A guest post from Sarah Hanks
The Brave Author Novella Collection Every Voice Heard releases tomorrow. My novella For the Love of Truth is part of this outstanding collection. It was a privilege to partner with N.Y. Dunlap and D. T. Powell to bring stories about church hurt and abuse.
Church hurt and church abuse are two separate things, but they often produce the same result. Church hurt happens when someone in the church hurts someone else, often unintentionally. It’s real, painful, and occurs when someone doesn’t act like the Jesus they represent. If you haven’t experienced church hurt, just wait. Because church is full of human beings with sin natures, if you hang along long enough, you’ll get hurt. Because hurt people hurt people, you might have been the instigator of church hurt with or without knowing it. Throw a bunch of messy human beings together and we’re bound to make a mess of things.
Church abuse is something more sinister. More than an innocent mistake that causes pain, it’s often targeted. Whether it includes sexual abuse or spiritual abuse by manipulation, the abuser is often a person in authority within the church who takes advantage of someone in the congregation or on staff.
In Every Voice Heard, N.Y. Dunlap and D. T. Powell have novellas highlighting church hurt, while mine shines a light on church abuse.
Unfortunately, the end result of both church hurt and abuse is often the injured person leaving the church altogether. I’ve seen this many times personally. It’s painful to watch, but it’s understandable.
The thing is, God created this messy thing called Christian community to be a vessel of healing to His people. Jesus heals every heart wound. He is the truth that sets us free. And though He can do that without involving another person, often He chooses to speak that truth through the mouth of others in His body.
When we reject Christian community, we cut ourselves off from a source of healing. Satan loves for us to isolate because it makes us easier to attack.
What I love about all three novellas in this collection is that they find healing in Jesus through Christian community. Each story comes at the problem from a different angle and with a different solution. The combination of these novellas shows different ways the Lord can lead us. No matter which method He puts on our hearts, He is the one who heals and redeems.
Have you experienced church hurt or abuse? How did the Lord walk you through it?
About Sarah:
Sarah Hanks spent a decade delightfully merging her two main passions—writing and equipping children—by writing a variety of Sunday school curricula for churches in her community. She wrote her first novel when she was seventeen and continued to write fiction “on the side” until deciding to pursue writing professionally with Mercy Will Follow Me. She and her husband have nine children of their own, a couple of whom seem to have inherited their mother’s love for playing with words and crafting stories. Though Sarah dreams of a cabin by the beach, the family lives together in beautiful chaos in St. Charles , Missouri. She buys ear plugs in bulk.
