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Should you help your ex-spouse? No. The end.

If only it were always that simple, right? For some of you, that’s all you need to read. For the rest of you, this may be the article you need to finish.

It’s the cold plunge of reality your psyche needs if you’re going to survive divorce.

Let’s be clear. The person sitting on the other side of the mediation table already has their ring off. This meeting’s not about fixing your marriage. It’s about who gets what. That’s not your lover on the other side. It’s a stranger with boxing gloves on. Proceed accordingly. Yes, that sounds cold. Divorce is a frigid volcano.

For the one still in love with your ex: Just because you’re not wearing gloves doesn’t mean they won’t take a swing. An even harsher truth? They know you’re still in love with them. Arms at your side won’t stop a right hook. That’s free money and trampled boundaries.

Here’s an uppercut: Your ex-spouse is like an enemy who will capitalize on your vulnerability. Enemy is a strong word. So is divorce.

Divorce is the cage match you never trained for.

What octagon has pictures of your children everywhere and spoons you both collected from all fifty states? How do you fight someone you’re still in love with? You can’t afford not to.

It’s an out-of-body experience. Like being dragged into an alternate reality of your worst nightmare and forced into decisions that follow you for years if you get them wrong. Being “in love” can be devastating. Your ex is counting on it.

You are no longer their priority. That’s a gut punch.

Dust finally settles. Reality grievously creeps in. A part of you still chases glimpses of the person you fell in love with. The phone rings. It’s them. They need money and they need it now.

Heartstrings take you for a ride. This was the person you pledged your life to, and they need your help now. What an opportunity! What a trap.

If there’s one thing to glean from this article: accept and live like you’re divorced. Because you are. Your money needs to accept it too. The only time finances need to be discussed is during divorce proceedings. Anything beyond that is overreach and possibly an attempt to exploit feelings you still have for them. This is a classic “have your cake and eat it too” situation. Ali called it the Rope-a-Dope. They wanted to end a life with you, just not the financial benefit you may have provided. Their current financial situation is most likely of their own doing. Don’t buy tickets to that circus.

Even in the aching, don’t sacrifice your finances during divorce proceedings. Dollars aren’t an olive branch to be extended. This doesn’t mean being cold-hearted and vicious. Divorce shouldn’t be a money grab. It’s self-preservation. Make financial boundaries clear and never extend beyond them. Even if your ex falls on hard times. It may be hard to watch. Just hide your pocketbook from view. You will lose every time if you don’t.

Children are often weaponized while determining custody, visitation schedules, and child support. It gets ugly fast. They become pawns in the knock-down-drag-out of which parent wins custodial superiority. You’re thrust into the cage against the person you lovingly created them with. If you’re fighting for your marriage, it’s tempting to “end the war” to preserve a chance for future reconciliation. It’s a lie self-told too often.

Giving up any kind of parental rights to ‘help’ your spouse sacrifices influence in your children’s lives. Don’t do it. The cost is too steep.

In the other corner stands the ex who continually needs you to watch the kids more so they can relive their college years. The junior in theta phi you’re still in love with. What a win/win! You get to see the kids more and show your ex how willing you are to be strung along. That’s not help. That’s enablement. Kids need both parents. When one is constantly pawning off their responsibilities, the kids start feeling like a burden to everyone. Standing your ground is the best way to help your spouse behave and your kids to feel valued.

You’re fired from helping with taxes, laundry, lawn care, remembering important dates, and running errands for them. Most importantly, you’re not a booty-call. Your attempts to ‘act’ married give your ex permission to stay just that. All the benefits, none of the responsibilities. Sounds like college. It confuses your children too. Most children want their parents to get the band back together again. No more visitations, just life under one roof. That’s the dream. When they see mommy and daddy playing pretend, it creates resentment and distrust. You’re not helping your spouse, only hurting your children.

Establish boundaries now. Your future spouse will thank you. Unless you’re hellbent on crippling your next marriage before it starts. If you’re still in love with your ex, understand that the probability of remarriage is extremely low. As in 6% low. The best thing you can do for yourself is begin living life as a single adult with children. Think of your former spouse accordingly. Pretend the only thing you share is the kids’ calendar. It’s hard to land a punch when your heartstrings can no longer be pulled into your ex.

How would your new spouse react to seeing your ex’s clothes still hanging in their closet? Want an instant reason for marriage counseling? Keep ‘helping’ the competition. That’s exactly how your new spouse will view it. When you help your ex, you’re writing them into the wedding vows. Remove their seat from the table of your marriage. The new spouse is the priority. Period.

Divorce is the ultimate rejection. The pain keeps you from seeing straight. For the one still in love, you’d do anything to get the other half of your heart back. Accepting that the person you planned to spend the rest of your life with no longer wants to. Agonizing. Continually helping them only lets the wound fester. They move on while you reel in agony and delusion.

Bob Newhart would tell you to ‘Stop It.’ I’m begging you to.

That’s a knockout.

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Lying to yourself lengthens the pain. Projecting it to others highlights it. It’s like reporting the news of your life oblivious to the dumpster fire raging behind you.

“I’m fine.”

“It was amicable.”

“Kids are adjusting well.”

It’s hard to hear you above the sound of burning garbage.

Newsflash was the name of a skit on the improv comedy show, Whose Line is it Anyway? A classic. Two ‘anchors’ interviewing a ‘reporter,’ giving live updates, completely unaware of the pandemonium exploding on the green screen behind them. All while the audience can see everything. The sharp contrast of what’s being reported and the chaos behind them was comedic genius. In divorce, it’s a harsh reality.

Maybe no one will notice the flames if you post about how much fun your first Easter without the kids was.

Welcome to the green screen.

Laughter, jokes, and jazz hands. All distracting from the disaster unfolding behind you. You’re selling a story no one is buying. When divorce ignites the fire, honesty is your friend. Not fake news.

Some of these may hit hard. Please don’t hit the eject button. The version of you ten years from now will be thankful for it. You’ll push back. Maybe fingers are already twitching toward the comments. Give this piece a chance.

#1 – “I’m Fine”

Quick answer: No, you’re not. Divorce is life-jarring. A death without a funeral see divorce grief. If you’re newly divorced, you’re somewhere along the five steps of grief. “I’m fine,” is denial. Step number one.

It’s the lie we tell ourselves to numb the pain or salvage an image. We curdle at being seen at our lowest. We’re hardwired to press onward. Project strength. Divorce feels like failure. That’s not an option. You have to be fine. Culture demands it. We like roasting marshmallows around dumpster fires.

Marriages don’t end in a courtroom.

By the time those papers are stamped and signed, the bond has long been severed. At this point everything should be fine, right? Now you can stand in front of a green screen reporting how relieved you are that it’s all over. You’re doing great. #Divorcestrong

Going from “I do” to “I don’t” is an excruciating process. Nothing about divorce is ‘fine.’ We just don’t know how to mourn it, buckling under the pressure to preserve an image long gone. We pretended the marriage was solid. Said separation was a season. Divorce was a speed bump. Smiling the entire way. Everything’s fine. So what’s with the empty ice cream pints and Netflix asking if you’re still watching?

How many times have you heard about a couple getting divorced and thought to yourself, “I had no clue, they seemed fine.” They weren’t.

It’s okay to not be okay. Stop the live feed, go backstage and cry. Weep the loss. Let your body feel all of it. Wave goodbye to social media for a season. Comparison gives fuel to “I’m fine.” Tell someone safe about the train wreck they’ve already seen. Drop the image. Take the broken first step of healing instead.

#2 – It Was Amicable

Remember all the mutual breakups from high school? For one side it was. Two weeks of bliss gone in a handwritten note full of hearts. Divorce is usually amicable to the side petitioning. For the other, an attempt to save face. Who likes getting dumped? Divorce is high school breakups on steroids. The notes are way longer.

Let’s rewind. At one point you held their hand, slid a ring on their finger, and pledged your lives to each other. You became one…a lot. Hopefully. A quick freshman biology refresher: Sex makes babies. Maybe you had a few. Creating an eternal soul or fifteen together. You saw each other’s great, good, bad, and extremely ugly. Maybe all of them within five minutes. No one else ever saw that.

You were naked in every way. A transparent marriage. Everything was shared, nothing hidden. Two souls woven in covenant. A life intimately shared.

You don’t pass a note in seventh period and call it even.

Divorce is anything but amicable. It’s two souls being hacked apart and left bleeding out. We use the word to make it sound surgical. Chainsaws make horrible scalpels. Your children pay the price. Lives changed forever. That’s not “amicable.” It’s catastrophic.

Intimacy fades. Divorce doesn’t feel like an end, just a natural progression to a courthouse. By the time you tell someone it was “amicable,” you believe it.

Accept the weight of it. Don’t sugar coat. Speak honestly about the fallout. Divorce is never amicable.

#3 – Going Back to Normal

The Titanic isn’t booking cruises this year. It’s taken on water. There’s no getting back what’s gone.

One of the hardest truths to face after divorce is how quickly the cement dries. You’ve split the stuff, but the rhythms of life take time to recalibrate. Normal is no more. Someone else needs to do your taxes this year. Have fun taking over calendar planning. Guess you’re gonna need to find a mechanic for those brake pads. Sprinkle in a new spouse and buckle up. It may get bumpy.

Divorce changes everything.

Friends you shared as a couple are now unsure of who to choose. There’s an empty chair every time you get together. Ignore it? Talk about it? How much? How long before that gets old? Some friends won’t be able to make the adjustment. You might not either. And that’s okay.

People waste years trying to salvage the past, refusing to embrace a future forced upon them. The ring is still on the finger. Their side of the closet left empty for when they return. Even after their ex remarries. Unacceptance isn’t faith. For those who fought to save their marriage, the immediate future looks grueling. After all, they wanted this, not you.

Instead of accepting pain, we chase ghosts. Holding on wreaks havoc. Normal gets messier. Healing gets cut at the knees.

Recreating the past opens the door to continual betrayal. You can’t heal wounds that keep splitting open.

Normal is never coming back. Own it and build a new future.

#4 – Tell a Great Story

“My fish was this big.” A classic whopper told by amateur anglers as hands spread further apart with each word. Minnows aren’t forty-seven inches long.

Human nature tends to move the sticks of divorce based on who’s spinning the tale. Presenting the case of how you were wronged is predictable. It’s clear where the blame lies. Leave no doubt who’s starring as the victim. Shine the spotlight on the villain. Don’t be afraid to embellish. That’s the playbook.

In the moment there’s satisfaction, even a little relief. Faces reflect the reaction you were going for. You’ve got some fans. Now what?

Here’s a hard truth from someone looking back on divorce a decade later: Convincing others of how awful your ex was doesn’t move your life forward. Reprising your role as the victim keeps you marinating in pain. The more energy you spend disparaging your ex, the more mental real estate you surrender to them in the future.

“There’s your story, their story, with truth landing somewhere in between.” This gets drowned out under a megaphone of self-preservation. Another version of the story exists. Silencing it backfires for two reasons:

First, it shuts the door on honest reflection.

You’re not excusing bad behavior or how they failed you. You’re opening the door to healing. Examining your part through impartial lenses clears the way. Wounds remain infected when ignored. Candor is a powerful anesthetic. A godly counselor who will go there with you is worth every dollar.

Second, not everyone will take your side.

It’s a hard pill to swallow when a subtle dig on the socials from your ex is liked by a friend. At least you know where the friendship stands. Resist the charged response. It won’t change minds. It will galvanize them. Let self-restraint win. Time will do the talking.

#5 – I’m Ready!

Our culture fails miserably with mourning. We treat it as a disease, seeking out every remedy to avoid it. If you’re mourning, something’s wrong with you. Get up and dance. Go to a Tony Robbins Conference. Watch anything from Joel Osteen. Your breakthrough is coming for a thousand dollars.

You burst out of bed, put on your running shoes and bolt toward the door to show the world nothing can slow you down. Only one problem. It’s hard to sprint when the bottom half of your right leg flops uncontrollably from side to side with every step. Everyone in the neighborhood can tell it’s broken. You can’t feel that? Our culture says you’re not supposed to.

Sitting on the bench of life is humiliating. We’re not wired to “sit this one out.” Healing is boring. That’s exactly where you need to be after the chaos of divorce.

Jesus, godly counseling, and time are the only prescription for brokenness.

Sit this season out.

It’s hard watching someone go through the despair of divorce while projecting sunshine and roses. It’s like the French spraying perfume on top of their body odor.

Wearing a cast over your heart isn’t weakness. It’s honest. The more transparent you are with yourself, the faster you heal. Our culture is addicted to image. Project a version of yourself that isn’t real. Divorce doesn’t let you do that.

Healing doesn’t come with a fast forward button.

Quit the nightly newscast.

Go get some rest.

Ten years ago I would’ve never read this article. The pain would’ve been too raw to listen to any of it. But looking back, if I would’ve even applied even one of these, I could’ve healed a lot quicker.

Please, if you know of someone going through a divorce right now, would you please share this with them. Or maybe you know of someone who is still struggling moving past a divorce that happened awhile ago. I’m dedicated to helping people through their pain.

There is life on the other side of divorce. Even an abundant one.

God bless and thank you for reading!

Life was full speed until that cement wall jumped out of nowhere. The nerve.

“You got this.”

“It’s just a season.”

“Your breakthrough is coming.”

“Acceptance is defeat.”

These slogans scroll across the news ticker of your life as constant dopamine hits to keep this hype train rolling. You’ve got meetings, phone calls, sermons, and deliverables all needing your ‘A’ game. You don’t have time to feel.

Rushing to finalize Sunday’s notes has you striking keys at light speed before the media team arrives in an hour. You thrive on deadlines. “The 360 Life” series is set to challenge people to live their full life in Christ and launch into the small group campaign. The future looks bright! It looks busy.

Last month had record attendance. Momentum swells with new energy filling the room. The noise is palpable. Rows sat empty for five years and now fruit is finally showing up. All that labor in the desert is finally paying off. Or maybe it has something to do with the church split down the road.

Home is chaotic as kids shovel down dinner to make it on time for youth group. Life is school, practice, events, & church. The frantic shorthand of a busy schedule. Braces make it more expensive. Lukewarm spaghetti and dried out French bread meet you at the table. Stampeding teenagers trample past on the way out, with a quick wave and a “Bye bruh.”

She runs her hand through your hair on her way to the chair next to you. Something about her touch always calms you down after arriving home. Just the two of you, sitting in the aftermath of chaos, enjoying a quiet conversation. You download your day with its ups and downs and mention the couple that want to start meeting for pre-marriage counseling. You ask how her day was and she gently grabs your hand and says:

“Dave, you’re living in a fog right now.”

Jerking your hand away, the jolt surges through every fiber as you blurt out, “What’s wrong with your voice?!” She sounds like a man. She sounds like your therapist!

“Go away bad dream!”

“Who’s Taylor Johnson?! I don’t like what he’s saying!”

Noodles disappear from the plate. French bread blows away as dust. Every chair around the table crumbles to the floor. Ocean foam green paint is violently stripped off the walls. Calming powder blue curtains rip off their rods and vanish out the windows. Utensils zip past into the vortex. A hand smears away the face of your wife, revealing the stranger you’ve been talking to for months.

“This is garbage. This Taylor-Johnson stuff is a joke.” Your thoughts sneer.

You check the church Facebook page, annoyed at the fact your series hasn’t posted yet. What’s the deal? You scrambled so they could get all the media ready. No one’s responding to your texts. Heads are gonna roll. Then a reel pops up on the scroll. “Who’s that guy and why are they welcoming everyone to my church?”

“Dave, did you hear what I said?”

“Not now Taylor!”

Texts shoot out like orders from a general fending off an enemy strike. Whatever this attack is, it won’t prevail. Your army stands ready.

“We love ya bro.”

“Hang in there.”

“So sorry man.”

“We love ya?!” What does that have to do with fighting? You’re under attack! Sound the charge!

“Where’s everybody at?!”

A singular chair faces you amid the rubble. Smoke rolls off the embers of torched two-by-fours. Paint still bubbling off the siding. A foundation left dismantled. Ash gently falling from a winter of death. There’s no war to fight anymore. “Can someone please turn off the fog machine?”

Welcome to life after divorce.

They sit down with your file in hand and begin reading it off like a post-war assessment. It doesn’t look good. Taylor has a lot to say. Life as you pretended never existed. It’s a harsh pill to swallow. A cement one.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, & Acceptance.

The five steps of grief. Every one of them applies to divorce. Divorce is a death. It’s tremendous loss. That grief may stretch out for years. Divorce has an added layer in the grief process that comes before denial:

Disillusionment.

It’s not even acknowledging there’s anything to deny. It screams, “Your life is still the same. Believe it! Claim it!” They are still your spouse. No one will tell you otherwise. There’s no such thing as divorce. That ring still on your finger proves it. You revert to a childhood of playing ‘pretend’. You’ve created your own Matrix. Ignorance is bliss.

It’s a stage you never want to leave. Living in a ‘fog’ is the plastic peace you need right now.

Running through it, waving your arms in the mist, bliss suddenly smacks headfirst into a cement wall. You weren’t even wearing a helmet.

That’s where denial begins. It’s where you met Taylor.

Taylor-Johnson’s wrong. That’s not where you’re at. “Don’t tell me that.” You’re still wobbling from that cement wall. Fog smells like smoke now.

You’ve been divorced for six months. Haven’t pastored in over a year. She’s already moved him in. You fought for your marriage and now your kids have a live-in boyfriend for a ‘dad’. Your church has a new pastor.

It’s okay to take the ring off. It’s time to remove her picture from your home screen. End the fantasy. You’re not preaching Sunday.

That reality burns deep.

When it hurts, hope has a chance. You can’t heal from a wound you refuse to see. Being jolted from fantasy isn’t the first phase of grief, it’s the first step toward healing. Cement walls are your biggest blessing.

Thank you Taylor.

**The Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis is a tool used in evaluating behavioral tendencies and relational patterns.

**The five stages of grief were developed by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 groundbreaking book, On Death and Dying.

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We’re all ‘good’ people staring at a broken marriage with an empty toolbox.

They keep asking when the reception line begins, where to put the potato salad, and if it’s going to be an open casket so they can warn the kids. For starters, it’s a toss-up if courthouses even allow reception lines, and secondly, no one’s cornered the market on divorce caskets. Good news: Meal Trains are good for two weeks.

Tires screech off leaving the last tater-tot casserole steaming on the front steps next to a freshly purchased set of bright blue arm floaties. What an odd gift for the kids in September? No, the sticky note’s addressed to you. It’s hurricane season.

Notifications hibernate and calls dry up as funeral flowers expel their petals. According to your church, the grieving process should be wrapping up right about now, but your storm is just beginning. Tides are rising, winds are snapping. Arm floaties need inflating. Friends hold up prayer hands from the shore watching in horror as you’re ripped out to sea alone. A journey absent itinerary.

Divorce leaves you alone, fighting for air as rogue waves smash against any hopes of rescue.

No one is coming to save you. Why?

We love plush couches, Doordash, streaming, and robotic lawn mowers. We don’t mind funeral pain. Go to the service, pay your respects, raid the meat and cheese trays, and be back to normal life in a few hours. We like mourning in the moment. Anything disrupting our rhythm of comfort for extended periods is strictly prohibited. People don’t like soaking in pain that isn’t theirs. Even Christians.

Beyond time limits, divorce is a powder keg few will take a crack at diffusing.

Letting someone drown is easier than saying the wrong thing. Let that irony sink in. Our idea of helping is doing nothing. Most people aren’t trained counselors and humans have a general fear of misspeaking into highly sensitive waters. Saying the wrong thing could unleash emotions we’re not equipped to handle. Who wants to be blamed for a blow up? Silence is the safe bet.

Fear of someone’s divorce pulling yours down is real. The McDermott/Brown University study found that friends with shaky marriages pull away the hardest. A men’s small group was meeting to support one of them going through divorce. After the meeting, his friend admitted “I’m afraid my marriage is next.” Their wives were friends. Safety meant keeping distance. Struggling marriages encounter increased distancing in the pews.

Why do churches struggle with addressing divorce? Simply put, there’s no script. No clear roadmap to resolution. It’s not that churches are purposefully avoiding divorce. Why risk addressing what can’t be fixed? Plus, Sunday’s coming. We’re hardwired for Sunday adrenaline shots, not ongoing loss. No one is dropping off casseroles seven months into a custody dispute. Churches are equipped for funerals. Divorce is a death that won’t die. There isn’t a playbook for walking people through long term emotional pain like that. We avoid what we can’t resolve.

A few months ago, a coffee shop shut down that had an easily recognizable brand in town. Multiple locations, trendy look, great coffee. Now closed. When the closure was announced on social media, patrons were shocked, some angry. Their favorite coffee shop shuttered. The coffee shop none of them ever went to.

This is known as the Bystander Dynamic. Everyone assumes someone else is buying coffee. Same in church. They’re drowning in divorce, surely someone’s throwing them a lifeline. Silence confirms the crisis is handled. No noise, no problem. The mistake is the assumption. No communication. No follow-up. No one’s taking care of it. No one hears the person screaming underwater.

What is the script? What’s the twelve step plan for divorce recovery? How long should it take? These are the wrong questions. Divorce doesn’t have steps, it has phases. Each with their own undetermined timeline connected with grief. There is a death, just no funeral. “Are we here for the long haul?” That’s the right question.

This is where churches get stuck. They don’t like messy unknowns. Quickly checking for offramps instead.

Offramps lead to late night snacking.

Comfort food at 1:00 am eases so much stress but prevents us from seeing our toes. We know we shouldn’t shove Ben & Jerry’s in our mouths after midnight, but no one is there, shouting into a bullhorn, pointing at unseen extremities. There’s a massive gap between knowing what we should do and actually doing it.

We should do something; we don’t know what, so we don’t do anything. That’s how people handle divorce. Churches follow suit.

Churches need guidance, encouragement, and accountability. They need a life coach.

Life coaches drive simple, consistent contact. It’s a phone call saying I see you. I care about you. They ensure follow-through. Someone is going to their house and watching a movie or dragging them out for a walk. Quick texts saying, “I’m praying for you right now, what can I pray for?”, are the difference. You don’t need a PhD in Psychology, just a willing heart. A heart tuned in to the ultimate life coach. The Holy Spirit. Respond to His nudges of reaching out.

People in crisis aren’t looking for answers from their friends. They crave presence. It’s the lifeline. John Andersen, PhD puts it this way:

“So, the most powerful thing you can offer isn’t advice. It isn’t a solution. It’s steady, faithful presence.”

A phone call, a knock on the door tells them they’re not forgotten. Consistent presence. That’s the script. Any church can run it.

Abandonment leaves leaves people alone in the storm. Coping in the self-sabotage of isolation. Grief compounds. Trauma playlists repeat. Each loop lands harder. Fantasy spirals. Negative thoughts plunge into the Mariana Trench. That phone call could make the difference. They’re gasping for it.

Modern church culture sets its sights on Sunday. You won’t find a sign out front proclaiming, “Come Grieve with Us!” We treat mourning like a glitch in the system, a virus. We look at long term suffering as weakness or losing a spiritual battle. Those who grieve beyond the expiration date are glared at through a lens of contempt. They’re an inconvenience. A buzzkill. People don’t hop around as much singing “It is Well.” That’s a testimony quickly scrolled past.

Determined engagement is the key. It’s not an arm floatie. It’s a lifeboat.

Simple contact could spark the greatest awakening. Loving broken people to health may be the next wave of the Spirit. Imagine a church laying out the red carpet to the broken, hurt, divorced. No matter the denomination, creating space for healing could be the breakthrough.

Keep calling. Keep knocking. Be present. Don’t quit. Don’t let go.

That’s the script. Let the Holy Spirit narrate.

Thank you for giving my material a few moments of your time. If you know of struggling through divorce, please share this content. We want to be a voice speaking life and hope to people going through one of the greatest storms in life.

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References

Aknin, L. B., & Sandstrom, G. M. (2024). People are surprisingly hesitant to reach out to old friends. Communications Psychology, 2, Article 34. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00075-8

Andersen, J., & Evans, J. (2026, October). Who will love me now? God’s embrace after divorce. XO Publishing. (Forthcoming)

Barna Group. (2025, December 19). Marriage and divorce in 2025: Five trends shaping today’s families. https://www.barna.com/trends/marriage-divorce-trends-2025/

Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 155–195. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352321

Crosswalk. (2016, September 12). What the divorced Christian wants you to know. https://www.crosswalk.com/family/marriage/what-the-divorced-christian-wants-you-to-know.html

Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? Appleton-Century-Crofts.

McDermott, R., Fowler, J. H., & Christakis, N. A. (2013). Breaking up is hard to do, unless everyone else is doing it too: Social network effects on divorce in a longitudinal sample. Social Forces, 92(2), 491–519. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sot096

Norton, K. (2025, August 11). When friends abandon you during grief: Why it happens and how to cope. Kelly Norton Coaching. https://www.kellynortoncoaching.com/blog/when-friends-abandon-you-during-grief

Restored Lives. (2022, September 23). Why do friends disappear after divorce? https://www.restoredlives.org/why-do-friends-disappear-after-divorce

Stroebe, M., Schut, H., & Stroebe, W. (2007). Health outcomes of bereavement. The Lancet, 370(9603), 1960–1973. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61816-9

Being unfriended after divorce wasn’t in the cards. Sure, the in-laws would wave goodbye (or good riddance), the kids are gonna need counseling, and major holidays might be less political. Church family? They’re solid.

Solidly split that is.

Both were embedded in ministry, intertwined in marriage groups, and closely knit with the pastor and his wife. Severing ties wouldn’t remain unnoticed. People have opinions. Deeply held ones. Who knew?! They discipled couples. Championed marriage. Now who’s going to coordinate the Marriage Ministry?

Sixty missing Facebook friends later, and they’re beginning to wonder if everyone picked a side.

The Hebrew word for divorce is k’rithuth; meaning ‘cutting off’. One life now split and people choose sides. Game nights are cancelled. Coffee meetings vanish. Except that same person thirsty for some spilt tea.

The Marriage small group collapses. Men sit on one side, women on the other, shooting red hot glances across the snack table. The last time anyone saw this seating arrangement was in children’s church, and way less hostile.

She’s parked in the same seat on Sunday. His is empty. He was supposed to take the offering this week as repeated calls go straight to voicemail. Men retreat to caves in silence. Women process it on Facebook. Both unhealthy. Both attract fans. The Marriage class seating arrangement slowly bleeds into the pews on Sundays.

Suddenly single, friends aren’t comfortable having them near their spouse. Everything was fine with the four of them in the text group and now laugh emojis feel like flirting. Maybe even an innocent threat.

Sound farfetched? It’s coming to a church near you.

Divorce smells toxic. They’re the biohazard. Highly contagious. Friends cordon them off for fear of spouses catching the disease. Researchers call it the Contagion Effect.

“This would never happen in our church!” Until it does.

“Christians would never do this!” Not according to the research. Dr. Bruce Fisher, author of “Rebuilding When Your Relationship Ends”, touches on the above scenarios. Each dripping in reality.

LifeWay Research found that 31% of divorces end up deeply fracturing other relationships within the church. Divorce doesn’t stay locked in a box.

Every Divorce has a box named ‘Bob.’

Bob was a Christian who liked music, art, and wearing trench coats. Bob lived in the nineties. One day Bob wanted to show his friend Chuck his favorite painting at the local Christian bookstore. It sat on top of two other paintings on the wall. When Bob spun around to point at the top painting, his arm caught inside the trench coat, thrusting the hem into one of the bottom corners of the top painting. The force jarred it off the wall mount, crashing into the one below it, and smashing into the bottom one. Shattered glass and splintered wood frames covered the carpet. Three paintings destroyed. Bob was banned from the Christian bookstore.

One poor decision initiates a series of destructive events they never see coming. Friendships forever changed. Relationships fractured. Wounds left untreated. A church shaken. All thanks to Bob.

The real tragedy is broken covenant. Who mourns the fabric of a culture ripped to shreds? Jesus hated divorce. We forget that. Friends peddle advice having no clue the fallout. Be careful what you clap for. We dress up spouse bashing as loyalty with little regard for how it affects family trees. A child’s future hangs in the balance from words we speak into their marriage. Choose wisely.

Instead of promoting forgiveness, we reenact the Revolutionary war.

We form allegiances instead of calling for prayer. We quietly cheer on our cause, unfazed by its casualties and the smell of burning lead. We’re hardwired this way. There must be a villain and a victim. Tents are pitched on two ends of the church with mobs camping in both. It’s Battle of the Sexes: Church Edition. Nobody wins.

Wars never end well in pews. This is where leadership steps up for unity and prayer. Or it doesn’t. Simply ignore it and it will go away or fade out. This tends to be company policy. This approach has always aged well…

“Divorce is just messy, and I don’t want to deal with messy.” One pastor admitted. This is the default strategy. Another just flat out said “We just love them both, but we’re not getting involved.”

Oh pastor, people are getting involved despite your lack of a stance. While you’re intent on imitating Switzerland, powers and principalities fuel war.

Saying nothing speaks volumes.

Friends fade when war ends. Adrenaline runs out and the damage has been done. Nowhere to be found when silence is deafening. When life goes dark.

It was supposed to be a simple dissolution with each quietly going their separate ways. Divorce had other plans, it always does.

Friends aren’t always friends forever.

References

Andersen, J. (2026, April 22). Men grieve divorce in silence: And it’s making it worse. Substack. https://substack.com/home/post/p-194974208

DC4K [DivorceCare for Kids]. (2015, April 13). Question of the week: How does divorce hurt the church family? https://blog.dc4k.org/archives/3708

Fisher, B. (1981). Rebuilding: When your relationship ends. Impact Publishers.

LifeWay Research. (2015, October 29). Divorce threat hard to detect for churches. https://research.lifeway.com/2015/10/29/divorce-threat-hard-to-detect-for-churches/

Pew Research Center. (2013, October 21). Is divorce contagious? https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/10/21/is-divorce-contagious/

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. (n.d.). Gender differences in the grieving process. Together by St. Jude. https://together.stjude.org/en-us/emotional-support-daily-life/bereavement/gender-differences-in-grieving.html

Waterloo, S. F., Baumgartner, S. E., Peter, J., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2018). Norms of online expressions of emotion: Comparing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp. New Media & Society, 20(5), 1813–1831. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6256717/

Thank you for reading! If you know of someone going through divorce or considering it, I would be honored if you shared this.

It’s hard gluing your arm back on after an explosion. Pesky bleeding won’t stop, glue won’t set, and it’s turning green. Green’s good, right?

Stumbling around like zombies in a blast zone, they lurch around hoping to piece together fragments of a destroyed marriage. You keep waving toward the getaway car as they wander in a daze, digging up hope and staring at a sun that isn’t there.

You see self-destruction, struggling to verbalize it, watching them scratch through the dirt for a landmine to dance with. Clumsily jerking through a one-way two-step, they hold the explosive up high for all to see. Don’t they see the danger?! Why aren’t they chucking that thing as far as they can?! Don’t they know how expensive arm glue is?

You may have heard the phrase “I’m standing for my marriage.” For many of us, it’s a rallying cry to get behind and cheer on. It looks a lot like faith. We clap along for this noble cause unaware of the dangers below as they fumble around in fantasy. We’re not cheering them on; we’re endorsing false hope.

A woman was allowed to attend Divorce Care classes for ten years in her local church as she ‘stood’ for her marriage. Church, you are enabling them to live out a fantasy, not moving them forward in reality. Say something.

“Faith sees what’s not there yet!” True, but there can’t be faith without an admission of current reality. God doesn’t part oceans they don’t believe exist. Coming to grips with divorce is agonizing. Refusing to feel the sting of divorce, they numb it instead. That’s why they’re out there hugging hand grenades in hopes their spouse will come back. Their “faith,” might be destroying them and your high-five isn’t helping.

Admit it Christian, you caught yourself immediately going to the comments to speed type how God can heal and repair anything. Yes, God can heal anything. He’s God. But healing may look different than what you envisioned. Healing comes with scars, and churches struggle staring at scars.

We love what looks good on a Sunday stage. An affair ripped apart a marriage that God restored five years after divorcing. Tears are flowing, hands are held tighter across the auditorium, ending in a standing ovation. We’re addicted to that stuff. But the crowd isn’t around on Monday. Later that year they’re in counseling. Why?

Consequences from rushing reconciliation are like gluing arms back on. We tend to fast-forward healing without properly bandaging the wounds. We applaud restoring unions still bleeding under the veneer.

Nobody likes being told they’re broken. Some are hell-bent on getting back to the way things were, unwilling to examine how unhealthy it was. Divorce doesn’t happen by accident. Divorce fairies don’t leave dissolution papers at your door. It’s a result of unhealthy patterns and practices compounding. Divorce is messy, and loving someone to the realization of their part in it is messier.

Before rushing to reconnect an index finger, point people to healing. It’s the only way out. It’s the only way of releasing death’s grip on their fantasy.

The biggest blessing they’ll hate is helping officiate the funeral of memories that will never come to life again. This creates the space for Jesus to heal them from a trauma left ignored, making room for a miracle.

The healing of the blind man happened because he knew he was blind. Why ask for a miracle they don’t think they need? Why ask for deliverance from a pain they refuse to feel?

Scars tell stories. We just don’t like scabs. They’re itchy and we pick at them hoping the itchy goes away. It temporarily subsides, returning 10 times worse. We fixate on relieving the current discomfort, crippling long term relief. We don’t view scars as healing, but as permanent reminders of pain. Scars wave the white flag of surrender. This is where miracles happen though. Where pointing people to Jesus sets them free.

In Revelation chapter five, verse six, the scene in heaven turns to Jesus and John describes Him as being “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.” Jesus could have removed any sign of His sacrifice. Erased any recognizable mark of what He endured. But He chooses to stand in heaven, brightly displaying His scars as symbols of His eternal victory.

Scars are not a reminder of the worst season of their life; they’re the stamp of victory going forward. They bear the mark of freedom now. That’s the miracle. That’s victory.

Just ask someone where they got that scar from and buckle up. What once was a place of pain so intense they couldn’t even feel it, is now the scar of how Jesus healed them through it. That’s a story worth telling.

Stories in real life don’t end the way we think. You’re still reading hoping this couple gets back together. Fight that urge. After a divorce, it’s the individual who needs healing, not the marriage.

Maybe what your Sunday stage needs is a divorced person with a missing arm singing about the goodness of God. That’s a testimony. That’s powerful. That’s healing.

We need more stages showing more scars.

Let scars display God’s victory.

This was the second installment on our series Life After Divorce. If you know of someone struggling through a divorce, would you please share this with them. Right now, they need voices speaking life, truth, and hope into them. It would be an honor to be one of those voices.

If you’re divorced, there is hope. There is a future. Let Jesus write your story.

Every time someone likes or comments on my writing, I genuinely consider it an honor. So thank you. Even if you subscribed to me so that I would subscribe back as you build your Substack, thank you.

Some of you may have noticed that my last four articles have steered toward divorce issues within the church and it’s intentional. When I began writing on here, I didn’t want divorce being my “signature” on the platform. The goal was to share areas of the American church that need changing. But truth is my divorce is exactly what made me examine the very institution I gave my entire life to.

Early on my wife kept encouraging me to speak to divorce issues within the church. I resisted. I was worried what would happen if people knew I was divorced…I really was. I’ve lived the stigma that comes with it. My wife still kept quietly encouraging me. I kept saying no.

God connected me to someone on this platform who showed me it’s ok to bring this conversation to the public square. They challenged me, not directly, but in the freedom and confidence they had sharing their story. I went to my wife and apologized to her. She has been my cheerleader from the start.

We’re headed in a new direction.

Helping people has been my heart since the start of ministry back in 2001. Now helping people, and the church, navigate all the issues around divorce is my passion moving forward. I genuinely hope you stay on the journey with me.

If you know of someone struggling through a divorce, I’m humbly asking you to share my material with them…and much more is coming.

God bless!

Let’s face it, we’re allergic to explosions. Add juggling molten lava potassium balls wrapped in tinfoil through an entire field of them, and you can understand why most people pass on helping someone walk through a divorce.

Shallow questions hit different when you’re in the middle of it.

“Hey, how ya doin’?”

“Terrible.”

“Anything new going on in your world?”

“Divorce. Divorce is what’s going on. Every day. Divorce.”

“Any plans for Christmas?”

“Oh, just soaking my pillow in tears at night watching Tim Allen Santa his way through marital status issues, steering reindeer, then drowning my sorrows in eggnog and old takeout.”

“Ok, sounds good, great to see you in church today!”

No villain in this impromptu drama. No rehearsed lines or predetermined plot. It’s “Whose Line is it Anyway: Divorce Edition” with both thrust into roles without auditioning. Two people, new terrain, no training. How do you rescue someone entrenched in hidden explosives? One wrong move and appendages start flying. That sounds hard. So is divorce.

How many churches offer training for walking someone through divorce? Most only offer blast ointment.

Churches like clean, and divorce pulls up in a sewage truck emptying its contents on the front lawn. We prefer calm and divorce strolls down the aisle with a bag of dynamite. It’s messy, volatile, and stinks. Reaching someone walking through the hell of divorce is high risk, and churches tend to be highly risk averse.

Divorce is volatile. Its triggers don’t react well to footsteps. It’s safer for everyone if left alone, right? They’ll find a way through the blast zone alone. God will light their path. Less body parts go missing when no one helps.

It’s like standing on the shore watching someone drown, hoping they make it out alright.

What would Jesus do with divorce? In what gospel does Jesus avoid the culturally stained? Where does He skirt around explosive issues? Where did Jesus abandon people in the battlefield of life? Would He do nothing for a drowning soul?

Jesus knew scripture and how to apply it in the right context at the ripest of moments. He wasn’t afraid of danger zones.

The woman at the well was living in sin, and Jesus walked into Landmine Central unfazed by what others thought. Men didn’t talk to women in public, especially one with her reputation. He didn’t address difficult situations in abstract tones or post a piercing quote on Facebook. He walked into a minefield, read her mail, and delivered her out of it, regardless of how hot that potato was.

Hot Potatoes sit in your church every Sunday, silently smoldering, stuck in one of the most explosive seasons of life. Standard operating procedure tosses them to a counselor, avoiding them at all costs. You’re not a trained counselor so the only play is avoidance. That’s what we’re quietly taught. But the question quietly tugs at your heart; what would Jesus do? Are you willing to step into chaos, risking safety for a soul?

If you’re a YES – let’s go! But before charging into this explosive frontier, be aware of the dangers lurking below. What do these explosives look like and how do we navigate around them? Let’s meet some trigger points now.

Mine #1 – The Ex-Spouse

Why not start with the mother (or father) of all bombs. Tread carefully. Triggering this one ends the rescue mission before it starts. If they can’t get past this one, there’s no saving them.

Keep Your Lenses Clean

We tend to believe the person physically in front of us, or side with the one who shares our gender (Sidenote: if you’re sharing relational details about your ex with the opposite sex, major red flag alert). Proximity doesn’t automatically translate to truth and neither does frequency.

Direct traffic elsewhere when conversation turns negative. Remember, you are getting their version of the story, told through a lens of pain or betrayal. There may be paragraphs of truth, but blind acceptance keeps them stuck and you biased. You don’t know what’s happened behind closed doors.

Their ex doesn’t push them forward — it shackles them to an improvised explosive device. Fixating becomes the Groundhog Day of landmines.

See clearly. Discern the difference between honest frustration and manipulating you to their side. Taking sides never moves someone forward. When you do, you become a fight promoter within the church.

“Did you hear about so-and-so, and what they did to their ex?”

This always ends in a fourth-of-July finale explosion. Carrying their offense never leads to escape. It fogs your vision.

They will never see a future when their ex clouds it. Yes, it’s a minefield they can’t see through yet, but you can. Keep speaking God’s future over them. Let them hear God’s purpose through your words. Speak to a destiny they can’t see yet.

Wear the right lens.

Give Pain its Space

If you’ve never experienced divorce, imagine your body ripped in half with the expectation of walking at the same pace on one leg. It’s a nuclear detonation with a vicious radioactive aftermath. Divorce doesn’t use a scalpel; it prefers shredding. Meet their pain with grace and compassion.

If they’ve been betrayed, don’t trivialize or play it down. Give it the space it deserves without rushing them to forgiveness. Let it breathe. Giving yourself to another opens the deepest wound possible. This isn’t getting fired from a job or ghosted on social media. Their entire world was upended by someone else’s sin. That pain only heals at one speed: slow. The pain is valid, treat it that way.

If they violated their vows, gently walk them through guilt and toward repentance. Don’t gloss over it or treat it like a traffic violation. Ask God for the wisdom to speak into their life at the right time and be ready when He does. Be ready to meet them at their well. Speak truth, but douse it with grace, compassion, hope, and love.

This journey won’t have a timeline. You don’t flip a switch to turn off this kind of pain. No cheat code. Don’t try to crack it. Resist pressing the eject button when the mission misses a checkpoint. It’s their journey, not yours. Don’t rush them through pain they haven’t processed.

Let pain breathe.

Change the Language

Ever learn a new language? Now’s a good time.

Their ex is just that — an ex. Not a wife or husband, an ex. Teach them fluency in their present reality. This will get pushback. Teach the basics in loop mode. Take the ring off. That’s the first language lesson. Controversial for some, but it’s a reminder of a past not coming back and wishful thinking for a future that won’t happen. That indentation on the fourth finger needs to disappear.

Direct away from language that connects to the ex. If they have children, it’s “your mom,” not “mom.” “Hey guys, your mom is picking you up today.” Simple, but the implications are landmine diffusing. There’s no we. It’s you and them. Change the language and they’ll slowly change their thinking.

Where’s faith in this?! They’re refusing to say ex because God is going to bring them back! He may — we serve a big God, and it’s happened. But is it helping current reality? If they’re not careful, that language ends up in a restraining order. Kaboom.

It fosters false hope for the majority. The moment that decree is signed, the marriage is over. In its current state, they need to speak its language. It feels cold, but the sooner they get there, the closer to freedom they’ll be.

It’s Maggie, Jim, or their ex. Help them get there.

Stop Giving Them the Main Role

Human nature loves making villains more villainous. The bigger they are, the more satisfying the kill. People spend years on this circular quest tripping mines along the way. Life becomes about revenge, getting even, settling a score. The more they mention their ex, the bigger the role they play, the more stuck they become.

Or is it a vicious cycle of replaying the movie of a life that doesn’t exist anymore? This person was the star of the show. Now they’re paralyzed in a field surrounded by explosives with their main character walking off set.

Either way, their life must escape the orbit of their ex-spouse. If they call needing help with their taxes, kindly point them to H & R Block. If guilt or pity keeps casting them in their story, they’ll never make another movie. Point them to a future where the ex makes cameo appearances at graduations, weddings, and births only.

They win when they no longer miss their favorite character or seek revenge. They win when their former spouse becomes an emotionless thought.

Show them the power they possess when writing out their ex.

They’re Not Them Anymore

The spouse you married isn’t the ex you’re divorced from.

It’s like seeing the main character of their favorite movie series playing a different role in a different movie. They’re not even in the same costume anymore! They recognize them, but don’t know who they are.

They struggle making the shift. Accepting they aren’t loved by this person once inseparably bonded. It doesn’t feel real. It’s a gut punch in the feels. They would never do this to them. But they did and that sting stays. They’re in a different movie now.

Help them start making theirs.

Your mission is to help them find a new frontier. No future with this person no longer married to.

These are the moments you breathe life into a future they can’t see. Don’t resuscitate a past that chains them to a landmine.

It Will Not Go as Planned

Remind yourself of this often. Take Mike Tyson’s advice and be prepared to play jazz. Your plan will take a punch. Adapt, but never forget the mission no matter how messy it gets.

Emotions don’t play well with timelines. There is no template. It’s improv. But with the right tools, discernment, and the Holy Spirit, you can help them escape the minefield of divorce.

Ready to meet people at some wells?

Divorce loves surprises. It snaps your jaw with an overhand right of reality, leaving you on the mat with your world spinning all around.

Sometimes life after divorce is the favorite TV show you’ll never watch again. It’s the takeout place you’ll never go to because they added her favorite to your order last time. It’s the beach you’ll travel to the other coast to avoid. It’s the air freshener never to be snapped onto the heater vents of the car they didn’t help pick out. Divorce is like that.

Some are in the thick of it, some in the ‘numb’ of it, and others are in the ‘so done with it’. No matter the phase, everyone experiencing divorce yearns for something that may take years to find. It evades herculean efforts of forming a coherent sentence but will move mountains to discover its treasure. Casting nets, only to catch the memories of what once was hoping to lure in that trophy marlin. It’s the thing that once said out loud, sounds generic, even silly, but it’s the only prescription you need filled right now.

100 mg of normal. Twice daily.

You ache for home. Not the one your ex just planted a for sale sign in the front yard of, but the place where life made sense. Where mismatching pajamas and untamed hair were given safe passage. Vows of secrecy were pledged over who confessed to having cosmetic surgery during ladies Bible study last week. Morning breath kisses were the sunshine needed to start the day, and dinner was the decision no one could ever seem to make. They were your home, the rhythm of normal.

They sit in our churches every week aching for the compass to stop spinning and point them to normal.

Make way for boring. There is no greater healing balm than hearing someone asking if they can help weed the flower beds this spring or take the kids to school once a week. It’s a crockpot on a doorstep after work. It’s a conversation about Super Bowl XL being stolen from the Seahawks by the refs in 2005 (not bitter) or how your mullet is finally in style again.

You’re not avoiding the obvious. This isn’t about playing pretend or dismissing someone’s pain. It’s a quiet commitment to steady the weathervane towards a normal they can’t see yet, no matter how hard the wind is blowing.

Waxing biblical on divorce before the service begins won’t get an “amen”, the twelve step plan of recovery you swiped from ChatGPT won’t be read, and the invite to the divorce class on Thursday night won’t land. Sometimes, the weather is the most spiritual conversation they need.

Don’t take the bait. It’s tempting and juicy, but the aftertaste leaves you reaching for a bottle of holy Scope. The road to normal dead-ends with the ex. Venting sessions have their place, but it’s not with you and not in the church lobby. The following statement is littered with caveats, but the adage: “There’s his story, hers, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle,” carries weight, and their version usually leads to one place, and it’s not normal.

Ignoring the ‘divorce’ elephant in the back row isn’t effective zoo keeping either. It’s there, everyone has eyeballs, but the goal is to keep it tame until we can find it a new home. Divorce is raw and human tendency is to get as many on their side of it as possible. Truth is, they may be right, and that may be a problem. Is the goal to point them toward finding a path forward or taking up their offense? Confronting someone’s ex about their wrongs goes about as well as telling your wife to calm down. Elephants are hard to calm down. Don’t ever compare your wife to an elephant. See what happens when you get involved? Human default mode wants to take sides. Don’t lunge at the worm on the end of that hook. Stick to the weather, don’t poke the ivory tusked monstrosity sleeping in the back.

No one wins when churches take sides. Before you start in on the “Well, what about _______?” There are exceptions. If there was a clear violation of marriage vows, there needs to be an acknowledgement, for the sake of the violated, but that’s for an entirely different article. Taking sides risks dividing a church and forcing people into camps.

Remember, this is dealing with someone who is already divorced. Divorced couples rarely remarry and the ones who do carry a higher risk of divorcing again.

Put down the cape. Unstrap it from your neck and just be present. Never underestimate the power of presence. You’re not coming in to save the day, fix everything, and speed off into the sunset. You don’t have a good enough quote to snap them out of it. Stop orchestrating the reconciliation parade of a marriage that doesn’t exist anymore. Building false hope is one of the most dangerous things you can do to someone who isn’t thinking straight. The best advice is your presence when life isn’t making sense for someone.

Regurgitating what you heard on a podcast isn’t what’s going to help them process and parse through the intricacies of divorce. Pointing them to normal is pointing them to a licensed, godly counselor who will guide them through the minefield of intense emotions and diffuse them in a biblical way. Does this mean never giving advice? No, just the unsolicited and unbiblical kind. They don’t need your opinion wrapped in a Bible verse. Remember this, you are accountable for the counsel you give.

Normal sounds trivial, unspiritual and shallow. It’s the slow process of watering a new garden out of scorched soil. It’s not the haymaker you were hoping for in fighting for someone who’s in the thick of it. We love the knockout punch that removes problems for good as the crowd chants “Rocky, Rocky, Rocky.” We love being the hero and normal doesn’t feel heroic, it sounds like a sidekick, and that’s the point. It’s committing to walking with them through the tornado of their life and guiding them, in boring ways, to where normal is.

Give them the gift they never asked for.

**During the writing process, it was quickly evident that one article would not cover all the dynamics that go living life after divorce.

This will be the beginning of a long running series to encourage the divorced and the church through one of the most difficult issues to navigate.

Thanks for reading, stay tuned!

He knew he’d put on deodorant — a quick tilt of the neck followed by a stealthy sniff confirmed it.

Same row as always, third row from the back, closest to the exit. Smiles greeted him but with an added plastic sheen. The handshakes were quicker, conversations shorter, eye contact more elusive. As service began, the seats around him quickly emptied, giving plenty of room to marinate in the isolation. He’d applied body wash, even used the luffa, and clothes smelled Downy soft, so that couldn’t be the issue. He hadn’t worn his people repellant in months.

Only a few nose-crinkles later, he caught a whiff of the stench. Smells like divorce.

This explains the used car salesman enthusiasm from the greeters and their insistence on slapping on the pre-filled out nametag on his shirt. They didn’t even get it right. He’d only been gone a year. These people should know his name. Is this a joke? Truth is, they knew his name, just not the one on his driver’s license. Who’s ‘Unclean’ anyway?

So, what’s it like visiting the church you’ve attended for eleven years?

Imagine walking into the lobby and everyone’s staring at the imaginary wife standing next to you, glancing at you, then shooting back to her. Their attempts at subtlety almost land as gently as a nuclear bomb. She’d walked into that lobby with you for eleven years. Eleven Easters, Harvest parties, Christmas, Block parties, with two marriage retreats in tow. First kid, second, and a whoopsie third.

It’s as though someone sputtered out “You’re missing your better half. Come back when you find her.” Then attempting to buff out the faux pas, they redeem themselves by saying, “So glad to see you today, here’s your nametag, any appendages fall off this week?”

What do you say to that? “Hey everyone, my name’s still John, I have a soul, please don’t make this weirder for my kids than it already is.” Next week you should take your divorce bath right outside church and enter the lobby shouting “Unclean, Unclean.” That’ll take the weirdness right out of it.

Divorce is the new leprosy.

Leprosy was a social death sentence in the Bible. Being forced to tear your clothes and leave your hair disheveled was the first step in the humiliation process. In today’s culture it translates to pleating your Jeans, parting your hair in the middle, and wearing socks with sandals.

Covering your upper lip was required — like carrying around a giant sign saying, “I’m hazardous waste.” You didn’t have a voice in society. The only words you were permitted to speak in public were a warning: “Unclean! Unclean!”

You were treated as though dead, living in disfigurement. Your life had no meaning. You were a zombie.

Only the priest could declare you clean. An elaborate process, involving purification sacrifices, frequent inspections, and long waiting periods, stood between you and reintegrating into society.

And there it was. The invisible nametag. No visible sores, no priest declaring him unclean, yet the stigma stung the same. There was no trial, no chance to explain, no shot at redemption. No official church vote, just the quiet, collective instinct to create distance from anyone carrying the contagion of a broken covenant.

The third row from the back had been his home for eleven years. He led Wednesday night Awana’s to be around his boys more. Stacked chairs. Lots of them. Delivered meals to families in need. Brought his famous smoked pulled pork to the church campout six years running. Sang at funerals and weddings. He knew these people. But that was before the papers were filed, before her affair, before the empty seat next to his, before becoming a diseased statistic.

We place labels on people with no intention of ever taking them off.

It’s why he didn’t get insurance with her a few years earlier. Bill’s wife that is. He’d mentioned to someone at the church about going through her agency for coverage and had that idea hammer-slammed shut. After all, she’d had an affair fourteen years prior.

You would’ve never known.

Bill and his wife seemed blissfully in love with three beautiful girls. If anything, this should’ve been an incredibly powerful story of Christ’s redemption — a couple reconciled back to oneness. Instead, fourteen years later, the nametag was still super-glued to her shirt.

Jesus touched the leper.

If there was a giant, red, pharisaical “Do Not Touch” button placed in front of Jesus, He would gently touch it fourteen feet into the ground. Touching a leper was strictly forbidden. You were deemed ceremonially unclean if you did. It was a social death sentence. Jesus jeopardized his own social standing, to restore this man’s status and heal him completely. Jesus touched the leper before He healed him. Jesus punched the red button.

Move beyond identifying people by their greatest shame.

The stats aren’t clear on how many divorcees run into church, waving pom-poms chanting “D-I-V-O-R-C-E, How’d You Like Some Leprosy?!” Or singing “All my exes live in Texas,” in the echo chamber known as the lobby. Chances are, they’re low.

Most arrive feeling the shame of failing in their covenant. They isolate, attempting to avoid further humiliation. They didn’t want a divorce. Fought to save their marriage. Never thought in a million years this is where life would take them. Wondering if they’ll be forever identified with the person no longer at their side. Now they’re standing in a place that once felt like home, being handed a nametag they never asked for.

Loving like Christ means meeting people in their greatest pain. Not to shame them in it, but to walk with them through it. When Jesus touched the leper, He was identifying with his pain. He was willing to get messy.

We need churches that dive into the mess of leper’s lives. Love goes after the person sitting by themselves or not coming at all. Love asks when that pulled pork is making a comeback. Love invites him to go golfing. Love asks if he’d ever consider coming to the ‘Stronger Men’ small group. Love asks if they can give the boys coupons for free ice cream. Love says they can’t wait to see them teaching again when they’re ready.

Love doesn’t hand out nametags, it extends healing.

Jesus didn’t heal the leper to lock him in his shame. Jesus set him free, gave him his life back.

Rise up, be healed child of God.

It’s time to rip the nametag off.

“Till death do us part or April 17^th, 2018.” That’s what it should’ve said. You could’ve at least braced for that.

In the eighties, unintended destinations were filled with men unable to read a Rand McNally road map, and if you don’t know what those are, you’ll find them in the book of Daniel.

It wouldn’t be a vacation in 1987, unless one of these bad boys were spread across the entire dashboard of your wood paneled Chevy station wagon, navigating a web of asphalt from sea to shining sea. As a kid, it looked like a jumbled mess of lines and numbers, but to dad it was a quest map to epic destinations. Which in our case were random rest stops spattered along 1-5.

One fatal error of this map was that it didn’t talk back.

If you missed a turn or an exit, you entered the navigational hell of one-way streets, lost hopes and dreams, and dad who said words you didn’t know existed.

This is how Sunday feels after a divorce. A missed turn, a passed-over exit, and now you’re sitting in a back row, looking at a jumbled mess, saying things you never thought you would.

Divorce. Lawyers. Co-parenting. Betrayal. Numb.

Trying to interpret what might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics, with no one to help navigate where to go next, is how many enter the church after life takes them to unintended destinations.

Divorce is one giant awkward conversation in the church, full of everyone saying the right things, while having no idea what they’re talking about. So, the church does what any normal human would: give it the ‘silent treatment’ and a class on a Thursday night. Sunday is reserved for the married folk.

You champion everything the Bible proclaims about marriage. You clung to the covenant. You valiantly fought off any suggestion to quit. You did the right thing. Now you’re wallowing in the mud with no fire hose in sight and church is in fifteen minutes. You’ve never shown up there dirty before.

It was always subtle and innocently intended, but you used to look down upon what you are now. You used to say “Oh, bless your heart” to that single mom dragging her kids in late and now you’re him. At least hers showed up in matching clothes and combed hair.

You’re singing Amazing Grace caked in mud and everyone in the room sees the person missing from your side. Grace doesn’t seem amazing right now, it feels lost, and you can’t read a map to save your life. It’s like having every single eye on your failure while being lovingly shunned.

Yet almost forty percent of churches are filled with a conversation no one wants to have. It’s our scarlet letter. It’s an irony we want to ignore because on the one hand we pulpit pound the sanctity of marriage while half our church sits in violation of it. There isn’t a church out there advertising an upcoming ‘Divorce Retreat’. Maybe the answer is assigned seating: Divorced/Non-Divorced.

You’re not damaged goods; you’re a child of the King. That’s the song the church should be singing over the ‘divorced’. You are wholly and dearly loved and we’re going to embrace your mess no matter how muddy your life gets. God’s grace doesn’t stop at divorce.

You’re worth a shout out from the pulpit and a plate of cookies at your doorstep. Divorce is not your identity, Jesus is. You are not ‘less than’ in the church, you’re co-laborers in Christ and heirs to the kingdom. There is no divorced section in heaven.

Jesus didn’t have that woman wallow in her shame while everyone ate popcorn. He said, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus doesn’t keep people in the place of shame to be spectated upon by His church. He’s a God who gives you a map that talks back so you can move forward. Jesus saw a daughter who needed to be set free and yet many fidget in a pew shackled to their shame.

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” – John 8:36

Divorce is part of your story, but it is not your destiny. Jesus is in the shame washing business. He doesn’t see ‘divorced’, He sees ‘dearly loved’ and worth diving into the mud of torn apart lives and molding priceless art out of the mess.

The divorce happened. It was hell. There will be dynamics to deal with for the rest of your life. It’s not about playing pretend, like it never happened, it’s embracing the reality from the lens of heaven. You can live with victory in the pain and walk in royalty without shame.

There are no tiers in Christianity, only the cross.

To the divorced – walk in freedom and victory today. Move in the grace of Christ which is freely given to anyone who will receive it.

You’re not damaged goods, you’re precious treasure. Your name is child of God.

Yes, this may be the place you thought you’d never arrive at, but it’s the place you’ll flourish from.

Thanks for reading! If you know of someone who would be encouraged by this, please share!

Sunday doesn’t care about your feelings or how your week went. It doesn’t check and see if you need a few more days to get your message ready. It doesn’t come with a pause button.

Monday arrived, decked out in three burnt shots of espresso disguised in a mocha suit. Six dollars never tasted so painful as you dream of an afternoon filled with acid reflux. A digital melody stomps on the silence of a morning drive to the office as his name flashes across the dash display, tasting worse than the coffee you can’t afford to spit out. Answer or ignore? If only life were that easy. The conversation always starts out sweet but always leaves you with that cheap frosted donut film in your mouth. The onslaught continues in your office, opening an email with the subject line: “We need to talk,” knowing it’ll be a one-way conversation with you paying the bill at the end.

Tuesday loves meetings. It just does. It’s in the Bible. It’s spent combing through every detail of last Sunday, celebrating how seamless the transitions of the service were, how many new families came, and how important comas are in the announcement slides. There are calendars to go over, events to plan, visions to be cast, problems to be solved, services to prepare for, and a marriage with no pulse, in need of a defibrillator.

That “We need to talk” email wasn’t from your friendly self-appointed prophet; it was from an aching wife: Yours to be exact. By “we,” she means you, her, and a licensed referee with a boxing ring in their office and one set of gloves. There was a church to build, leaders to grow, and people needing saved while she raised Clark Kent’s children as he flew around anointed spandex. Now the bill’s come due, and your costume doesn’t impress her anymore.

Wednesdays are the tush-push of life where the prize is just getting the ball over the line of mid-week activities. You’ve developed a nervous twitch every time your phone buzzes on this volunteer driven day. Some teacher’s kid is always sick on a Wednesday, that’s in the Bible too, somewhere in Ecclesiastes. You’ve thought about offering cash prizes to every volunteer who shows up, but then they’d have to report that as taxable income and the next thing you know everyone’s negotiating for a new Name, Image, and Likeness contract. It’s hump day, get over it.

Thursday is the hangover you never asked for as you, yet again, volunteered to ride the tornado known as the fifth-grade boys’ class last night, waking up not even sure what week of the day it is. Staring blankly out the window, waiting for the fog to lift, you’re forced to admit it’s how you escape the pain. Some turn to alcohol, others to porn, but you did something even stranger. You made the church your mistress while she suffered at home, alone. It’s been two years since the cancer took your daughter and her room still looks exactly as it was before the treatments. Now it’s covered in the tears of a mother unable to move on.

Activity numbed the pain wielding crowded calendars to distract you from the agonizing process of grieving. The hollow applause from a church who heaped praise on your strength through adversity, now lost as you stare out into the mist of a marriage on life support.

Friday is an extended version of the silent game with your wife winning in straight sets. Otherwise known as your day off. An improvised schedule of who enters the kitchen at certain times or who takes the car out for errands has developed as each has done their best to give space to the other, avoiding any kind of unintended interactions. She gets ready for the day while he drops the kids off at school, then zips home to sweat on a treadmill for an hour while she runs to Costco. It’s her weekly therapy to reminisce through the aisles in the same pattern her daughter always insisted, stopping to model the coming seasonal fashions for her. She would’ve loved this year’s colors. She daydreams toward the book section, watching her thumb through any mystery novel she could get ahold of. She always buys her chocolate ice cream cones on the way out. She loved chocolate.

Afternoons are spent alone soaking in the silence. Nothing like breathing in unresolved tension to release the stress of the week.

Balancing the monthly budget is a Saturday ritual only meant for nerves of steel. Especially when the math isn’t math-ing and hasn’t been since the diagnosis. If only following God’s call came with health insurance. Unlike your sin debt, Jesus hasn’t washed away those seminary loans necessary to fulfill the qualifications of your current job, with the consolation prize of no retirement. When God said go, you asked how far, you’ve been a good soldier, and haven’t been able to afford a vacation in four years. If you would’ve just taken that staff job at the large church this wouldn’t have happened, but you weren’t willing to sacrifice your soul at the altar of performance. Now it feels like you’ve offered up your family instead.

Never mind any of that now, Sunday’s knocking on the door and it doesn’t like waiting.

Sundays are always served best with a smile. Always.

The media team custom designed all the graphics for your new series launching this week. Musicians gave up an extra night of the week fine-tuning all the songs for this very moment. Baristas started working their magic in the lobby over an hour ago. Welcome teams came early to stand at the doors with bulletins and big smiles. Ushers are clearing the way in the auditorium, guiding people to the best seats in the house. Somewhere a volunteer coordinator is hiding in the fetal position over the trauma of rounding up enough Children’s Ministry staff to make this morning happen.

Lights are flashing; singers are hopping and the band is bringing the heat as contagious energy surges through the room. It’s the hit of adrenaline you needed to make it to the end.

She sits through your entire message, dutifully smiling on cue. The empty shell she sees at home is now pouring all his energy into an audience that will never love him the way she does. Her pain remains tightly sealed, never endangering the vibe he’s putting out.

You created this beast, now it’s time to ride it.

The stories are connecting, the jokes are landing, the points are sticking, and the dopamine is flowing. There’s nothing like it. It’s a rush until amen.

Monday is two plane tickets on a desk, with an all-expense paid marriage intensive itinerary sitting underneath. It’s the one she keeps sending you reels of.

On top of the tickets is a note simply stating: “Your ministry is only as good as your marriage is healthy. We love you.”

Sunday can wait.

You’re only as good as your last sermon.

It’s the voice in your head going off at two in the morning, unable to reach the snooze button on a Sunday as you rehearse the inevitable book report. Last week the jokes were landing, the points were sticking, and the visitors were smiling. The passage was ripe with application as you plucked the spiritual succulence of low hanging fruit off the Bible’s Greatest Hits tribute album.

It’s been like chiseling granite with a toothpick this week. Scouring for crumbs off commentary floors in preparation for Sunday’s feast results in conjuring up a recipe for toast. Last week was a home run and now you’re just hoping to get on base with a bunt.

This is what life feels like when you’re preaching to score cards. You live in a world where batting a thousand feels like the only option as pressure mounts to hit the ball further. Anything less and you’re disappointing everyone who gave of their time and tithes to come and warm a pew. Better bring your ‘A’ game. Last week’s message was culinary perfection. What’s this week’s special? Hopefully they like granite soufflé.

It came in your inbox two months ago, veiled in a compliment, praising you for how much better your messages are now compared to what they used to be. They’re finally enjoying coming to church again and glow in the nostalgia of glory days gone by. Keep it up pastor! They write while waiving their banners and run with streamers. Their skin leathered from basking in the setting sun of yesteryear. Coaxing air from an empty ‘Brownsville’ tank, they’re banking on you for another refill.

They’re bringing their friend because last week was off the charts and church finally feels safe again. Your message was the breath of fresh air this dusty sarcophagus of a church has been gasping for. Finally they feel like they can invite someone without taking them on a tour to the Museum of the Bible. The music finally discovered the 21st century and the moratorium on electric guitars has finally been lifted. Messages have felt like you don’t need a Bible thesaurus to understand them and Bible stories are presented as though real people were in them. You’re bringing the fire, please don’t say anything too preachy, no pressure. Keep the shofar in its case.

Nothing. So far that’s been the title of this week’s message. Maybe just do a series playing everyone’s favorite YouTube preachers. You get the shorts sent to you all week anyway. How do you compete with that?! Mentos and Diet Coke. If you’re not on your game, there’s always YouTube.

“I’m just not getting fed here.”

One of the all time greatest hits for leaving a church. It’s a classic that never goes out of style. You can show them your notes with all the Bible references and commentary sources all you want. You have flicked that spiritual spoon in every direction, in front of mouths that refuse to open. You get caught up in a vicious cycle of appeasing a crowd you’ll never please, intent on continuing their hunger strike.

”Just preach the Word!”, as their mouths gape open during nap time every time you do. Enough with the jokes and practical application. The laughing keeps them awake.

Notepads don’t write themselves and Sunday isn’t taking a break. Why does it feel like you’re always one sermon away from losing an entire row? For those who pastor small churches, that’s a real possibility. An entire row gone, because you didn’t take a stronger stance on the ‘hot-potato’ political topic of the day.

You’re only as good as last Sunday.

Is that what it’s come to? What about being deeply rooted in the local church, tightly knit with a body of believers, co-laborers and heirs to the kingdom? Is it really dependent on your preferences of preaching styles? Has it become that easy to hop around to the flavor-of-the-month church when the sugar coating has worn off the one you attend now? Where’s the depth of faith when your ears aren’t being tickled every week?

We place expectations on humans to deliver what we never could if placed in the same role. Our lack of perfection is lived vicariously through the person standing on stage so we have someone else to blame when our spiritual lives stale.

Serve the weekly shot of dopamine in the preferred flavor and get a score to make it through the week. Riding these waves of approval leave us staring at blank notepads on deserted beaches.

It’s a mirror the American church as a whole should gaze into. On one hand we criticize the performance culture on display weekly while ignoring the glaring stain of unbiblical expectations many have espoused. We grew up applauding a stage and it bled into our pews with us gladly paying for the tickets. It’s not that pastors aren’t preaching the Bible, it’s that we’re trying to do it better than last week. It’s a rush until the adrenaline runs out.

Oh God give us fresh fire. We’re tired of serving up candy and playing not to lose. Give us boldness to speak Your word with passion. Playing to preference to preempt empty seats is shredding sails trying to catch the Spirits wind. We need revelation not presentation. Transform us as the pressure mounts to conform to the fad of the day. Give us a passion to speak on the hard things with love. We’re tired of greasing the squeaky wheels of what once was to quench the kudos of the moment. We’re done bending the knee to consumerism.

My value isn’t found in last Sunday, it’s found in you Jesus. Here I am.

Thank you for taking the time to read. Pastor, if you’re reading this, thank you for serving in a local church. We need you. Your church needs you. Stand strong and hold fast.

One of the biggest blessings I ever received was realizing my identity wasn’t found in my title. For so long my name had the word ‘Pastor’ in front of it, and when it disappeared, I didn’t know what to do. Jesus set me free of that bondage.

Simply enjoy being a child of God today.

“Look at the way we go out walking close together
I guess you could say I’m really beside myself.” – Weird Al Yankovic

It wasn’t until a few years after 1988 that a generation of children found out Michael Jackson ripped off Fat by Weird Al and propped it up in a brazen attempt to become the King of Pop. It was Bad, terrible, evil. We knew who the real king was. That perm, those glasses, that nasal tone with an affinity for polka. You can’t dethrone that, don’t even try.

That platinum album cranked out hit after eighties pop hit, cementing its place in the hierarchy of musical royalty*. The most egregious heist of all happened with his hit “I Think I’m a Clone Now,” because it wasn’t stolen once, but twice. Tiffany ripped it off in 1987 and Tommy James and the Shondells traveled back to the future to plagiarize their version in 1966. You know it’s a hit when two artists use your masterpiece to rocket launch themselves into stardom.

Clones get a bad rap for not knowing who their parents are and being plagued with an inherent ability to hit anything but their target with a hand blaster. And they’re none the wiser. Ignorance is their bliss in a world of decisions veiled as choices by their creators.

Rising out of bed in a smooth, mechanical motion, cuing melodic alarm tones of “Make Us One” by Jesus Culture as any evidence of a body sleeping is quickly removed by the crisp folding of bed sheets. A seamless swivel turns a petri dish body toward the porcelain altar in anticipation of the day. Hundreds of tiny brushes massage flawless white teeth in a circular motion as the head bobs to the Jesus beat. One backwards snap of the head places every hair to its pre-determined landing spot.

Throwing on a white hoodie with that ninety’s retro-font-church-logo and designer black tennis shoes with the white-walled bottoms, the uniform finally caps off as they nudge their eighties aviator rimmed glasses up the bridge of their nose.

In a choreographed dance, every car chassés their way through the church parking lot to its designated spot, heads bobbing to that synchronous Jesus beat. Like a flock of birds, identical hoodies congregate in murmuration toward the church entrance, with corporate issued tablets in tote, triple skinny no-fo extra hot lattes in hand, marching in mechanized unison toward the conference room for the weekly software update.

” The band dialed in to the click tracks this weekend!”

” Launching the “Stranger Things” series is blowing up the gram.”

” Service transitions were seamless.”

” Everybody stayed in their lane.”

” Lights came up perfectly when Pastor walked on stage.”

” You guys heard that cheering, right? They’re finally getting the worship atmosphere.”

” You see that one dude jumping the whole time? That’s it right there.”

” Anyone notice how smoother the flow of traffic has been getting between services?”

“Yeah, so much better since we stopped having response times.”

” Zach is killing it on the drums with the new LED panel behind him, it’s epic.”

“So much better since we nixed the auditorium lights.”

” Alright, alright guys, great stuff! I’m loving this momentum wave we’re riding, let’s keep it up!” The pastor says, slightly bobbing his outstretched hands like a maestro signaling a decrescendo to an orchestra. Bursting out of the gate, this rush of dopamine was exactly what the Pastor ordered and, oh, did it fill his cup.

Asking the sweatshirts to recite the church vision was like placing a bag of popcorn in a microwave and setting it to level ten as they frantically shouted over each other in a race of who could answer the fastest.

When the first slide appeared on the screen, a collective “oh here we go” echoed with a flow chart in need of no title.

“’Send It’ Church KPI’s!” reverberated through the room as the sweatshirts ‘pew-pewed’ each other as their hands took the shape of blasters, congratulating their collective accomplishment. Pointing at each section of the flow chart, eager fancy-fonted ball caps clapped back titles with their explanations bouncing around the room at caffeinated warp speed as the maestro waved his hands across his digital composition.

“And how do we get there?” Maestro directed with a gregarious swipe left to the next slide.

” Processes and strategies” blurted out in a monotoned enthusiasm, as heads slowly swiveled back and forth with hollow stares. That one phrase initiated a hypnotic response, void of any free will.

One by one, every process in the flow chart was unpacked, line after droning line, heads bobbing with every wrist flick from the maestro.

Momentum, Next level, Re-org, connect, authentic, unpack, execute, deliver, measurables, performance and excellence. This organizational set list loops with different voices echoing the same vernacular with syntaxed enthusiasm. Heads gently click upward with every emphasized syllable.

“We exist to be a culturally relevant and authentically relational, connecting and assimilating all who attend ‘Send It’ Church in our discipleship continuum through collective experience.” The lips all move in exact fluctuations in an automated drone.

You can almost see the progress bar pulsing its way toward completion as the software update/staff meeting neared the end of its download.

They execute this latest OS update into their various areas of ministry hoping to plug others into the matrix, dangling a free sweatshirt as a consolation prize. They live life in the same font, matching the same outfit, slurping the same Kool-Aid.

Next OS update: Personality Modification. Some sweatshirts, like Thompson, are experiencing glitches and the new bug fixes should eradicate those completely. Clones aren’t designed to ask why, only “how fast?”

When coding the implementation of maestro’s masterpiece, ‘Send It’ isn’t looking for individual creativity, it’s zeroing in on streamlined efficiency.

“We’re not looking for different perspectives; we are the perspective.” The only way to accomplish implementing strategies is to engineer the type of person who can execute them efficiently and repeatedly, in a petri dish.

The goal isn’t diversity, it’s uniformity.

Leading humans is like nailing Jell-O to a wall while herding cats. We keep giving them the coloring sheet and they refuse to stay inside the lines or use the coloring template they’ve been given and ask for more crayons. They ask questions; like a six-year-old, they want to know ‘why’. Some even attempt to write their own code into the mainframe, like little holy hackers. Their files have been corrupted to contain multiple methods of doing ministry and must be wiped clean. They think music sounds better with multiple instruments playing different parts when the most efficient way is for everyone to play the same note until the song has ended.

Don’t hire people, hire personality traits. Do they enjoy the same mental gymnastics routine every day? Are they allergic to asking ‘why’? Do they like white sweatshirts? Is their favorite flavor vanilla? Hand them a coloring sheet and see what they do with it. Is their favorite method of ministry yours? Do they find monotone soothing? Are they good with a hand blaster? Do they like Weird Al? Does having the same mannerisms as the person next to you initiate a sequence of electronic pulses racing to your mainframe? Humans call this dopamine.

These people are the holy grail of streamline-ification (yeah, that’s a word). When we all rock the same hairdo, jam the the same play list, pew-pew at the same time, sip our lattes at the same angle, and never ask ‘why’, there’s nothing matching sweatshirts can’t accomplish. It’s like framing the most beautiful, photocopied painting in the church entry way. It’s flawless.

Leading different personality types should be an Olympic sport where everyone who attempts it get a participation trophy. It’s canoeing through a lake filled with spaghettiOs in a white suit during an earthquake. It’s messy. Some have emotions proudly displayed on their sleeves, while others have a face never properly introduced to an expression. Some of them like tea…that’s an abomination. Some of them have a personality other than the letter ‘A’. They’re creative, sensitive, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination. There’s those who can’t wait for the next New Year’s Eve all-nighter and those who think it should be tied up with cement blocks and thrown into the Mariana Trench. Some enjoy the messy process of building relationships that don’t adhere to a schedule, spreadsheet, or a specific outcome. There are those who swear by PC’s and others that are wrong.

This is exactly what a church staff should look and sound like.

Clones are clean, sterile, predictable, hopelessly hardwired to miss the very target they were engineered for.

Humans color outside the lines, bob their heads to different beats, capture beauty through different lenses, come to different conclusions, don’t order off the same menu, and shop at different clothing stores.

With God as the author of the greatest masterpiece, he uses humans, in all their diversity and mess, to make the most beautiful music and weave the most elegant tapestries in perfect chaotic harmony. God knitted together every personality for a purpose in His kingdom. Church staffs should reflect this instead of each other.

A church consultant was laying out the perfect personality traits needed to remain a full-time pastor on staff at the church he was asked to train. If you were quiet, you could hear God vomiting in the background.

Truth is, you grow tired of looking at yourself all the time.

Anyone seen Thompson lately?

Thank you for taking the time to read yet another one of my ramblings. I pray it blesses and challenges you.

Peace.

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After years of watching jealous spouses, betrayed friends, and pure human greed play itself out in the form of murder, real estate must be pennies on the dollar in Cabot Cove, Maine.

As a child of the eighties, logic never enters the fray while sacrificing your planned date with Super Mario Bros for your mother’s guilty pleasure of murder intoxication on the one tv in the entire house.

She solved murders, then wrote about it. And we watched it every week.

After witnessing multiple homicides in this quaint coastal town, and surviving the trauma, the throat punch of logic strikes in your mid-thirties: How are there any people left in Cabot Cove and why would anyone want to move there?

You’re flummoxed. You saw the lead pass through their chest, the shove off the cliff, the rope around the neck, and that knife plunging its way into the heart. You watched them die. They should all be dead by now.

Frantic, you dial up your mother, confronting her with this conundrum. Then in a calm, measured tone, she attempts to soften the blow of a family secret kept hidden for years: none of it was ever real. Props and stunt men. What a dagger. Throw in Santa Claus while you’re at it.

Retractable knives. An entire childhood wrought with lies. Apparently, this was going on all over Hollywood back then. What’s next? Indian Jones chased by a giant foam ball?!

Your head snaps sideways when the left hook of reality sneaks its way through. You didn’t see it coming, but now you see it clearly.

Their words ignited a dormant warrior, reviving a belief in yourself exiled in a wilderness of obscurity. You sat at the table where the chess pieces of the church were moved. Dreams were allowed to soak up as much oxygen as needed. Casting a wider net for a vibrant future pushed nitrogen into an engine that had developed an acquired taste for unleaded. A melting pot of broken dreams joined together in this renewed sense of purpose. We marched in lockstep thrusting the mission forward, faster. There wasn’t a Satan strong enough to stop us.

The quiet rumblings of a few were quickly extinguished as new trails were being blazed. Hesitation was a beast quickly tamed when defending the captain as the ships burned behind us. Most of the bullets bound for the visionary’s heart, bounced off your chest with the rest hole-punching your loyalty beyond question. The standing orders had been canonized. It was all in. Late nights were a small price to pay while sacrificing domestic normalcy. Kids made great props on a stage built for Sunday success. Sacrifice was an early hospital exit after holding your newborn, just in time for making the announcements. No way McAdams was subbing in for your sworn duty. You carried your weight. You pushed each other harder, further, faster for an unknown prize at an undesignated point. We zeroed in on the rabbit around the track never asking why. Self-care was a webinar on how to lead more effectively and efficiently.

Critical thinking played inside a sandbox sealed with saran wrapped optimism and visually impaired loyalty. Running blind-folded had its risks without any caution tape to soften the blow from the barbed wire lined borders. But flesh wounds are for mortals. Pain was an obstacle in need of conquering and there’s no better elixir than megaphone-optimism. In a battle for kudos and budget dollars, this tight knit family buzzed about, unaware of each other’s struggle and barbed wire induced scars in this silent play of posturing. There was a kingdom to build and jobs to be kept. Loyalty points were on the line as everyone danced before the king under the guise of teambuilding exercises.

Saving the world on a grand stage didn’t waste time on distractions like mortgage payments, marriage issues, genuine relationships, difficult children…you know…life. Put on that make-up, inject that biblical Botox and smile, you’re on camera. Performance reviews are in a month. Vying for that golden globe, everyone lit up the stage in a carefully choreographed showstopper with no end credits in sight as the director gently strokes the clapperboard awaiting any missteps. This plastic drama played out to the delight of a raucous congregation applauding the pastoral banter on stage unaware new characters would soon replace the ones being dragged off stage. The sting of goodbye quickly fades as you wave to someone you never knew, in a culture you were never intended to.

The cracks became too deep for the natural beige foundation to cover, with unchecked burnout making it impossible to keep reciting the same rusted out lines. You gave everything. You played your part the way a seasoned actor should, and yet deep down, you longed for it all to be real. That need for relationship? You starved for it. That sense of knowing the Big Kahuna had your back. You bled for it. A mentor who breathed life into you. You craved it. You longed to be valued, only to unmask how replaceable you always were as you offered up your best years. You sat at the table playing chess, only to realize you were always a pawn.

The pain oozes out the cracks with no gauze in sight. They’re sorry you’re bleeding. A vain attempt to wipe the Type A off with a cotton swab miserably fails as a solid side hug is applied to the wound increasing the blood flow. They apply the ointment of appreciation to you, pouring on how much you meant to them and their church as they subconsciously thumb through a pile of resumes for a position that recently came available. Yours.

They genuinely feel bad about all the makeup you bought over the years; that’s a lot of money to spend. You tell them the toll it took on your family while having to remind them Blake and Morgan are the Youth Pastor’s kids, not yours. They hate what ministry can do to children and lament what it did to theirs, staring fondly in the direction of his son’s office. It pains them to think they didn’t see this coming, unable to sputter out a sentence as to why. They just know they’re sorry it turned out this way but hope to maintain a friendship through it all. Just don’t do anything that displeases the king in the future. They’re sorry you’re hurt. They’re sorry it didn’t work out. They’re sorry you don’t have a job. They’re sorry you lost friends. They’re sorry you’re still in their office.

But boy are they thankful for all the bullets you took for em’.

It’s surreal, like you’re in the middle of a scene where the murderer plunges the knife into your chest and the blood bag bursts and the director screams “Cut!”. You tug at the knife getting ready for the next scene. Only the blade doesn’t retract, and there wasn’t this much blood in that bag to begin with. Your heart must be allergic to this prop. Gosh, my chest hurts.

Backwardpastor exists to encourage pastors who’ve experienced hurt in the church. While this is a story about a staff pastor, I know of lead pastors who’ve experienced similar hurt by a board or staff members who betrayed them.

You’re not alone. Don’t suffer in silence. I pray this can be a place of healing for people who were never allowed to heal or don’t know how to.

You will never see my stuff on the cover of Christianity today, it’s too dark and sarcastic, but I firmly believe there is a large group of people who would connect with this message.

If you know of someone, please forward this article to them.

Thanks for reading and if you’re blessed by my writing, please subscribe.

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Oh, how the devil loves to slither around in the details.

Who here has sipped away an afternoon of Earl Grey tea while doing some light reading through the entirety of the terms and conditions of your new subscription contract? If so, there’s a new position open down in accounting starting Wednesday. But for the rest of us commoners, either agree to it, or you’ve just wasted $99.99. However, if scrolling through the legal jargon of Amazon leaves you craving more, add Robert’s Rules of Order to your list. It’s a real page-turner.

Didn’t you just hate that kid who barely studied for the exam and ends up acing it, while you’re slumped over a desk, postulating how many different words you can spell with the multiple-choice letters on a #2 pencil. Some people just test well, some don’t. This will manifest itself later in life when asked what your greatest strengths and woefully short weaknesses are. You chiseled yourself onto a resume as though Michelangelo was called in for a consult and now you must back it up in person. You’re peppered with situational hypotheticals like, “If the copier malfunctions and no one is there to throw it out the window, did it actually malfunction?” Or “Your boss is a moron, do you address it, tell others, or let it stew in the pot of resentment as your soul slowly turns to ash in a cubicle over the next 30 years?”

You hear the hammers and nail guns rattling around in your head as you attempt to craft a coherent thought. What exits the oxygen intake hole are thought fragments resembling the “Puppy Who Lost His Way” speech from Billy Madison as the interviewer scribbles down some constructive thoughts on a piece of paper with a blank stare. Keep it up, it’s going great.

On another track (Yes, this article is a little ADHD today), have you ever struck out in slow-pitch church league softball game? It happens to the best of us. That giant stitched ball, lobbed softly into the air on three separate occasions, followed by the walk of shame as you sulk into the dugout with your chiropractor on speed dial. Their resume was flawless. It was filled with B.A.’s and M.S.’s from the right institutions with a flowing work history and glowing references. They were a ‘can’t-miss’ and now security is leading them out of the building. Maybe the real whiff was that kid who could barely sputter out a sentence.

You’d expect these two scenarios in corporate America, but this plays out under steeples everywhere. Job descriptions post daily of churches looking for the right candidates for specific positions filled with lingo that sounds ‘churchy’ but smells ‘corporate.’ What began as a calling at an altar now reads a lot like a job you could get at your neighborhood manufacturing giant.

Relationships and corporate style job interviews don’t mix. Let the whiffing commence. Relationships are built over time, not in an interview room over hypotheticals.

The art of mentoring is an extinct species. We hire for the now. We want results now. We want plug-n-play. You won’t be considered if you don’t match a certain criteria and wow someone in an interview. That’s how most church staff relationships begin. The starting line of the relationship is performance based, in institutions touting relationship with Jesus, one another, and “Come as you are” through a microphone. The façade of relationship peels away as the discrepancies between resumes, job descriptions, and reality erode in the daily grind of ministry. When the masks come off, the ugly comes out and the cards are finally on the table of what this relationship ever was . When the expectation was 250 teens in the youth ministry and you’re running 125 three years later, is when the details come creeping out. That’s when the rubber meets the road of those pastoral bonds.

Walking alongside someone as they grow in their ministry is like potty training a puppy. It needs constant attention, consistent guidance, and cheering like crazy when they poop outside. It’s easier to buy that fully trained dog, but you’ll never build that bond only attained from training a puppy. It’s hard. It takes work. It’s messy. Then one day you look at that little pup and can’t imagine your life without it. That’s relationship and severing it would be excruciating. Resumes are the Windex of job descriptions, which explain why no one would ever want to own a puppy.

It’s easier to fire someone you never really knew who didn’t meet expectations, than to part ways with someone you went on vacation with and appear in your family photos.

It’s why we do it. Specifics let us off the hook of relationships. It lets you cut ties with a scalpel rather than a chainsaw. You don’t have to invest relational capital in something that should already be trained. The more details you sneak into pastoral descriptions, the easier it is to let them off the leash when it doesn’t seem to be working out. It’s easier to rip band-aids off wounds that don’t go very deep.

This is why the church is filled with lost puppies.

No one likes interviewing naked and Photoshop should never be used for profile pics on churchstaffing.com. Both sides put their best foot forward on that first date. The church shows a little ankle, and the candidate buttons up their rented tuxedo unaware of what cufflinks are. They don’t talk about the split, or the pastor before them who was abruptly let go and that tux distracts from asking why they’ve been in seven churches in the last five years. And that’s how the relationship begins. When the foundation is fake, the relationship is never real.

If those deep pastoral bonds end in an NDA, the grip was never that tight to begin with.

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Ignoring the stench of burning garbage outside while focusing everyone’s attention on becoming a better “you,” is an illusion worthy of landing a show in Vegas. There’s nothing more comforting than warming a seat cushion at the weekly pep rally while throwing some coin at Crooked Tree Elementary’s annual free mochaccinos from Sunrise Heights Family Community Happy Valley Church to feel #blessed. It’s easy to give toward something you never have to engage with. You Venmo the love of Jesus with a warm, fuzzy tap. Afterall, homeless people need socks and kids need no. 2 pencils and more glue paste to eat. Appreciation letters plaster the lobby walls from schools and community organizations, alleviating you of any guilt from inaction. Give yourself a good pat on the back, you deserve it.

Then a letter arrives, affectionately stamped to you from your child’s school: “Coming This Fall!”, a new, socially engineered curriculum being served up in classrooms all over Happy Valley to help your child develop into the person society wants them to become. It sounds harmless: self-worth, anti-bullying, acceptance of others, discovering your sexuality, being a good helper, and saying no to drugs. Wait…discovering what?! He’s in kindergarten! Maybe it was a typo, or someone was having a bad morning, leaving flawless grammar in their wake. Your core constricts. You call the school. Your church gave them caffeinated kindness and now their urinating on your lukewarm convictions.

It’s a shock to the system when bribes don’t work on darkness. You gave it gift cards and dropped off lattes in hopes they turn to righteousness. Your church relentlessly reached a community with fingers crossed, hoping generous silence would lead to a spot in the upcoming Happy Valley Holiday parade. Only to find darkness purring while being petted with gospel-free lattes. When the church stands idly by, throwing candy at school boards, darkness keeps that parade slot wide open.

“Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words!” That famous quote St. Francis never said, but many churches embody. Be seen and not heard. People saw Jesus when He was quietly hurling tables in the temple. Peter enjoyed free stays at the Hanoi Hilton for preaching Jesus in the temple after repeatedly being told not to. Stephen wouldn’t shut up about his faith while his face kept blocking boulders from hitting the ground. Peter used his words. Jesus lived loud. The apostles stomped on eggshells.

Silence paid off, the church cheered it on, and congratulations, that free caramel macchiato you Venmoed is now unlocking the proper pronoun for your second grader. Darkness loves your charity when Jesus is left out of the conversation and allowed to prowl freely. Hopefully preparing for spiritual warfare was on the recipe card for becoming a better you.

The gospel, when preached boldly, lands you on a cross, your head on a platter, and being hoisted onto a wall as human candle stick. Darkness hates you. You were born into it, a slave to its sin, and only Jesus can set you free. Freeing people is bad when you’re in the darkness’ business. Give them handouts, not keys to their chains. Whatever you do, don’t call evil, evil. Just give it your appeasement offering and continue on the next exhibit.

Communities embrace a generous, toothless church unable to muster a roar. They welcome your absence against abortion, your “no comment” on LGBT+-R2D2² and bowing out while your children enjoy a steady diet of gender dysphoria and familial primates. Just don’t hand Jesus the microphone. The Pharisees told Peter the same thing. Do your best Christian mime, hand out socks, and you’ll be displaying that Community Partnership Award in no time.

Silence is a cheap fleece blanket churches snuggle into on a Monday, insulating the status quo while basking in the light of its LED panels inside a darkened hype-cave. Hear the church roar only inside its four walls. Nothing like bravely singing in the shower at the top of your lungs for no one to hear.

Roars are meant for the wild, not self-enclosed zoo exhibits for paying customers to snap selfies #Jesusiskool.

Love roars. It abandons cushioned seating at the risk of being unfollowed on Instagram and reverberates into the darkness. Love willingly paints a fluorescent orange target on itself for darkness to dial in its crosshairs. Love is more concerned with eternity than conformity. Love stares the human condition in the face without blinking. Love engages a society on the brink and points it to a cross.

Stop hanging with culture in the photo booth. Blurring the lines between Jesus and Jezabel isn’t love, it’s confusion. Stop wooing her with empty trinkets untethered to a cross. Light stomps down darkness’ door, piercing into the darkest corners of deceit. Light scatters woke cockroaches preying on children in lesson plans. That’s love.

Resist the temptation to muzzle a gospel intent on offending the sweetest of sinners. Charity never nullifies confrontation, and silence isn’t golden. Filling up food banks isn’t a hall pass for passivity; it’s a catalyst for courage. Cleaning your school campus isn’t a “Get Out of Jail Free” card when righteousness comes calling at the school board meeting. We can’t keep Jesus caged in acoustically padded auditoriums while caffeinating a dying world. He was meant to roar.

Mochalattocaffechinos taste much better when brewed in the gospel. Jesus gave people abundant life while exposing snakes, vipers, and hypocrites. He opened blind eyes in front of those scheming a path to a cross. He uses backpacks filled with school supplies, sandbags to keep the floodwaters out, and paid medical bills to reach hearts for the gospel while publicly standing against organizations exploiting our most vulnerable. The gospel uses charity to point people towards eternity. It generously hands out groceries and opens its auditoriums as Red Cross shelters, while standing vigilant against propositions for transgender bathrooms.

Darkness would love nothing more than a toothless lion gumming at sin while passing out free ice cream coupons to a bound up world.

The church was meant to roar the gospel loudly, love generously, and live victoriously.

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Friends cheering, blood rushing, common sense escaping. Macho is bonding your tongue with frozen steel after a triple-dog-dare. Maybe you could wiggle out of it with a double, but there’s no escaping the clutches of the triple, no turning back now. You followed the pied piper to that flagpole and now it’s time to pay up as you’re left alone, with your involuntarily conjoined metal twin. You wait, thirsting for the flow of warm water to send the prickling sensation of freedom, unshackling you from a frozen prison.

A smile breaks through a face still checking to see if pain and humiliation have left the building for good. It’s the look of being rescued from a cult. The sweet relief of freedom coupled with the scars of regret for years spent investing in something that left you stuck to a flagpole. The wince of reminiscing in the deception of someone who once cheered you on to new heights only to ensnare you at the summit. They left that part out of the pamphlet.

Maybe you’ve seen the harrowing testimonies of those rescued from the darkest of places where charismatic narcissists preyed on vulnerable seekers promising salvation for the small price of handing over the keys to their lives. All you had to do was empty your bank accounts, hand over your spouse, free your mind of any critical thinking and open your soul to this bright, shiny, all-encompassing enlightened life.

Sitting on the couch, adorned in those green plaid pajamas, bowl of cereal in hand with a jaw fully descended to the floor, complete disbelief slaps your face as nine hundred people drink Kool-Aid. Blood pressure rises as followers offer up their children to these hedonistic saviors. How could anyone allow themselves to worship at the altar of these sadistic soul pimps?!

It's the punch you don’t see that gets you every time. When deception strikes where you’d least expect from someone you threw war paint on for and blazed trails with. The kill shot was never supposed to come from behind and burst out your chest. Gasping for air, pain pulses through your body with a piercing reality: The campaign to proclaim the cross got tangled in a web of cultural relevance, cloaked in an ego using you to make a name for itself. Slipping in and out of consciousness, the reel of your life scrolls the greatest hits of compromise for the cause. Their cause. Now they stand over you, barrel still smoking, quoting scripture.

It was supposed to be simple; it was supposed to be about Jesus. An A frame building with burnt orange carpet, popcorn ceilings, dimly lit round orbs hanging from above and a sound system that almost worked. There were no cameras, no hashtags, QR codes, and click tracks, only Jesus. The website hadn’t been dusted and tidied in years, and the eighties wanted their clip art from the church bulletin back.

The piano player Karate chopped every hymn while the lead singer fought the melody into submission. It was a simple gospel message that echoed off empty pews that morning while the savory smell of pot roast tortured every nostril still conscious. For some, Sunday service was a time to tilt the head back and let the anesthesia of the pastor’s sermon work its magic. On this sleepy Sunday, however, a life altering appointment with Jesus was on the menu for one starving soul who had arrived late. A hand raised and a life was changed forever. The church hadn’t seen a new birth in years, and nobody could find a copy of “What Now” anywhere in the building.

The next week he was early, with friends. They didn’t know the songs but had no issues establishing the beat while the drums sat empty on stage. What they lacked in church etiquette, they made up for with loud enthusiasm. Two more departed that sleepy church alive in Christ and ready for more.

While the pastor was excited about this new growth, he’d also grown to love stroking his sheep to sleep every Sunday. They’re easier to manage that way.

The lobby kept getting noisier every Sunday. Not enough bulletins were being printed, and people were losing their unofficial assigned seating on a weekly basis. But no one was upset, God was moving, people were meeting Jesus.

One Sunday, the young man approached the pastor asking if there was a way to start a Bible study for his friends. “Why don’t you do it, and I’ll teach you,” the pastor said. A jolt of excitement burst out his mouth and the following Wednesday B.O.B. was born (Bunch of Believers).

The stage filled with musicians that could actually play over the following months, the pastor introduced himself in matching outfits, dressing like he cared, they found a lyrics person who could keep up, and the nursery stopped being used for extra storage. Church was growing, and the pastor was becoming less sure of himself and his ability to control it all. It was so much easier with empty pews.

The pastor reached out to a larger church seeking advice on how to manage the new growth. He shared how energetic and sometimes chaotic the services were and felt he was losing control of what God was doing. They suggested dynamic books on church management and a video series that had just been released by the fastest growing church in America on funneling people into church through pipelines (sounds slippery).

Six months later, the young man who started all this chaos now carried the title, Volunteer Associate Pastor; on fire for Jesus and unable to manage his way out a wet paper sack. Pastor requested he consume these new books and meet weekly to master the new material.

“You need to start managing your Bible study better, it’s a little chaotic.”

“Yeah, the dog’s walking me, but we’re gobbling up the bible, people are sharing their lives and struggles. It feels like family, a crazy, loving one. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be?”

“If we don’t start learning to manage this now, we’ll never get to the next level of where we need to be.” Pastor said.

“What’s the next level? Like in Marios Bros.?”

“We’ve gotta dial this in, part of growing is striving for excellence in our professionalism. New people expect that.”

“I didn’t expect that when I came.”

“We’re at a different place now. It’s time to elevate. We need to be more relevant in this town.”

He left deflated. He’d never been around Jesus loving people before and craved it. It was a circus at times, but he liked the rides. He struggled with the tension of pleasing his pastor and cloning another church, while a passion burned for what God was doing in his group. Yes, it felt untamed, but it didn’t feel wrong.

Introducing these new changes went over like a balloon filled entirely with lead that Wednesday night.

“I feel like you’re telling us we’ve been doing this church thing wrong” someone in the group said. “What’s so wrong about talking about Jesus and having fun?”

“Uh, well, Umm, our church just beat level 4….and…we need to power up, I mean level up for extra lives…and…”

He didn’t know how to answer them; he empathized. He was one of them. Proper church verbiage escaped him on crafting the culturally-correct “why.” All he knew was that his life was an absolute train wreck and a small voice led him to a dusty old church one morning.

“Hey, this is just what pastor wants, so we’re gonna do it.” He said sheepishly.

Thursday morning, the pastor requested a meeting immediately.

“I got a call this morning from someone in your group asking why they must do “all this new stuff.””

“Yeah, it didn’t fly with some people.”

“From this moment on, never disrespect me in front of my church people again, this is your only warning. And starting next week, you will begin submitting a report to me on everything that goes on in your group. You will also submit to me your teaching outlines prior to Wednesday for my approval.”

“I wasn’t disresp…..” he said getting cut off.

“Do not talk back to me, you’re a volunteer. I’m the pastor, what I say goes.” He snapped. “Tomorrow, I need you here to meet with the team from our mentor church. We’re going to learn how to do church the right way.”

Beginning that Sunday, detailed orders of service were outlined and followed to a “T”, even rehearsing the service earlier that morning. The sound and media people would get berated if something went wrong. Only certain songs were allowed from the current popular worship albums. Pastor began using “buzzwords” every Sunday, emphasizing them repeatedly to rebrand our culture. In the announcements, words like, “Authentic” and “Connect” and phrases like “You belong Here” were required. Cultural relevance became the name of the game in executing the growth strategy of the other church.

Approved teaching outlines were used on Wednesdays, and meetings only lasted an hour so unchurched people wouldn’t feel trapped. Food stopped being served because more budget dollars were going toward new lighting and the re-branding of the church.

The website desperately needed revamping with the band jumping around on stage plastered on the home page. It had to rival the big boys. The church needed a new digital front door.

Anticipating growth, pastor required more leadership training, using the video series sent earlier, assigning his associate to the task.

“Pastor, I don’t have the time to do all of this. I have a family and a job.” He pleaded.

“You can’t complain in kingdom work. Part of showing your worth, is showing your sacrifice” Pastor said.

“I’m spending more time here, away from my family. I’m rushing over on Tuesdays to submit my lesson plans, I’m racing from work on Wednesdays to teach, I’m staying up late to write the reports you’ve requested, I’m coming in on Saturdays to load all the media and put the service orders together. It’s too much, I can’t keep doing this!” he said.

“Then I guess I’ll have to find someone else who believes in the cause, who can execute the deliverables required. If you can’t perform these duties and sacrifice for God, then maybe I’ve waisted my time investing in you.”

“This is where I got saved, where my life changed. You introduced me to Jesus. This is where my friends met Jesus. That’s all that matters. People started coming because of what Jesus was doing here, now it feels like we’re trying to manufacture some watered-down, polished version of what we used to be. Everything was going great when all we had was Jesus. We don’t need all this other stuff.”

“Leave now! You have become a rebellious Spirit. An Absalom.” He gritted.

“Who? You’re like a dad, I got saved under you…why are you doing this, I love you?!” he cried.

“I thank you for your time, your services are no longer welcome here.”

“What about Wednesday nights? That’s my family!

“That’s no longer your concern.” He said, barrel smoking as his mask hit the floor.

Some cults scream out a megaphone, while others thinly veil themselves in Jesus. They have a “form” of church but deny the power. Anytime you control the cross for personal gain or preference, you’re creating a cult. When methods are prioritized above the cross, you’re in a cult. When personalities get more notoriety than Jesus, you’re in a cult. When modern vernacular saturates the stage over scripture, you’re in a cult. When man made strategies choke out prayer, we’ve lost the plot.

The scariest cults aren’t found it Waco, it’s the ones hiding in plain sight behind a man on a cross, with their people stuck to a flagpole.

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