Wolf Snarls, True Shepherds, and Seeing Jesus: Church Hurt Part 3

My feet just kept taking me further and further into the deep end of the church pool.

Until I found myself a pastor’s wife ready to get out of the pool altogether.

It’s a strange thing to reach back into my mind, into those memories, and see that young girl in the pew confused and sad. And look back more recently at her as a pastor’s wife crying her eyes out as she walked back to her car in the church’s parking lot after the last of the painful goodbye’s. 

And all those years in between, that rollercoaster of experiences, and every time something confusing happened again, something disappointing, something alarming, and yet our steps went further into the deep end, it’s like there was this whisper in my heart that if only this… then the church could be that… church should be that…

There was this hope for the church, this vision, that saw the missing pieces and wanted to help put it back together. 

And I think that’s part of why I never gave up on the church.

But it’s mainly that for every wolf snarl I heard, God sent His hands and feet through true shepherds.

For every wolf snarl I heard, God sent His hands and feet through true shepherds.

Back in that first church, where some of the worst happened, God sent me a mentor. A college student who taught me piano but so much more. Each lesson covered in prayer time and counseling, she showed me the gentle beauty of the Savior and what it was truly like to follow Him. When pastors came and went, when church leaders abused and ignored, my piano teacher shepherded me along the Christian path and showed me what the church couldn’t or wouldn’t.

I went to a Christian camp that immersed me in caring, genuine discipleship, passionate worship, and that place spurred me on to seek authentic Christian faith. As a teen I grew more in my weeks there than years in my church. 

And this piano teacher and those camp leaders, they taught me how to get alone with God, how to read and study the Bible myself, how to praise Him in ways legalistic circles looked down on, how to talk to Him through prayers from my honest heart and not for the approval of an audience of others.   

And then those years after growing up, those years out and in so many churches, so many moves and relocations and adjustments. Getting more and more involved in church and yet riding the rollercoaster that left me so unsettled and seeing more and more gaps. But again, Jesus came. 

The college teachers who had humble hearts and took time for loving conversations with each student, despite the institution’s divisive, better-than approach. 

The youth leaders we worked alongside who did real life with us, who are now missionaries we support, who have proved themselves time and time again to be tried-and-true followers and servants of the King.

The pastors who welcomed my interpreting ministry, who welcomed the Deaf congregants, who didn’t worry as some others did about the “distraction” of it, the difference of it. Who were willing to adjust themselves and their norms and who didn’t view a stage as theirs to be controlled and hogged.

And the pastor whose sermons I still listen to, whose deep teaching, inspiring application, and humble leadership is something I still benefit from today though years and states away from that church.

And in over three decades of church involvement the list of hurt and harm is long, yet these shepherds in my life helped me see the hands and feet of God and helped me hold onto hope for the Church. And I’m so thankful. 

And the shepherd who helped me the most is my husband.

It’s a strange thing, going into full time ministry, being a pastor’s wife, the hard you expect, the discouragement you envision, the testing you anticipate.

But once behind the scenes in ministry, a new shattering would begin. 

God had asked me so often before to trust Him with my pain. But now he asked me an even harder question. Would I trust Him with my husband’s?

God had asked me so often before to trust Him with my pain. But now he asked me an even harder question. Would I trust Him with my husband’s?

My husband had worked with much success for a Christian bookstore chain for a decade before church ministry became full time. He had had trying situations, deep challenges, and type A bosses. I’d seen him come home discouraged, overworked, and exhausted. But after going into the pastorate, what he brought home wasn’t in the realm of normal-hard, even for ministry. I grew in concern and pain for the state of his hurt as the days in ministry continued. And after silently trying to absorb what was going on, he finally shared with me his experiences.

And I won’t go into it all here, but suffice it to say that my heart broke in awareness of how he had been treated, of the things going on behind my church’s closed doors, of the narcissistic leadership of manipulations and bullying that was harming those closest to me and damaging the church I loved. The wolf snarls sounded again in a deeper way than I’d known before.

And as time continued on, it pained me to see one who called himself a shepherd act one way and know of the secret woundings behind the scenes. It does something to you as a saint to be aware of this. And while these were some of the most damaging times in my life between me and the church, while I saw some of the ugliest of it, I also saw the most beauty in the servant leadership of my husband.

And it’s amazing to me to see how these experiences were simultaneous, the knowledge of one pastor whose behavior hurt others, and yet the knowledge of another pastor who came home every day pressed down and yet washed dishes, loved his wife, shepherded his children, and kept serving his church.

I had to see hypocrisy in that church. But there were also the weeks where I got to sit under the preaching of my husband, knowing every word he said he practiced, knowing his genuine love for the body of Christ, knowing his sacrificial heart and actions for others.

And one of the greatest acts of integrity I ever saw was when he made his most painful decision to leave the ministry there because he knew he couldn’t support the steps being taken any more. He had to choose between his dream, his position, his income, and the church he loved so deeply, or his character and stance against abuse of power. And you wouldn’t expect that choice to have to be made in a church. But his leaving the ministry there as a pastor was actually one of the most pastoral actions I’ve witnessed. His standing up for others who had been harmed, his standing up against destructive leadership, his standing alone, this was being a shepherd. This was loving the flock. And it cost him immensely. 

I’ve never been so proud of him. And for what all it cost him, what all it cost us, I believe the Word and have seen that sometimes you can lose your world but gain your soul.

My husband showed me a genuine shepherd in the church, in our home, and he still shepherds his family and community today. And it may not have the title “pastor” but I can attest to his shepherding hand and how it has benefited our souls.

We relocated out of state, and my husband started working for a landscaping company. We found out the company, owned and run by Christians, had been “praying for a shepherd” to come on staff.

And when he comes home exhausted and dirty from a 12 hour day of wrestling the earth, I smile at God’s beautiful upside down Kingdom. Maybe to some a pastor is always someone holding a title and standing behind a pulpit claiming a position. But I know a pastor who mends ground and counsels from a truck and shepherds in service. 

This pastoring- this shepherding- if we believe what God says, that true shepherds are servant leaders who protect the flock; if we take seriously the biblical warnings of wolves; well how many times are we overlooking the true shepherds and filling our pulpits with people who have no right to some title? 

A shepherd can be a piano teacher, a camp volunteer, a landscaper, a father, a husband. And a pastor stepping out of a formal role.

It’s funny, if you talk to me in person, the way I stumble over my words in discussion on this experience. Normal verbiage leaves my heart lacking. Because I don’t view my husband as “leaving the pastorate”, I don’t see him as “no longer a pastor”, and I don’t view everyone standing behind pulpits as shepherds. The American lingo, the modern day boxes we put things in- too often they miss the mark of the Jesus way.

God promises us in His written Word that with every temptation He will provide a way of escape. So many times I’ve been tempted to write off the church, to give up and give into cynicism. But God has always provided a way of escape for me from that, and the escape has looked like genuine individuals who shone through the hypocritical mess and showed me His hands and feet as they swam in the deep end of rocky waters with me.