Dealing with Church Hurt ❤️‍🩹

  When the church fired you, it hurt you, it hurt your family, it hurt

your finances, it hurt your relationships with the community that you build.

So it’s a multifaceted kind of hurt.

And that’s kind of crazy, because when church hurt happens, especially if

you’re a paid vocational worship leader, it affects so many aspects of your life

and that’s why it feels so huge.

Plus the fact, like you said, you’ve given your whole self to this thing.

You’re like, I’ve given everything that I have to this.

And the people that I’m trying to serve are attacking me.

Welcome to the Worship Ministry Training Podcast, a monthly podcast for worship

leaders who are serious about growing in their craft and calling My name is Alex.

Fellow worship leader. Super stoked you’re here.

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All right, let’s get into today’s episode.

If you are in ministry for any length of time, you are bound to be hurt.

Church is filled with flawed humans, and whether it’s unkind congregants

or toxic and egotistical leaders or gossiping and divisive team members,

we can all be wounded in ministry.

And sadly, it’s not really a question of if, it’s a question of when.

When Will you be wounded then?

The question is, how do we protect our hearts so that we don’t

become bitter or jaded or even leave the ministry altogether?

And so I’m excited to bring my guest today, Mike O’Brien

on, and we’re gonna talk all about this.

But before I bring him on, I wanna say we make these podcast episodes not just

to be helpful to you, but also to be helpful to other people in your life.

And so if you know someone who has been wounded recently in ministry,

or who’s going through it, or who’s becoming bitter,

this is a chance for you to pause and send them this episode and encourage them

and say, listen to this and let’s talk about it.

Definitely share the love on this one if you know someone who needs to hear it.

So let me introduce Mike and then I’ll bring him on the screen.

Mike has been a veteran worship leader for over 30 years and now he is travelling

around and doing consulting, training, one on one coaching

and workshops with worship teams.

And he also does them virtually as well.

So, Mike, let me bring you on the screen and I’d love for

you to add to anything that I missed.

How you doing, Mike? Doing great.

Hey, friends.

So good to jump on the pod with you, Alex, and see your Academy folks here

as well from all over the world.

Such a beautiful thing. Awesome.

30 years in ministry, so you’ve seen a lot, you’ve been through a lot.

What I’d love to do for both of us, you and me, is to share some

of our stories or like a high overview of our stories of certain hurtful things

that have happened to us.

I don’t want this to be like a therapy session, but I do want to share just

so they have a bit of context of what we’ve been through.

So if you want to share maybe a two minute story about some yucky stuff that you’ve

seen in the church, and then I’ll share a little bit about what’s happened

to me over the last couple of years.

And then from there we’ll boil out some important principles that we think will

be helpful and healing for the viewers.

So you want to just share a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think it’s funny that it’s like, hey, let’s do a church hurt podcast

and let’s call Mike O’Brien.

He’s been hurt the most.

I. I don’t think I have.

I don’t think I’ve been hurt the most.

I think I’m probably a garden variety person

that has been hurt you know, average.

But here’s the thing. I know that I’ve been the hurt, right?

So I know that on the counselling couch or with spiritual directors,

I’m saying maybe other people’s names.

Well, I know that my name is being said on couches as people are working

through their pain, because I’m the one who caused the pain.

So I think anything around this discussion, just knowing that all have

sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, none of us are without sin,

none of us have not been the perpetrator of hurtful words, phrases, actions,

and oftentimes we feel justified in it.

And so I just want to admit that and say that there’s still people in this town,

in my city, that I led worship with, I travelled the world with,

we led worship together that don’t talk to me because

of the things I’ve said to them or done to them in my 20s or 30s.

So it’s been a lot of hard lessons in leadership.

And yes, I’ve been wounded deeply by things people have said,

and it’s been really hard.

The church I served for 20 years, I developed many worship leaders

and I had five drummers and six bass players and seven sound techs

for a church of 200 people.

I had developed so many people.

I had gotten my master’s degree in worship.

I had done everything the pastor and the leadership wanted me to do,

and eventually they let me go.

They had to not fire me, but retire my position because I had

developed so many others, it didn’t make sense for them to keep my role.

And it was really sad.

There was a lot of pain in that.

It was really quick.

It was too fast.

There wasn’t enough honour for the time that I had given to that place.

I lost my vocation, my family, my friends, and it was very difficult.

I was hurt.

My family was hurt by the way it was done.

Even though in the moment you’re smiling, you’re saying, oh, praise the Lord,

God’s opening new chapters. It was hard.

And I could assign the hurt to particular people, elders or leaders

or finance people, but it felt like the whole church had hurt me too,

like the whole system had let me down.

And just really quickly, a few years ago, some people start to

speak against me, like my mannerisms.

Sometimes the way I teach and train is a bit bold and brash, and my manner can be

very difficult for certain personalities.

And people just started talking about me behind my back.

And five or six different people had built this narrative about me and had brought

the concerns to the leadership.

And the leadership of this particular organisation came to me

and said, we’ve heard all these things.

And I just thought, oh, what?

What happened?

Because it destroyed me.

Like, it gave me panic attacks.

It brought a deep darkness to my soul.

And it was something I had said that maybe was a little off,

but it had steamrolled into this bigger thing and it was so hurtful.

There’s so many times where I could have just said, I’m out.

It’s not worth it. Like, I will go sell widgets, bro.

Oftentimes my conversation with God is like, really?

Like, I’m singing these basic cheesy songs on Sunday for ungrateful people,

for chump change, like, let’s get out.

Like, this is not.

This is not worth it.

You know, this is my final one is this past Sunday.

I was leading worship at a higher church.

They’re doing hymns and contemporary songs.

And this guy just walks up to me.

He’s probably 70, 65.

He’s like, I didn’t like that this morning.

I didn’t know any of those songs.

That’s literally what he said to me.

And I’m just like, oh, nice to meet you.

I want to pull out a few things that you shared.

One is that the cuts can be big cuts or minor cuts,

and they’re happening all the time. Right.

The other thing that you pointed out is that we can actually be the ones

who wound others without even realising it or realising it.

I bet you, like you said, there are a lot of listeners listening to this

whose names are being spoken on other counselling couches.

So we don’t think about that.

We think we’re perfect and we never hurt anybody.

But it might be something that you didn’t do that hurts somebody.

Right.

It’s like, he never says good job to me or whatever.

There’s many ways we hurt other people and we don’t even realise it.

And then the other thing that I thought about was when you shared how

when the church fired you, it hurt you, it hurt your family, it hurt

your finances, it hurt your relationships with the community that you build.

So it’s a multifaceted kind of hurt.

And that’s kind of crazy, because when church hurt happens, especially if

you’re a paid vocational worship leader, it affects so many aspects of your life

and that’s why it feels so huge.

Plus the fact, like you said, you’ve given your whole self to this thing.

You’re like, I’ve given everything that I have to this.

And the people that I’m trying to serve are attacking me.

Sounds just like Jesus.

So let me share briefly a little bit of my story of recent church hurt.

Later on in the podcast, I’ll share a story from a long time ago

that was pretty ugly, too, but just in my own life.

Recently, I was at a pretty large, a very large church here in Los Angeles,

and I was the worship pastor for about five and a half years.

And then at the five and a half year mark, our senior pastor retired.

We got a new senior pastor, and I had a conversation because

I’m pushy and controlling and I very immature in certain areas.

And I was, like, trying to prove myself.

And I’m learning all this now because I’m in counselling

because of the church hurt. Thank God.

I’ve learned a lot about myself.

And that’s one of the things we’ll talk about later is the good

that can come out of the church hurt.

But I came to him with a list, and I said, here are 10 ideas for

what I think would benefit the church.

Obviously, you’re the senior pastor.

Do what you want with it, but here’s what I think.

And he was like, hey, these are really great ideas,

and these are super strategic, and not one of them is about worship.

Do you even want to be a worship leader?

And I was like, well, maybe not forever. I love leadership.

I love strategy.

I don’t know what God has for me.

And so that comment, maybe not forever, I guess he tucked it away.

And four months later, we’re at a staff retreat in the desert, and

there’s, you know, 60 staff in a room, and he is talking about something else.

And randomly, as a side comment, he just says, and that’s why Alex is no longer

going to be the worship pastor anymore. Wow.

And that is the first time I heard it in front of everyone.

I’m just like, wow, that’s it.

Like, P.S. you’re done, Alex.

You know, and so over the course of the next six months, like, my role

was kind of stripped away.

Like, my team was stripped away.

My title was, like, everything.

And then over the next couple years, because I stayed, I was trying

to, like, be a good soldier.

Over those couple years, I had a lot of unfortunate conversations,

meaning they were pretty uncomfortable and unfair, and, you know, I was ignored.

It was just an uncomfortable environment for me.

And ultimately I left.

And by the time this podcast airs, it’ll be almost a year since I left.

So I feel comfortable sharing it at this point.

And I’m being vague enough, but good grief, that hurt.

I mean, Good grief.

That was so not what I had for my life, but God did.

And I guess I can start now sharing some of these principles

that we can dive into.

Well, Alex, go ahead.

Since it’s so fresh, I just want to say I’m sorry.

Yeah. Thank you.

It really sucks, man.

Oh, it’s not fun.

It’s not good.

That wasn’t right, the way that Leader responded.

And you’re the kind of guy where it sounds like he could have had

a good lunch with you and said, hey, let’s go deeper with this.

And he probably could have let you go in a much more honouring way.

Like that would have benefited everybody and wouldn’t have hurt him at all.

And I’m just sorry that that happened.

That’s freaking terrible.

And it shouldn’t have been like that.

Yeah, thank you.

It was sad because my team, and it’s not my team, that’s the thing,

it’s the Lord’s team, it’s the Lord’s church, we’re stewards of it.

But it’s like you become attached to these people.

And I’m on stage every week, multiple times a week,

leading this church and then basically over the course of two years,

I’m disappearing into the background and eventually slinking out the back door,

not wanting to even be seen by anybody.

And it’s like, wow, like, I gave my whole self to this church.

Like my whole self.

So, yeah, there was no fanfare.

And when we exit churches and we haven’t stolen $100,

000 or slept with the secretary or done some nefarious things,

when we exit churches and the churches do not celebrate us or have some sort

of thing to say, thank you, we appreciate you, we love you,

which my church did, they did a good job.

Even though they had to let me go, they still said, hey, you contributed

so much and we love you and appreciate you and you didn’t get that.

So many worship leaders contribute in those second or third chair positions

and organisations and they are not honoured in the transitions

the way the senior pastors are.

These second and third chair positions, we just shuffle them

in and out because we don’t want to disrupt the organisation too much.

And you were a victim of that.

And it’s not to say you did everything perfectly and you’re an angel,

but it’s just wrong and I’m sorry, it’s so silly and I just want to say it

out loud for all the worship leaders.

Like, you deserve to be honoured.

Even if it was a bad fit chemistry wise or they want to make a change, like, that’s

okay, but let’s be hopeful and honouring.

I want to say that’s my side of the story.

If you ask the senior pastor, they might say a different thing.

They might be like, well, Alex did this and he did that and I don’t even know

what I did because I’m unaware of that.

There’s always another side.

Yes, but God is sovereign and he allows, allowed this to happen

for my good and for his glory.

I see so much good that the Lord allowed to work in my heart

and my life through this.

Like I said, I started going to counselling because of this

and I learned that I’ve got all sorts of problems inside of myself

that I’ve never even known about.

And so the Lord has done a beautiful work in my life that he couldn’t have done

unless he made this happen or allowed this to happen.

Whatever your theology dictates. Sure.

It’s like he allowed this to happen and I wouldn’t want to go

through it again, but I wouldn’t undo what I went through because of

the beauty that came out of that.

So God is sovereign, even over unfortunate circumstances.

Do you want to speak into that? Yeah.

The theology is all over the place. Right.

What does God allow? What is his idea?

I do believe that the Lord, he’s making all things new,

like the kingdom here on earth.

Lord, let your kingdom come.

We’re praying that the goodness of God’s future kingdom comes on earth

today and that we’re a part of that renewal in the church.

The renewal is actually happening, that our worship teams, our structures

of power within the church, they reflect a kingdom coming, an upside down kingdom

where the most honoured people, the most gifted people are the ones washing feet.

We’re praying for that.

And the future systems that you’re a part of, you’re going

to be a much better leader in the future.

And we know this because sometimes I meet with leaders in their 50s and 60s

that still love Jesus, still are in the church and their care for me is at

a whole nother level, like they get it.

So don’t do it to the next generation.

Be a better king.

Yeah.

I think what you’re saying too is whatever.

If God allowed it or didn’t allow it, like it happened.

And you can learn from what happened and not do that to the next person

that you lead, Right? Yeah.

And if your bitterness is going to carry you to the next

assignment, it’s bad news bears.

If you’re going to take that bitterness to the next assignment.

And you become less trusting of the leaders and you have

this bitter root inside of you.

It’s not good.

Yes, you’ll have a different guard up and you’ll have more wisdom, but don’t

take it everywhere you go and know that your family’s carrying it too.

Like you might reconcile with that pastor.

You might experience things on the therapist couch where you become healed,

but your wife is still ticked off, your kids are still irritated.

We need to let them know, hey, I’ve forgiven this person.

Or I’m going through this because they’re going through

their own indirect wounding as well.

Yeah.

The second thing I want to share from our stories is that part

of ministry is suffering.

And I’ll explain what I mean by that.

I remember being in a small Baptist church.

I was a youth pastor and we had a really divisive church split

and the elders were yelling at the pastor and the pastor was yelling at the elders.

And it was a big meeting and the missionaries

were standing up and yelling. And I was like, this is disgusting.

This is so ugly. This is so wrong.

To see 80 year old missionary to Africa standing up and yelling

at the pastor, like, this is so wrong.

And I wanted to quit ministry forever after that.

I was like, this is it. I don’t want to do this.

I thought, I want to do this.

But if this is what ministry is, I don’t want to do this.

So I was getting ready to leave ministry forever.

And I read Colossians chapter one and I call it the suffering sandwich.

Paul says, I’m filling up what is lacking in Christ’s affliction.

And I am struggling and toiling and in the middle, it’s to see Christ formed

in you, which is the hope of glory.

So you got filling up what’s lacking in Christ’s affliction.

On top, you’ve got struggle and toil on the bottom, and then you’ve got

the hope of glory, which is Christ being formed in you in the middle.

And I was like, oh, this is ministry.

If you want to be in ministry, you’re going to have

to eat the suffering sandwich.

And I just had to say, okay, well then, now at least

I know what I’m getting myself into.

If I continue moving forward in ministry, I will continue to eat this sandwich.

And should we be surprised by suffering in ministry when our Lord was crucified

by the people he came to serve?

Do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah.

I mean, in this season of Lent, this is a season

where we journey with Jesus to the cross, where we Remember his suffering for us.

We remember that we don’t suffer alone.

It’s a time for the evangelical church to go time out.

The party’s not happening every Sunday, or there’s a feast,

but there’s also a funeral.

So that should be a part of our worship as worship leaders.

I think Piper says worship is teaching people to suffer well.

So a lot of the lyrics I sing not so much in mega churches, but in churches

that allow it is suffering lyric, you know, in the darkness in my valley.

Not just like quick little things, but like, we’re going

to sit here for a minute.

Like, when there is no answer, though the questions asked may never be resolved.

Whom have I but you? Right?

I mean, like, it’s broken.

It might not be fixed on this side of mortality, but you are sovereign.

You are good. I think that that’s huge.

It’s a really good reflection.

So just some thoughts in that. Yeah.

Actually, I want to point out something you said.

It’s not related to the conversation, and we don’t

have to go down this rabbit trail.

But it’s just a funny comment.

You said, I sing songs of suffering, not in mega churches.

And that reminds me of a conversation that I had recently with Aaron

Keys, and he was saying how mega churches are all about just

jubilistic, triumphalistic, like, everything’s happy up into the right.

And you’re like, yeah, they don’t let me sing those songs there, which is so sad.

But let’s not.

Let’s not go down that rabbit trail.

But here’s the thing.

It’s connected to our conversation because our worship oftentimes just

lives in the feast.

We don’t have space for true suffering.

And it starts with the worship team.

So when your worship team has a little huddle before church

starts, hey, how are you guys doing? Everything’s great.

Praise the Lord. God’s good, you know?

No, like, the best huddles I have are the sound guy saying,

hey, I’m struggling with faith.

I don’t even believe God this week, man.

Me and my wife might get divorced.

Yeah, I’m kind of bored with church right now.

Like, those would be the kind of huddle conversations I’d like to have,

because that’s the reality.

If you have 10 people on your team, you’re going to have some people

struggling with faith.

So to be able to have some dark conversations

and invite that versus everything, just being on this buzzy, buzzy appraisal.

And it’s not just mega churches.

It’s the culture of, like, worship and like, to Aaron’s point,

like, a lot of the songs are just like, everything’s awesome.

The goodness of God.

Well, yes, God’s good.

Because rich white Americans writing songs in Franklin, Tennessee.

Like, it is awesome.

It’s, like, amazing.

I’ve been in some of those rooms and it is.

There isn’t a lot of this pain in the suffering.

So the pain that we feel, it is coming.

You’re not going to avoid it.

It will come at some point and.

It’S going to come at the hands of people most often.

And this is my third observation or encouragement for those of you who

are going through pain, which is don’t confuse Jesus with his followers.

Jesus is perfect, but his followers are not.

So don’t get angry at Jesus for his followers.

Bad behaviour.

You have to realise when you go to church, you’re going to be dealing with

flawed people who are going to gossip, who are going to let the flesh take over

and they’re going to say things.

Even though you think the pastor or this elder or this deaconess should

be more mature, there’s still people.

And unfortunately, everybody’s jacked up.

Just like, if you’re honest with yourself, you’re jacked up too.

So what you want to share about how to kind of protect our hearts

without blaming Jesus for the hurt?

Yeah.

Well, there’s parts of the Bible, like the story of Job and so many places

where the Father, a good Father, is going to do things to us that feel like pain.

They feel like hurt.

God, why are you doing this to me?

I believe my theology has enough space to say God is doing things to me that

feel like pain, that my interpretation is going to feel like hurt.

And a lot of times in church, the things done to us,

our interpretation is they hurt us.

But actually sometimes it’s really good for us.

It’s what we needed.

It is the Lord that’s doing that.

But it’s hurt.

It feels like hurt.

Our summary is that is pain.

It’s not like people are sinning against us.

Sometimes that is the case.

Like the dude that came up to me after church and just kind of, kind of

rebuked me, like, bro, that’s not cool.

Like, you could have done that a little differently.

But sometimes the things said to us are done to us

are the things that we actually need, but we interpret them as hurt.

So just to be careful with that, my whole thing has always been like, the church

didn’t hurt you, a person hurt you. Right.

That’s always been my correction.

But I realised that if the priesthood of believers, the body of Christ,

if that’s truly God’s mandate for us, then we all are together.

So it’s the system that hurt.

It is truly the church that hurt you, even if it was Becky

the elder that cut you down.

Becky’s a part of the system of the church.

So it is kind of fair and okay to say the church hurt me.

Because if we are one body, unified body, then it’s all or nothing.

We can blame crazy Becky the elder that hurt my feelings, but it’s a

much more difficult conversation to say.

She’s attached to a system that is kind of messed up and we need

to address, you know, that’s a much.

Bigger conversation that’s about the church itself in America at least, being

upside down in terms of power structure

and servanthood and fame and elevation.

Not elevation, worship, but elevation of like status and personality.

And there’s not a lot of humble shepherding happening in the church.

And it’s scary. Yeah.

And it’s not even a Western thing.

Like people love power all over the world. Right.

So those structures and systems of power, the power pyramid, if it’s not

turned upside down like Jesus modelled, it’s nasty all the time.

Yeah.

Well, it’s a good reminder for all of us to be as humble and servant minded

as possible and go as low as possible and lead with humility,

lead with love, lead with servitude.

The last kind of area I want to touch on for today is to process your hurt

with those outside of the church.

Because surprisingly, whether or not you think you’re asking someone

to be confidential about a conversation, it will leak.

Anything you say will be shared with others.

And so finding a safe community or people or counsellor or person for you to just

block, get it all out of yourself.

Process with those outside of the church.

There’s a proverb that says, the gist of it is, be careful what

you say about the king in your bedroom because a little birdie might hear and

take your message to the king.

And so what are your thoughts about processing?

How can we process the hurt in a healthy way, but also a wise way?

Yeah.

I encourage every ministry leader, every worship leader to have a punching

bag, somebody you can go to and you can say anything to.

Right. Certainly this could be a therapist.

This could be a spiritual director, which if you don’t understand the art

of spiritual direction, it’s kind of an ancient practise

that has come back into popularity.

It’s not crazy, it’s really helpful.

It’s kind of somebody that’s not a therapist, but just somebody

like an old priest that’s just going to sit with you and process what

the Lord is saying to you.

So that’s a practise that’s really good and it’s more affordable than therapy.

So therapists, a spiritual director, are people you can pay, but within

your denomination or other churches.

This is why conferences are really good, to just build relationships

with Those that are 10, 20 years further to say, hey, can I just

pick your brain every once in a while?

I’ve got a couple tools on my phone that I use to talk to sage wise,

old school worship leaders.

One is Marco Polo and one is Voxer.

So these are like apps to where I can call my buddy Dan, I can leave a message

to him basically and say, hey, Dan, I’m working through this thing.

This is what the guy said to me Sunday.

What would be a good response for this?

And when he’s ready, he’ll just give me the answer, right?

Or I can email him.

But I’ve got two or three people like that in my life that I can say anything to

and they’re going to give me some wisdom from an outside perspective.

And sometimes it’s things I don’t want to hear.

So that’s when you know you’ve got a good coach, is when they tell you

things you don’t want to hear.

And then I would say just, you know the Matthew 18, if

you’re going to worship and you realise that there’s something your brother

has against you, stop worship.

Jesus actually tells us, hey, I don’t care about that new song or the Led wall

or your excellence in worship.

I’m actually pretty good.

I don’t need any of this.

Can you stop it and go deal with your brother that sinned against you

or you sinned against them and make the conversation, make the call.

So as a worship leader, as a worship pastor, several times a year, this is me

with 30 years experience, several times a year I’m pulling people aside

saying, hey, Kelly, can we just chat for a quick second after church?

And you get into a little private cove and you say, hey, Kelly, I think I

said something Thursday night that was inappropriate and wrong.

Did I hurt your feelings?

Well, actually you did.

You said that thing and it hurt me so much I cried all night.

I am so sorry, Kelly, will you forgive me?

I should not have said that.

That was so rude of me. Please forgive me.

Right?

That’s the work of the ministry and vice versa.

If the sound guy said something to your drummer and you’re like,

bro, that is not cool.

Hey, Steve, Two minutt