5 Misconceptions about Spiritual Abuse: #1 “Loving the Church Means You Don’t Call Out Her Problems”



 By Michael J. Kruger - Posted at Canon Fodder:

Published September 26, 2022

Last week I announced the upcoming release of my new book, Bully Pulpit: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church (Zondervan, 2022). The book releases on November 1st.

As a lead up to the book release, I am launching a new blog series entitled, “5 Misconceptions about Spiritual Abuse.” In my research for the book, it became quite evident that people have a lot of misunderstandings of spiritual abuse, how it manifests itself in the church, and how it should be addressed. Some of these are rather innocent misunderstandings, and others perhaps less innocent. Either way, it is important that they be addressed for the health of the church.

We begin with perhaps the biggest misconception: “Loving the church means you don’t call out her problems.”

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When it comes to the issue of abuse, it’s been a rough stretch for the church. The last decade has not only seen a rise in cases of spiritual abuse—Mark Driscoll, Steve Timmis, James MacDonald to name a few—but it seems we are hearing about more and more cases, including those of sexual abuse. Beyond the high-profile cases of Ravi Zacharias and Bill Hybels, we have the 6-part Houston Chronicle series, and now the newly released SBC report, showing the problem is much more extensive than anyone even knew.

Every time we think we’ve seen the full scope of the abuse problem, it seems we discover the iceberg just goes deeper below the surface than we even realized.

In light of such revelations, we might hope for the church to respond like Nehemiah, “Even I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses” (Neh 1:6-7).



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