How to Overcome Church Hurt and Stay Rooted in Christ with Natalie Runion

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Church hurt is a real thing that we have to deal with as believers in Jesus Christ.

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And if you believe in Jesus and you are walking with Him, then you are going to a church and you're a part of that.

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And when there's other people involved, there's opportunity for offense left and right.

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With us today is Natalie Runion, and she has written the book, Raised to Stay.

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And it is persevering in ministry when you have a million reasons to walk away.

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And there's a lot of reasons to walk away, Natalie.

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And I'm glad that I've stuck them through and my family has stuck them through growing up.

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And it's great to be able to talk to you about how God has shown you how to deal with offense in the church.

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Oh, it's so good to be with you, John. Thanks for having me today.

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Yeah. So, Natalie, I've heard this joke a while ago, so I'm going to just start with this, OK?

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There was once a guy that was on a desert island and he was stranded.

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And a boat came and finally rescued him.

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And the captain of the boat saw that there was these three houses on the island.

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And so the first one, he asked, well, what was this?

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And he said, oh, that was my house.

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That's where I lived and that's where I stayed for these last several years.

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And he said, what about this other one?

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And he said, oh, that's my church.

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And that's where I go and that's where I worship.

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And the captain of the boat said, well, what about that third one over there?

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And he said, oh, that's where I used to go to church.

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And so he was the only person on the island that are still an opportunity for church hurt.

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And I think that is very appropriate for our conversation today.

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That's good.

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So let's talk about church hurt.

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I mean, it is not something that we want to deal with in our personal lives.

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And we know that it exists.

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But how do you deal with it whenever it comes to you?

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I used to think it would just end.

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You know, being a pastor's kid growing up in it and then going into ministry right out of college,

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I kept thinking, well, surely when I become an adult, everybody will just magically grow up

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and will be kind and there won't be all of this that I saw as a child.

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And I was actually wrong.

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The older we get, the more into church we get, the more leadership roles we take.

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But ultimately, the more people we love, the more people we let in,

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the more people we are in community with.

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That hurt ratio to relationships and all of that, it grows because anytime we love,

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we are at risk for being hurt and hurting other people.

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So, you know, for me, it's just been a journey of accepting the fact that hurt people will hurt people,

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but healed people will also help us heal as we go through life.

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And so rather than running from the church, running from community, embracing this reality,

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I'm most likely going to get hurt, but I have learned and I'm going to continue to believe

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that the risk is not going to be nearly as great as the reward we're going to see for loving God

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and loving his people.

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Soterios Johnson Yeah, for sure.

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You know, there's plenty of stories I'm sure that we could tell and opportunities,

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you know, but it's when you're dealing with people, you're dealing with offenses.

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And it's differences of opinion, you've got issues, you know, shoulder to shoulder,

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but then you've got leadership issues.

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And recently, there's been lots of documentaries like Shiny Happy People or the Hillsong documentary.

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And it just highlights things that are wrong that happen in church.

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And anytime you have any type of organized anything, you're going to have different levels

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of authority and abuse in different ways.

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But how do you deal with certain things like that?

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Soterios Johnson Well, years ago, I mean, we're talking 20,

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30 years ago, things like this were happening in the church, they just weren't being documented.

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There weren't social media pages or weren't ways for people to communicate what was happening

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within these churches and organizations, short of a courtroom or anything like that.

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And so now, thanks to social media, and honestly, movements that have had some

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validity like hashtag church to things like that abusers are coming out, and they are being

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prosecuted, they're being dealt with.

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And people who were abused, honestly, truly abused by those leaders and organizations

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are getting help and they're getting their day in court.

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And they're able to say what actually happened to them without the shame and guilt that

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was often tagged on abuse victims from the church in the 20, 30 years ago.

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However, what it's also done is it has caused a little bit of what I call second hand church

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hurt in that the more we sit in our homes, isolated from community watching these documentaries

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and letting that fear creep in that well, if it happened to them, it's going to happen to me.

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We now have an uphill battle as the church as people are coming in expecting to be hurt based

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off what they're seeing in these documentaries that are probably one sided that probably aren't

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sharing all of the information.

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I would like to separate shiny happy people from Hillsong documentary, documentary in that

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shiny happy people situation that is one of the most vulgar and gross abuse situations

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I've seen come out in the public.

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Whereas when you have a lot of these church documentaries come out, you are getting more of

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kind of a one sided lens of what actually happened.

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So those, we know that people always like a controversy.

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People want to, it's like the real crime podcast or TV shows, but with the, with the focus on

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the church, you're looking for the who done it.

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Do you, did this thing really happen?

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And so, yeah, it's people want there's that intrigue there and it's not always good.

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No, and I think it feeds a narrative that the enemy wants fed.

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That is you can't trust leadership.

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You can't trust the church.

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You can't trust each other.

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So the goal of the enemy is to divide the church, to divorce the church from within so that we

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don't have a chance to be that light on the hill that we're called to be.

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And so while I don't think that these documentaries are necessarily bad, we do need to deal with

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the abusers and deal with what we're seeing.

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But we also need to turn our gaze onto Jesus who also saw persecution, who also saw the ugly

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of what it looked like to be on mission in a fallen world and remained on mission despite

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the Judas that sat at his very table.

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So I believe that those documentaries are informative, but I don't believe that they

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are part of our formation, this biblical formation that is to remain on mission of

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going and making disciples.

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Yeah.

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So when you're talking about making disciples, I'm thinking about the first step is somebody

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needing to come to Jesus and repent of their sins and turn their life over to him.

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But now we're seeing a lot of people going public with their deconstruction or their

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deconversion, and it seems that a lot of that is due to some sort of church hurt.

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And you can, at least from the people that I've talked to or the other stories that I've

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heard, it seems that there was some sort of church hurt that was the catalyst that got

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the ball rolling.

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And you mentioned a term earlier about isolation that those two things seem to be hand in hand

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in pulling somebody away.

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Can we talk about that for a little bit?

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In my foreword, Lisa Bevere says that deconstruction is just destruction if you have no framework

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to rebuild what it is that you've deconstructed.

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And we have to remember that Jesus loves a good wrestle.

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I mean, even the disciples, the apostles, there were people throughout all of scripture

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who were looking at the things around them.

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And Paul was so honest in why do I do the things I don't want to do and why can't I

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do the things that I want to do?

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So there is a constant wrestling in this faith of detangling and detaching from some of these

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religious things that the world placed on us, that maybe religious people placed on us that

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weren't even biblical.

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And so when we talk about deconstruction, it can't just be, well, this is a popular

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word, so I'm just going to use it to describe what I'm walking out.

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If you're not, you know, deconstructing is healthy if you have a plan to rebuild.

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But if it's just destroying everything that we know to be true of God, that's when we

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start getting on dangerous territory if we don't have disciplers, if we don't have mentors

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to help us walk that process out to completion.

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Yeah.

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And you mentioned that you went through a kind of a deconstruction in yourself, but

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you were able to rebuild as well.

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So what's a healthy way to go through some deconstruction?

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We have to allow ourselves and allow each other to ask the hard questions.

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And for me, I was part of Campus Crusade for Christ at Miami of Ohio.

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And even though I wasn't going to church on Sundays, because I really had no desire to

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go back into a church building after being a pastor's kid for so long, I got involved

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with this campus organization and I was having coffee with people who let me get mad, who

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let me get frustrated, who didn't try to defend the church, didn't try to defend the church,

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didn't try to defend toxic leaders, but sat with me in this ugly space of just wailing

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and weeping my way through trying to know who I was in Christ.

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And they didn't make me feel guilty for that.

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They leaned in, they listened, they challenged me.

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And part of my deconstruction was coming out of the shame of wearing only one-piece bathing

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suits and a lot of that 90s Christian purity culture that really didn't help in a lot of

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ways.

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I think it was people willing to let me wrestle without trying to gaslight me and try to defend

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an organization that did hurt me.

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Mm-hmm.

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Yeah.

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So you mentioned I was actually going to bring up gaslighting.

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You just said it there.

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I mean, I believe it was last year or maybe the year before that it was actually the word

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of the year.

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And I've gone through gaslighting and sad to say I didn't realize it when it was happening

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until somebody, a close friend,

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I was talking with them about what was going on and they're like, you're being gaslit.

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And I was like, what?

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They had to explain it to me, but I was like, oh my gosh, this is really going on.

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This is happening to me and I did not know that.

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What are some signs of gaslighting that you would point out that could help somebody that's

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like, I feel this way, but I don't know what I'm feeling.

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Like there's this, I could definitely say that there was a frustration in me.

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But I couldn't voice it somehow.

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Well, that right there, the confusion, you know, it says in the word of God, that God

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is not the author of confusion.

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And yet, you know, we sit in offices and church staff, we sit in even our secular jobs and

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we bring something to an oversight.

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We bring something to a leader and we say, this is what I'm concerned about.

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This is what I'm seeing.

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This is what I'm discerning.

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I'm sensing.

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And it's always flipped back around to, well, you're imagining that or you're part of the

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problem or you're lucky you have me to help defend you in this.

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And if I could, I could get you fired, but I won't.

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There's a lot of kind of placing that concern back onto the one bringing the concern rather

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than that leader taking ownership and investigating in a healthy way, the things that we're bringing

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to them.

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This is hard because as church people, we do as Christians, we have discernment.

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We know when we walk into a church and we see that something is not right or a leader

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is unhealthy.

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And so not only are Christian leaders really good at gaslighting, but Christians ourselves

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are really good at gaslighting ourselves and saying, oh no, that was just, I'm just being

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emotional or I'm just having anxiety or I'm just the problem.

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I'm always the problem.

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And that's where we can't get discernment and suspicion confused.

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I'm just a sinner saved by grace and you never get beyond that.

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Exactly.

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And that's my authority figure.

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That's my pastor.

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He must know better than me.

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And we were taught in the 80s and 90s that our pastors were kind of where the buck stops.

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And because of that, a lot of us did stay in unhealthy, toxic churches because we felt

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loyalty to a person and not to God.

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Mm-hmm.

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So how do you, I mean, your book is called Raised to Stay.

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Okay.

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So how did you deal with church hurt head on without running away?

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Because that's how most people deal with it.

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It's called, it leads to church hopping.

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And people go from one place to another, to another, to another.

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And oftentimes the biggest issue is the common denominator, which is there's an issue that

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they didn't deal with, but there's oftentimes, for a lot of times actually, the issues are

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real, but they just kind of match up with those.

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And it's like they get reconnected all the time.

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How did you deal with that and what advice would you give?

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Well, a lot of people in our generation saw our parents get hurt by the way they were

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getting hurt by the church and then just continued to get abused by those same churches and leadership.

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And so we thought that's not going to happen to us.

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We're not going to be the whipping post for these church leaders anymore.

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And so we came out swinging.

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The minute anything looked familiar, like what we saw our parents walk out or another

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church, we ran, we were, it was fight or flight.

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It was like, I'm not going to let my family go through what I went through as a child.

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And so it's almost like this trauma response of I'm not going to let them hurt me again.

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And for me, I had to be so deeply in love with the people God had called me to serve

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that they were worth fighting for if I was simply hurt.

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Now, when I found myself under abusive leadership, when I found myself under a leadership that was

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harming me spiritually, that was when I had to go.

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And I talk about in the book that there's a difference between packing up our toys and

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just leaving and then knowing that God is calling us out to go because we can't continue to grow

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and produce good fruit and unhealthy soil.

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And so for me, I really had to know, I love the people, I love the Lord, but I also know

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that my soul and my heart matters to the Lord.

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And he is not asking me to stay somewhere where I am being abused or hurt.

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Yeah.

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So how do you, I mean, obviously discernment is going to be a key part of this answer,

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but how do you know, like, I need to deal with this versus I need to leave?

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Yeah.

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John, you know, I love John 15 because it talks about this whole abiding in Christ,

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this remaining in Christ and that when we remain in Christ, when we stay in Christ,

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he will produce good fruit in us and through us that we can accomplish the work he's called

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us to.

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And what I've learned is that when I'm in a church and I am abiding in Christ and I am

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honoring leadership, but there is no opportunity for that good fruit to come from me because

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I am being abused or I am not being honored or I am not in a safe place anymore.

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And I noticed that my own fruit is not growing on the vine.

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That is my first indicator that it's time to start asking the Lord for strategy for the next steps.

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That doesn't mean I just quit my job that day.

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It doesn't mean that I just pack up my family and say, we're going to a different church,

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but we really start to ask the Lord, search me first.

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Is there anything in me that needs to be weeded out or dealt with?

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And then show me, are we supposed to stay and contend for healthy culture?

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Are we supposed to stay and be a voice in the wilderness or are you releasing us to

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go somewhere where we can be in healthier soil?

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And this is an individual conversation with God.

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It's not, there's no textbook to tell you to stay or go.

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And I think that's what people want.

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I think they want somebody to say, you just need to go, which is why social media

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has such a great rap because social media will often times commiserate with the miserable.

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Whereas a lot of times Christian community will say, Hey, contend for that community

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until the Lord, until that cloud moves.

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And it takes a lot of perseverance to stay.

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So Natalie, you know, it takes a lot to be on record and talk about church hurt and

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abuse and to write a book that you call raised to stay, which I heard in another interview,

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you said, you know, if you could have named your ministry raised to abide, you would have done

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that, but raised to stay really is a good name too.

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But what caused you to say, I need to write this book.

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I was watching friend after friend, not just leave ministry, but leave Jesus.

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And I'm 43.

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So I am a millennial gen X hybrid.

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And we saw some of the most explosive evangelical movements in the eighties and nineties.

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We lived through, I'm Pentecostal.

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So we saw revivals, miracles, signs and wonders, but we were also extremely gifted in worship

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and extremely gifted in the arts because that is where a lot of those movements were birthed

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out of were in the nineties where worship suddenly came to the focus.

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And I watched friends who were so gifted in leading worship, so gifted in communicating

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the gospel one by one go through very real life experiences.

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And the church did not know how to be the church to them from divorce to getting pregnant

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before marriage, those non-negotiable sins that the church had kind of deemed the unforgivable

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sins.

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We started slapping scarlet letters on people and we started to lose very anointed and gifted

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people who really were being discarded because they were no longer good or they were no longer

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seen as sanctified or consecrated.

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And I think that as I watched us lose more and more of my peers, I felt this holy chutzpah

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inside of me to say enough.

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We have a mission.

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We need to remain in position, but the church needs to accept the fact that they have not

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been good to their very own children.

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And then we, as those children of the church, also have to say, I've been hurt and I don't

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want to live a life of remaining hurt.

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I want to be healed and marrying that conversation of accountability and then also helping each

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other heal.

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Yeah.

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Wow.

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There's so much to dive into right there.

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And I'm 38, so I'm just a little bit behind you, but I know those exact times that you're

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talking about.

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And as you were talking about how so many of your peers have been lost to the world,

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I've just been like people like Christina Aguilera and there's several others that grew

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up in the church that we know that they grew up in the church.

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And now they've gone the way that Katy Perry, her mother often shares her story and just

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seeing like there's amazing talent that because of different stories, different issues in

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their story, they've gone a different way.

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And now they're really pied pipers for the enemy in a lot of ways.

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And so you hit the nail on the head there, Natalie.

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I mean, that is so true.

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So how do we as the body of Christ, how do we help people get back that have been hurt?

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Because I think there's different levels and you probably talk about this as you get further

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into the book.

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There's people that are on the cusp of leaving, then there's people that have left and there's

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people that have gone.

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How do we help people that have gone that we still love maybe help bring them back?

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I remember being young and people would just be at the altars weeping over their prodigals.

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There was this just desperation to see prodigals come home.

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And something the Lord has been dealing with me about is that we don't have to rush prodigals

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home.

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God is the Holy Hound of heaven who is pursuing his children going after that one.

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And the thing that I'm learning is that we can't rush each other's return.

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And we need to be patient with one another as we slowly come back in and dip our toes

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into the water again and try to see if maybe this one is going to be different.

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Maybe this time it's going to be different.

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And so the church has an easy job.

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The Lord has given us the blueprint to how to receive people into the family of God.

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And that is to love God and to love people.

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And what does love look like?

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It looks like meeting people where they are when they show up, not trying to adjust behavior

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before we address belief.

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And the church is so behavior focused that if we don't change the way that we do church

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within our own walls, we are going to continue to prove to the world that we are not the

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safe place that we say that we are.

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My sister went to breakfast with a friend of ours this morning and she called me and

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she was so grieved.

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She said, Natalie, the very church that was preaching community, that this was a place

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that we could be in community and we could have community.

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The minute that I walked out something hard, that very community rejected me.

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And so we have to start being who we say that we are.

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And the world is a ready receiver of rejected Christians.

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And once they get into the world, the likelihood of us getting them back in our flesh is nearly

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impossible.

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And so we have to operate in that gift of the Holy Spirit of compassion and all of those

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fruits of the Holy Spirit and fruits of the Spirit to be that safe place.

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And trust me, it's not in our flesh because in our flesh, we are nasty Pharisees.

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But when we are walking in the Holy Spirit, we will be that safe place.

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And we have to get back there and very quickly.

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Wow.

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Natalie, we've talked about offense and you mentioned that Lisa Bervier wrote the forward

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of your book and her husband, John, wrote one of my favorite books, Bait of Satan, dealing

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with offense.

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And that's something that you and I talked about before we started this interview.

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Let's talk about that bait of Satan and that offense and how we can protect ourselves from

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that.

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And you also mentioned about secondhand offense, not picking up somebody else's offense.

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Let's just dive into that.

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Yeah.

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I mean, guys, let's be real.

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We don't choose to be hurt.

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We don't pick up hurt.

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We don't walk into a church and say, oh, please, somebody hurt me.

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Hurt happens to us.

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Abuse happens to us.

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And it's violating.

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It is exhausting.

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It is a betrayal like no other when we are hurt or abused by the very institution and

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organization and shepherds who say they are supposed to protect us.

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And so we don't choose to be hurt.

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But offense is a choice.

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We choose to pick up an offense.

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And when I talk about offense, I'm talking about things that probably do feel hurtful.

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And in the moment, it could be that we weren't put on the planning center weekend that we

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always are put on and we weren't given the revelation solo that we always sing.

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And therefore, that person who's leading that ministry must not like me anymore.

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I must have sang something wrong.

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And the enemy goes into a full on assault from that little thing that has happened.

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It could be as simple as the pastor not shaking your hand during the meet and greet.

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It could be not being invited to lead a Bible study and women's Bible study for the fall.

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There are so many things that if we were really to sit back in our own spirit and say, oh,

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I should probably investigate why that happened rather than going to the dark place of everybody

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hates me and everybody's against me.

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And that's what's happening when we're picking up offense is the enemy is just using it to

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create these false scenarios.

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The Bible calls them high things, anything contradictory to the word of God that we're

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commanded to pull down as well as to shake off all those things that so easily keep us

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from from running our race.

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And a lot of us are so weighed down by not only offense, but the things that haven't

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even happened to us that have happened to other people that we've picked up.

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And God never gave us permission to pick those up.

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And so I'm just saying how much freer our race would be if we would stop picking up

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things we were never meant to carry.

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Hmm.

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That's so good, Natalie.

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You know, I'm just feeling led by the spirit right now to ask you in just a moment to be

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to pray for those that are watching, because I'm just hearing in my spirit that there are

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people that are like, well, they don't know what hurt I've gone through.

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They don't know this situation that I've dealt with, and they don't know the people that

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that I have to deal with on a regular basis.

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And you're right.

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We don't know.

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And I'm just going to say that right now.

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We don't know.

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But we know somebody that does know we know that the Holy Spirit that the same Holy Spirit

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that's in us is in you.

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And he who can turn things around, you know, what the enemy meant for evil, God meant for

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good, and God will work those things for good if you let him.

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And so, Natalie, I just want to ask you to pray for those that are watching right now

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that they their their spirit is prickly because of the things that you said.

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And would you just pray for them right now?

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God, I thank you for everyone who is listening to this right now.

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God, you know, even though we don't know, you see every situation.

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Your hand is not too far from us, Lord.

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Your eyes never leave us.

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And in every case of abuse and hurt and offense, Lord, you've been in the rooms.

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You've heard every word that has been spoken and you've heard the ones that have been unspoken.

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You have fought fights for us that we didn't even know you were fighting.

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You've healed us from diseases we didn't even know we had.

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You have gone before us and you go behind us, Lord.

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And I just pray that your Holy Spirit would wrap around each and every one of us, God,

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as we do our very best in this broken world to live this life, God, of following you and

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taking up our cross and going and making disciples.

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You promised us that it wasn't going to be easy, but that you would never leave us.

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And so for those who feel isolated and alone, God, I pray that you would never leave us.

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That your Holy Spirit would meet them right where they are and that you would confirm to them in unique ways.

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God, that you see right where they are.

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God, I pray for unexpected community to come to them.

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God, that where they thought they were forgotten, that a phone call or a text would remind them today.

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God, that you see them right where they are.

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I pray for healing and reconciliation where it's possible here on earth.

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God, though it may not happen in the next week or so, God, I pray that relationships would be formed, God,

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because you are a God who wants to see your family together and unified for where there is unity.

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It commands your blessing.

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And so I pray for households that are divided right now.

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God, between church stuff and church leadership stuff, I pray for unity in our homes and our families.

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And God, I pray that the church would rise up and be the safe place.

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God, that we are called to be a safe haven for the orphan, the widow, the lost God,

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and that we would keep our light burning and our hearts ready to be ready receivers of those

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looking for the living hope. And it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

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Amen. Amen.

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Natalie, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about your book, Raised to Stay.

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And that's also your website, Raisedtostay.com.

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And I want to encourage people to go there to find out more about Natalie, her ministry.

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She's a worship leader. If you didn't pick that up from the interview.

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And so she's got a very great singing voice and you'll enjoy her worship as well as her writing

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and speaking in different places as well.

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So Natalie, is there anything else that you want to leave our audience with today?

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You know, the first chapter I wrote out of the book was chapter six.

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Don't let your Judas keep you from your Jesus.

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And it's strange when you're writing a book because you think you'd start with chapter one.

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But I wrote chapter six first because I was dealing with my own Judas at the time.

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And here's what I would say. Just as Jesus did not allow Judas to keep him from his mission,

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you and I will not let the Judas sitting at our table keep us from doing the thing that God has started in us

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because Philippians 1 6 promises that he who began a good work in us is faithful to complete it to the very end.

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Amen. Amen.

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Natalie, thank you so much for being here on My Charisma.

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Thank you so much.