Leaving Well
by Craig French
When you leave a church, there is a question some insist on asking: Did you leave well?
So I will ask you: Did you leave well? Will you leave well? If not, why not?
Such uncomfortable questions, aren’t they? There are two ways you can approach these sorts of questions depending upon how you understand them.
The first approach is something my wife and I encountered when we left a church some years ago. Those who asked if we left well had a vested interest in how we left. “Did you leave quietly?” “Have you made sure to say good things about the church when the topic comes up?” “While you haven’t moved away or ceased to exist, per se, have you left in such a way that we can tidily carry on as though you’re dead (though no mourning on our part, of course)? It would be much easier if you didn’t express pain, either. Chin up.”
The first approach is about you controlling your behavior. That’s not what I’m asking. If, or when, you leave—will you be well? There’s a lot that goes into spiritual wellness. When you have a child, nurses and doctors ask a series of questions before you go home with your newborn. Much of it has to do with your home’s environment. Does anyone smoke? Will you be co-sleeping? Do you know that placing an infant in a crib with a blanket could be deadly? The environment you provide could have terrible consequences.
Some might balk at the analogy. Spiritual wellness is about your own walk with Christ, some say. In fact, this is something I’ve been told in order to place blame upon me for how I left our old church. I didn’t leave well. The fault did not lie entirely upon me. All homes have unique environmental factors. These factors include clear rules, unwritten rules, and sometimes secrets. Just like the way one’s family of origin impacts the way one relates to others and the world, church provides a nexus for how we connect to God, others, and the world.
In the stress, pain, confusion, and unspoken assumption that Christians don’t suffer abuse from churches, hurting Christians don’t often stop to ask themselves: Am I leaving well? That is, am I leaving in a state of wellness?
To those who have yet to leave
If you haven’t left your church you might be struggling with distinguishing wellness from disease. We all struggle with sin and the church is no different. Healthy churches have leaders who are humble and are willing to own failure (naming specific failures), repent, and make amends. They take environmental factors in the church seriously, especially where such factors can harm Christians.
Churches geared toward spiritual wellness and wholeness are interested in helping Christians grow to maturity in Christ (Ephesians 4:13). This is what healthy churches seek. Unhealthy churches enact “unity.” What those churches mean by unity is conformity. They bypass health and maturity through a forced semblance of unity. They emphasize curated self-understandings and officially-sanctioned knowledge. They mistake ends (telos) for means. For such communities, the ends truly do justify the means. For unhealthy churches, unity comes before maturity. Sadly, that is the kind of “unity” that stifles maturity. It demands fruit with no cultivation and no sunlight.
According to Scripture, however, maturity is the means which brings unity. Where my family experienced spiritual abuse, there were terms used regularly for achieving “unity.” Those words were “authority” and “submission.” There are other words, too. Perhaps “anointing.” The reality is there can be a whole slew of different words. If those words or phrases are used as shorthand for reiterating identity, unity is possibly a mask for immaturity, at best, or a cloak for abuse at worst.
Does anyone have to “pay a price” in order for unity to be maintained? If that’s the case, that doesn’t reflect Ephesians 4:13 in the least. While there may be times that otherwise healthy Christians must “eat crow” and own up to ordinary offenses (I mean garden variety), owning up through repentance isn’t really a “price to pay.” Repentance is the path to wholeness and spiritual health. Scapegoating another blocks pathways to wholeness. When scapegoating, isolating, or other punitive measures are forced upon those with questions, concerns, or uncomfortable information, that’s fleshly and demonic (James 3:14-16).
When a church tries to keep people in the dark, shuts down questions, avoids direct answers, or subtly (or not so subtly) undermines others...it’s not a healthy place. It’s a dangerous place. Consider the question of “is this something my church is doing?” with a willingness to entertain an answer you don’t like.
When a church tries to keep people in the dark, shuts down questions, avoids direct answers, or subtly (or not so subtly) undermines others...it’s not a healthy place. It’s a dangerous place.
Leaving a church is not a decision most Christians take lightly. It is especially difficult where intergenerational friendships have taken shape, discipleship, marriages, births, baptisms, and deaths have stitched a fabric which you were convinced kept you warm. This fabric has been a comfort. A barrier to outside elements threatening your safety and security. You feel safe.
You feel safe until you hear others have not been protected. You wonder, is this fabric a protective blanket or has it become a shroud? Not only does it keep the rain and cold out, it also blocks out light. You’re embraced in darkness. Fear sets in. You now have two ways of understanding that church and those relationships. This experience is called cognitive dissonance.
While cognitive dissonance is not a sustainable way to live long term, it is important you don’t short circuit the process. Pain is an indicator of an underlying problem. The temptation is to merely alleviate the pain. It is important to instead ask what the pain is trying to draw your attention to. It’s one thing to “walk off” a temporary personal injury, it is another thing entirely to look across the field to see someone lying on the ground with a life changing spinal injury. You can’t walk off their injury. They certainly can’t walk off such an injury. Pain is useful in that it reveals there is a problem. Ignoring another person’s injury cauterizes moral nerves designed by God to activate the Body to help and to care. Churches that turn a blind eye to those they’ve harmed wound their victims but they also morally injure themselves. With each successive injury, that church becomes more capable of evil, not less.
Cognitive dissonance invites listening. How you listen should be oriented toward understanding the pain and its source.
Another way of evaluating your church’s wellness is to consider what you’re “allowed” to know.
This is not referring to a situation where church leadership shares secrets about other members of your church. If they do, that is a big red flag. What I mean is: does the unity of your church depend upon officially-sanctioned knowledge that becomes the accepted understanding? Some of this might take expression in explanations about individuals or families with “problems,” about those who have left, explanations for why your church might be thought of negatively by those outside that body, and more. Curated stories by a community about that community often include an origin story. Many healthy churches experience origin stories that come out of contentious times but unhealthy churches have contentious origin stories that are used to give members an understanding of the present. It becomes a way of identifying who is in, who is out, who is the enemy, or who is the hero. Somehow, an origin out of conflict has become an all-consuming description for what seems to be a never-ending existence of conflict where “enemies” are everywhere.
Churches that depend upon carefully curated self-understandings tend to be unhealthy.
Maybe another way to approach the question is to ask “do I feel free to ask certain questions?” Unwritten rules are very powerful. Maybe others also express that they don’t feel free to question. This can be expressed in innumerable ways. Someone might say they trust church leadership knows best as a means of silencing their own questions. Or, someone may preemptively make an excuse where one might otherwise ask a question freely. Pastors are under lots of pressure, for example, is a common one I heard (and used). Or, people will partially appeal to Proverbs 18:17. You only know one side of the story; there must be another (which side is never pursued). On the off chance you do seek an explanation or dare to ask leaders a question that is uncomfortable, if you walk away confused, that is also an indicator of disease. Perhaps in the moment you nodded and thought, “Oh yes, that makes sense,” but later you remember that doesn’t account for obvious other facts. If you also don’t feel you can go back to that leader to inquire further, that may be an indicator that your church lives and moves and has its being in a highly controlled environment. Perhaps asking penetrating questions leads to accusations against you. You cannot be pleased, you do not trust, you’re sowing doubt, you’re in rebellion, etc.
How to leave well
(even if you’ve already left)
The best way to leave a dangerous place well is to leave. If you’ve been in an abusive church, it’s only in leaving that you can begin detoxing. Experientially, this is a long process. My family is in year five now. For a long time, there was a lot of grief. This is good and healthy. There are many things to grieve over. The harms that have been done. Relationships broken. If you have children, this presents unique challenges.
Listening to God’s leading is paramount. That includes going into the wilderness. That’s what it will be like. In the wilderness, the noise that you’ve become accustomed to can grow silent. God, however, does not necessarily go silent. The most difficult part about the silence is sorting through your own voice and the abusive voices. For a long time, I heard my previous pastor’s voice when reading certain passages of Scripture. That is an alarming feeling. A word of encouragement: when you experience this alarm you are very likely in the long process of individuating from the abusive church environment. You are beginning to distinguish your voice, the abusive voice, and God’s voice. Those passages are likely not where you need to dwell. Dwell where you are hearing God’s voice most clearly. Someday those other passages will be exorcized from the past and become what God intends for them.
The best way to leave a dangerous place well is to leave. If you’ve been in an abusive church, it’s only in leaving that you can begin detoxing. Experientially, this is a long process.
Whether you’re a parishioner, official leader, or informal leader, engaging in and with an abusive system on its terms malforms you. Five years out from leaving our old church, my family is still parsing through things. We couldn’t do that if we never left. Straightening out what is crooked isn’t the first stage, however. In a sense, that can be presumptuous as it assumes a posture of strength when weakness, pain, and grief need to keep doing their work. The softening must come before the straightening.
Taming abusive and malforming voices from your past takes time and new voices. If you’re like us, you may have left your church in a state of not having many friendships outside of that space. Where it makes sense, reconnecting with stale friendships might be helpful. By stale, I mean friendships that fell by the wayside, especially if that was driven by involvement in your church. Those friends have known you in ways you may no longer remember. This can help reconnect you with who you really are rather than the malformation or image-projecting from abusive people.
Above all, it is important in your departure that you don’t quickly locate a “destination” church to fill the void. I have seen people fall into this where they never deal with the abusive voices and use the same thinking to only find themselves in another controlling environment. Churches are not destinations. In fact, ancient Christians have emphasized that the Church is an ark. It is not the destination, it is supposed to be a place that can navigate danger while providing safety. Church is supposed to help prepare Christians for a life of fullness in God. It should never use hellish tactics for control. Distinguish the devices, plans, and programs of people from the call of God. Your wellness depends upon having room to breathe and get your bearings. You can’t do that in a church that insists Christians are designed to breathe underwater and discourages swimming to the surface. Others can (and should) help you see and understand, but another person’s “vision” should never be used as a substitute for your own understanding. This isn’t merely “going your own way,” this is growing in maturity and discernment.
Continue relationships?
Full disclosure: when we left our old church, we worked hard to keep friendships. We left quietly and avoided disclosing the extent of what we suffered. In part, we did not fully realize what we had gone through nor how malformed we were. We just didn’t want to be alone. We lost most of our friendships immediately. In fact, a couple of weeks after we left my wife received a note from an elder’s wife. She told my wife she was sad that they could no longer be friends. Most others simply stopped calling, but some kept calling. Very few of those friendships remain.
As we individuated from an abusive environment, we came more and more into our own with regard to self-agency. It became clear that some of the friendships were just a means for our former church to keep ears and eyes on us. I remember one man who seemed to be sympathetic. He insisted upon lengthy text messages. He did it for months. I shared things while in a state of deep grief, pain, and anger with that man. One day the texts stopped. I learned why shortly after. He would meet with my old pastor. I was being pumped for information.
Obviously, you don’t want to maintain a relationship with an informant. Consider if a continued relationship centers on pumping you for information or if it promotes healing.
Other relationships acted as reiterating voices we did not want to maintain. These relationships placed us in defensive postures. Do you think your spouse was without sin? Do you think you are without sin? Don’t you think you should have said X differently or done Y instead? Where are you going to go to church (now that you’ve left the only good church)? I’m afraid your marriage is going to fall apart. Your children might depart from the faith.
Consider: Does this relationship foster security or do I find myself needing to justify myself or resist continued controlling influences? These are not the sorts of relationships you need. They are counterproductive. Boundaries are good. Exercise your agency here as you see fit. For some of these relationships we felt they were negative enough that we put into words that the relationship was over.
Still, there are other relationships that continue to today. Those that do simply accept we had our reasons for leaving and they’re OK with that. Some of them find it helpful to have friends on the outside. It's a pressure release valve.
Periodically, someone will reach out seemingly out of the blue expressing their own pain. It can be frustrating because you might think you’re helping them escape but it takes a lot for someone to make the decision to leave. People appear and disappear. I don’t exert much effort to maintain these connections. If they want to connect I’m here. I’ll offer input but I have come to expect fits of awareness followed by a disappearance back into the less painful option of reintegrating. Stay or leave, people are choosing the pain they’re willing to live with. I no longer try to convince them to leave when they reach out. I share the truth and the onus is on them to make their own choice. Just like unity cannot be forced, agency cannot be determined from without. We witness, inform, and do not hide the truth. We call others to maturity but we cannot force maturity.
We tried to use our former denomination’s ecclesiastical process to bring accountability. That, we learned, cannot be forced either. Those who control the process are also a part of the same guild abusive leaders are in. They “know” these leaders in a context of camaraderie. Hearing our pain did not resonate with their experience of men who “stood for the truth.”
We have accepted that our witness is limited. We tried to use our former denomination’s ecclesiastical process to bring accountability. That, we learned, cannot be forced either. Those who control the process are also a part of the same guild abusive leaders are in. They “know” these leaders in a context of camaraderie. Hearing our pain did not resonate with their experience of men who “stood for the truth.” Additionally, these allegations highlighted their own precariousness. Should they investigate and exercise discipline of other pastors, they could be next. There can be an undue self-identification and empathy of clergy for fellow clergy at the expense of members who have been harmed. Instead of providing care they carefully place a hurdle. After each hurdle is another hurdle.
At the end of the day, I’ve done what I can and said what I could. The onus is not on me to ensure a good outcome. The onus was on me to get me and my family into safety. I’m not discouraging the use of ecclesiastical process but I am saying it can be retraumatizing.
Relationships which do not allow you to be a unique person with a history and needs are potentially going to hamper your wellness. You may not need to completely remove all of these individuals from your life but you will do well to navigate them where you can maintain your own balance. Continue listening to signs of pain and continue learning to hear God’s voice. You are not on anyone’s timeline for healing besides God’s. He is gentle. He is patient. A smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
Craig French is an Anglican Christian, husband, and father to eight. He works in a technical communications field and earned an M.A. in Communication from Spring Arbor University.