us. Leaders may disappoint us. But when Christ returns, He’s coming to take home His bride. So we can’t run away. We’ve got to press in with persevering love. The same persevering love that Christ has loved us with. 

Well, we've talked about the dangers of life apart from the body of Christ, we've acknowledged that sometimes church hurts, but I want to end by talking about the joy of fellowship. And who better to bring us home than the wonderful Erin Davis. She’s a wife and mom who works for Moody Publishing, and she’s a faithful member of her local church. She’s experienced church life as it’s meant to be lived, and she wants you to know it’s worth pursuing, even when it’s hard. Let’s listen.

Erin Davis: Let’s consider Acts 2. What’s happening here is the very first Christians are starting to gather in the very first churches. And for a world that was still very angry about Jesus and Christianity, these early Christians put on display a brand new kind of connection. 

Listen to Acts 2:42:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. . . . And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts . . . praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (vv. 42, 44–45, 47)

There’s a lot of “all” and “any” language in this passage. It describes the kind of connection that these early Christians had with each other. This kind of fellowship described here, it’s the Greek word koinonia.

I was actually in a group called Koinonia as a freshman in college. I didn’t know what koinonia meant then. I just knew that I was kind of alone in the big world for the first time ever, and this group of Jesus followers took me in.

They fed me; they spent time with me. It was very much like what’s described here in Acts 2. And what we had for each other was koinonia. Koinonia doesn’t mean to hold something in common; koinonia means to hold everything in common. Every blessing, every burden, every privilege, every responsibility—we share it. 

Koinonia is transparency at it’s very best.

Koinonia is knowing at its very sweetest.

Koinonia is unique to the children of God. 

Our world is so fractured, and the world that the Christians lived in in the book of Acts was so fractured. Our connection with each other, the fellowship of the saints, is one way we put the gospel on display. 

One day I posted this sentence on social media: “The Church is God’s Plan A for the spread of the gospel.” And someone commented on that post, “There is no Plan B.” I love that. I can’t get over it. The Church, the people of God, the saints, we’re God’s Plan A for the spread of gospel. What Jesus did on the cross, we’re God’s plan A to spread that around the world from generation to generation. There is no Plan B. There doesn’t need to be a Plan B. There will never be a Plan B.

There’s a Jars of Clay song that I loved to listen to when I was a teenager. I listened to it on CD back then. I was a new follower of Jesus, and the words, even though they may not be original to Jars of Clay, they’ve stuck with me all these years. They’re based on John 13:35 and there Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

The lyrics of that song go like this:

We are one in the Spirit
We are one in the Lord.
We are one the Spirit
We are one in the Lord.
And we pray that our unity
Will one day be restored.
And they will know we are Christians
By our love, by our love.
Yes, they will know we are Christians by our love.

This is God’s plan for the spread of the gospel, and this is the mark we wear as followers of Jesus—our love. It’s not our church buildings. It’s not our church programming, but the Church, the Bride of Jesus, the people within the church. Those of us who are a part of the family of God.

I bet you sang that little song when you were a kid, with your hands: “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.” And it is the people that would make me giggle when I was a little girl. It is the people of the church that thrill me now, that are the antidote to loneliness in my life, that draw people to Jesus.

Now, I know, because I’ve been a Christian a long time and because I talk to lots of other Christians, that koinonia doesn’t often come easily. You may have been listening to this series on loneliness and thought, I want that, but I don’t have it. I’ve tried to have it. I don’t have it now. I’m isolated for whatever reason. I don’t know how to get back to koinonia. 

And here’s the facts: We hurt each other; we disappoint each other; we miss this mark even in the church. Maybe you go to church and you hear that in church we are a family. Maybe you feel like the black sheep of that family. 

Following Jesus does not mean that we are never awkward with each other. It does not mean that we are never dismissive. It does not mean that we are never inattentive or that we never hurt each other’s feelings . . . we do. 

This is why we don’t just need Jesus on the cross; we need Jesus in our hearts. We need Jesus in our midst. But koinonia is worth never giving up on. Even if you had it and feel like you lost it. Even if you feel like you tried it and couldn’t find it. Koinonia, the fellowship of the saints, is worth never giving up on.

Dannah: Amen. I don’t think there’s any better reminder as we wrap up our time together.

If you feel like giving up on fellowship, we want to help you persevere. Lasting love for the local church begins with remembering how loved you are by God. Endure: 40 Days of Fortitude invites you to walk with Him in the hard places. Let this booklet fill you with the courage you need to pull up to church on Sunday in the Lord’s strength. Request your copy today with your donation of any amount. You can give by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com. 

I also want to give a shoutout to our team of Revive Our Hearts Ambassadors. These women help leaders press on in the vital work of women’s ministry. They are eager to pray for, encourage, and equip women’s ministry leaders and pastor’s wives—especially those who may be feeling weary. 

If this sounds like a role you’d be excited about, you can visit ReviveOurHearts.com/ambassadors to explore the application process. And if you are a woman desiring support as you do the hard work of ministry, you can visit that same web address to search for a Revive Our Hearts Ambassador in your area. You’ll find some ways to get connected as well. Again, that’s ReviveOurHearts.com/ambassadors. 

Well, next week we’re continuing our theme of perseverance, fortitude, and standing firm in God’s grace. Our topic? Steadfast faith. We’re exploring how to persevere under trial. I hope you’ll come back for that conversation. 

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan. Calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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