The effect of a missed life.
Broken Rising Blog | 008
By Gary Don
I find death bed confessions a rather tragic thing.
Not because at the very last moments a wayward soul is snatched from the enemy and redeemed for all eternity, that part makes my soul happy. And not because a loved one can now have some semblance of peace in their heart that their family member or friend, like the thief on the Cross, had a powerful last-minute encounter with the savior and will have an eternity to celebrate. Those thoughts are comforting. The reason I find those moments tragic is because they missed a life on Earth with the savior filled with seasonal glimpses of Heaven that very well would have led to others getting their own glimpse of the savior. This is especially tragic if they lived a life of burden, pain and brokenness, instead of Christ’ hope, peace and love.
Being wounded and abused by a senior church leader when you are called as a pastor or a lay (non-clergy) church leader is a devastating experience, for a number of reasons. The most destructive reason in my estimation is that what we do for the Lord is connected to who we are in Christ, and when that very calling is abused and devalued, throwing in the towel becomes a tragic personal option, because the attack is connected to who we are in God’s eyes. It’s tragic for the leader themselves, and the church as it loses yet another leader, again. Throughout the 2020+ pandemic years I have talked with more pastors and lay leaders than I care to count about how many wanted to quit, or did quit, because of the terrible social conditions caused by the pandemic. Though I certainly can’t judge a single pastor or church leader for making a hard personal decision in light of the immense pressure they have gone through. Those leaders came face to face with the terrible decision to lay down the sword the Lord placed in their hands to destroy the works of the enemy as a soldier in His army of redemption and healing. The same kind of personal calculations happen too often in the light of a breaking under situation for staff pastors and lay leaders when they are abused by a senior leader in the church.
Don’t walk into eternity with regrets of how you spent this blink of an eye life
Though the decision to prematurely leave ministry, either formally or informally, in the light of senior church leadership spiritual and emotional abuse is always tragic for the moment and season that it happens, it becomes more tragic with each passing season you sit on the proverbial bench. That’s because before you lies years and decades of a life of Heaven’s destiny, that will be missed. People you were supposed to lead to Jesus. People who you were supposed to disciple. Kingdom leaders you were supposed to raise up. Teams you were supposed to lead. A once in a lifetime sermon that you will never preach that will never spur others onto their destiny in a moment of encounter. An injustice God will never be able to use you to make right. Marriages you won’t be there to help the Holy Spirit mend. The list goes on because your potential in Christ in the decades, years, or even seasons ahead are endless.
They do not cry out to me from their hearts but wail upon their beds. They gather together for grain and new wine but turn away from me. I trained them and strengthened them, but they plot evil against me. (Hosea 7:14-15 NIV84)
Hosea is a tough book to swallow, especially if you don’t read it all the way to understand the prophetic call God was making to the nation. I mean, God called a holy prophet of the Lord and the law to marry a prostitute, if anything it just goes to show us how seriously God takes His prophetic message. In the middle of God explaining His perspective on why Israel was to soon come under judgement, we get this perspective from the Lord that caught my mind’s eye in regards to the issue of those who walk away, even justifiably, from the call of God because of abuse at the hands of a senior church leader. Some just walk away from God’s call to preach, teach and lead in the Kingdom. Others walk away from the Lord altogether, and prayerfully by God’s own grace, return near or at the end of a life of running from the Lord. Israel was doing the same thing, but unlike the spiritually wounded leader, Israel was doing it out of direct sin. However, the tragic effects were the same – a missed life. They made room for everything else but the abandoned calling of the Lord, they built the big bank account, and a comfortable life for them and their family, and who could blame them for doing that? However, the perspective of Heaven isn’t one of blame, it’s the mourning over a lost destiny, and a life of what could have been in the Lord.
To those of you who have left ministry, vocational or otherwise, or have even left the love and grace of Jesus because of your own broken under experience at the hands of a spiritually and emotionally abusive church leader, I can only offer to you a plea from my heart as I write this. The pain is real and God gets that, and there’s possibly a long road of healing ahead for you. But please don’t come to the end of your days on your deathbed and point to one leader who represented Jesus poorly as they lead you, as the reason why you missed a life of marked destiny in the Lord. Don’t walk into eternity with regrets of how you spent this blink of an eye life in the light of God’s call on you, because you know it’s there. It’s there because the second last line in Hosea 7:15 speaks to Israel’s call and gifts, but to yours as well “I trained them and strengthened them.” Don’t journey the coming years and seasons knowing what the Lord has given you, and experience the effects of a missed life because of your wounding by a church leader.
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