Ideas from Focus on the Family

Focus on the Family has an article entitled, "Overcoming a Bad Church Experience". The article itself is pretty clinical. It gives suggestions for overcoming your hurt that some people may find useful. In my opinion, the bottom line is that it will take time to heal. I can't rush the process. I can follow Focus's reommendations and write down my grievances, ask for my own forgiveness, ask for the ability to forgive others. But, I'm human. It's going to take time.

However, I did find the part on "Finding a Good Local Church" particularly interesting. It's a very logical - unemotional - approach to picking a church. This just reminds me that sometimes we do things we may not feel like doing, because they are the right thing to do. I believe God wants us to be a part of a local church. There may not be a scripture that says that word for word, but the Bible as a whole speaks a lot about the community of faith. And experiential evidence says a lot, too. In a sidebar to the article, there's a quote from Philip Yancey:

"At a deep level I sense the church contains something I desperately need. Whenever I abandon church for a time, I find that I am the one who suffers. My faith fades, and the crusty shell of lovelessness grows over me again. I grow colder rather than hotter. And so my journeys away from church have always circled back inside."— Philip Yancey

I've experienced these feelings, as well, during different periods of my life when I've been away for the church for any period of time.

But what I found most disturbing was this statistic:

Approximately 22 million Americans say they are Christians and made a faith commitment to Jesus Christ, and say that commitment is still important to them, but they have struggled with faith or relational issues and therefore quit going to church.

Maybe we (the hurting) need to consider what we can do for others who are hurting. As I begin to heal, I need to pray that God will use me to reach some of these Christians who didn't have the support of a "Bank church" or a biological family. What good does He want to make out of my pain?