Great loss follows church hurt in three main areas—our trust of leaders, relationship with fellow Christ followers, and our struggle to keep our faith in the aftermath. The weeks and months and often even years that follow church hurt are fraught with questions, confusion, and pain.

Trust of Leadership

We tend to have higher expectations of people in church or ministry leadership, so when they fail or hurt us, we begin to question whether we have discernment, and we fear that we’ll be able to enter into relationships with what could be untrustworthy leadership in the future. In fact, there is a strong mantle of higher expectations when it comes to those in ministry, particularly those who teach. James reminds us, “Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church for we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). Leaders are called to represent Jesus, so if or when they harm others, the fallout is profound. It’s common to battle mistrust in both pastors and in God himself after church hurt at the hands of leaders.

This kind of top–down abuse can cause the victims to question the leadership structure of every church everywhere, which can push them to consider leaving the church altogether. Much faith deconstruction has happened on the heels of a church leadership wound.

Not only do we individually distrust our local church where the pain originated, but the overall reputation of the worldwide church is marred by unsafe and abusive church or ministry staff. This can lead to a nihilistic view of church in general, particularly if we have an all or nothing mindset. If we’ve experienced pain locally, it’s easy to project that pain globally—all churches must be bad because of our experience.

Relationships with Christians

Another fallout of church hurt is the loss of relationship that comes when we leave an unsafe place. Often, our entire social structure is wrapped up in where we go to church. When life is difficult, it’s our church family who steps in and carries our burdens. And it’s our church friends who celebrate wins and spiritual milestones with us. To use a cliché, we “do life” with each other. When we left our church after decades of attendance, in an instant, our social group ended. Our safety net evaporated. Those who had been close friends morphed into silent enemies. To not align with the church, oddly, made us an enemy of it. Losing relationships is one of the hardest, most perplexing aspects of church hurt.

Another problem is a growing distrust of others. If so–called leaders could act in dismissive ways with callous indifference, then perhaps all people are this way. Although it makes perfect sense to nurse this distrust, doing so causes us to project a lack of trust onto trustworthy people. Not all are out to get us. Not all intend harm. For the world to work, we need trust (but with wisdom). John Gottman asserts, “Trust isn’t just important for couples. It’s also vital for neighborhoods, states, and countries.”

Left unchecked, this distrust can morph into anger, resentment, and bitterness toward other Christ followers. When nursed, these traits, which are some of the fruits of the flesh (see Galatians 5:19–21 for a list) cause personal and corporate pain. When we are sinned against, we always have the option to either harbor that pain or process it in a healthy manner so that we don’t commit the same kind of harm we’ve experienced. The author of Hebrews admonishes, “Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many” (Hebrews 12:15).

Possible Complete Deconstruction

A pendulum phenomenon sometimes happens when we are injured in a church or ministry setting. It becomes easier to surmise that if we were injured in a hyper–conservative church, then the solution is to swing toward a more progressive one. Or if we are harmed in a mainline denomination, a freer style of worship would be healthier. While it is essential for us to know why we believe and question those tenets we’ve been taught as we make our faith our own, doing so without a view toward Jesus and his compassion for us has the potential to lead to a complete dismantling of our faith.

There is a more productive and beneficial way to question—and I hinted at it above. It’s to ask hard questions while relying on Jesus to help you heal from the pain you’ve experienced. Thankfully, he is well acquainted with betrayal, dismissal, overt opposition, and unfair treatment. He is the empathetic savior who knows best how to come alongside us. He loves to help us as we wrestle, and he doesn’t shame us for doing so.

While it may be necessary, for a time, to not attend church, one of the biggest fallouts of church hurt is never returning. If we spend extended time outside the church, the people we are likely to surround ourselves with are those that have chosen to abandon Jesus’s church entirely. We, according to Jim Rohn’s theory, usually become like the five closest people around us. If those people no longer love Jesus and his people, we might find ourselves headed toward a complete deconstruction of our faith.