88. Church Hurt: Healing from Spiritual Wounds & Finding Your Way Back to God | with Dr. Sean St Jean

Have you ever experienced hurt within the church or struggled with faith because of past wounds? You’re not alone. In this episode of Curious for Christ, we dive into a powerful conversation about spiritual trauma, healing from church hurt, and rediscovering a thriving relationship with God.

Dr. Sean St Jean shares deep insights on:
• The difference between submission and subjugation in faith
• How to heal from past church wounds without losing your relationship with God
• The importance of honest, unfiltered prayer—even when you’re struggling
• Why mature love in Christ is deeper and stronger than the emotional highs of early faith
• How to build healthy, life-giving fellowship, even outside of traditional church settings

Bible Verses Mentioned:
• Psalm 88 – A raw, honest prayer of suffering and struggle
• Matthew 18:20 – “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
• 2 Timothy 2:19 – “Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are his.’”
• Romans 5:3-5 – “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
• James 1:2-4 – “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”

Resources & Links Mentioned:
• Eremos Ministry Website – Explore courses and resources on healing and spiritual growth
• Eremos Ministry YouTube Channel – Weekly content on faith, healing, and ministry
• Spiritual Trauma: A Guide for Healing Your Heart from Church Hurts – Get the Book Here
• Listen to my Previous Podcast Episode with Christy & Joe Peed on how the Biblical Sabbath brings Healing and Renewal in times of stress or burnout

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Let’s keep growing together in faith!

Love in Christ,

Alexandra

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Transcript

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Welcome back to another episode of curious for Christ Today, we will have a profound and much needed conversation about spiritual trauma. Healing from church hurt and finding our way back to God. Studies indicate that church hurt it. is a significant issue affecting many believers. So if you've experienced church hurt or feel distant from your faith community, you're not alone. Let me give you some statistics. Church attendance has been declining in recent years, and according to Pew Research, only 47 percent of U. S. adults Attend religious services at least once a month, down from 63 in 2007, and many people stopped attending due to the COVID 19 pandemic, with 32 percent not returning to in person services. Church hurt is also a significant factor with one in three Christians experiencing it, and younger generations, especially millennials and Gen Zs, are increasingly disconnected from traditional church settings. A cultural shift toward secularism and rising trust in religious. Institutions are contributing to these trends. Despite these challenges today, we will see that it always boils down to falling in love with God over and over again. However, we cannot do life without each other. Hurts are bound to happen. And in many ways, they're a sign that our relationships are going deeper. So today we'll discuss all of this and more with my special guest, Dr. Sean St. Jean. Dr. Sean St. Jean is a clinical therapist with over 15 years of experience and a professor at King University in Bristol, Tennessee. Dr. St. Jean Specializes in helping Christians recover from spiritual trauma and has shared his expertise on trauma, occupational stress, burnout, and organizational health at conferences worldwide. Actively involved in his church community in Vancouver, Canada, he lives with his wife Erin and their three children, Noah, Jacob, and Andrea. To learn more, you can visit their website at SeanStJean. com. So if you've ever felt distant from God because of past wounds or struggled with trust in spiritual spaces, this episode is for you, let's dive in. Welcome to Curious for Christ. Do you ever find yourself lying awake at night, wondering about God's plan for your life? Maybe you wake up with big dreams, but feel unsure where to start or what your next step should be. If you're curious about exploring your faith and finding purpose, then you've come to the right place. Hi, I'm Alexandra. I too felt lost, unsure of the direction my life was taking. I yearned to understand my purpose and have someone guide me. But I kept telling myself I was too busy, the timing wasn't right, and my lack of clarity prevented me from being consistent, until I found Christ. He brought peace into my life and revealed the way to find purpose, by anchoring myself In this podcast, we'll journey together exploring the Bible to gain a deeper understanding of Him and cultivate your own personal relationship with Christ. So open up your Bible, put in those earbuds and listen up because God is speaking to you. He is making everything new and you don't want to miss it. Let's get started. Good morning, Sean, thank you for joining me in this discussion that I believe is really timely, really important spiritual trauma, church hurt. I'd love to hear your personal faith journey. I think it's so important to. To know and to hear how God calls us each one of us in the personal story that we have, that he is writing of our lives. So if you could share your personal faith journey and the experiences also that led you to specialize in helping Christian heal from spiritual trauma. Thank you for. Inviting me on, Alexandra. It is a real pleasure to be here. And those are great questions. I grew up as an atheist. I my, my father is an atheist. My, my family went to church for a time. And I went to a Christian school for a few years. And those were in hindsight, very formative. I've got some treasured memories of coming to an early faith back when I was seven or eight years old. I definitely had a fairly straightforward faith in God then. But in time the atheism sort of I, I caught it. I became infected with it for about five years, I'd say. And now I, it was really hard for me to be an atheist actually, because. If I ever got into trouble, I would find myself praying to God to get me out of trouble. As much as I tried to wear that as an identity, it never really stuck. And I was converted in campus ministry in 1996. It was a real spiritual blindside in every wonderful way possible. I do believe God rescued me from the pit. At that point, I was searching for Him. I had no idea. Where to go or what to do. I didn't know which way was up. And what I needed as an 18 year old kid was just some other people to come alongside me and guide me. And so I'm really grateful for that. I'll never forget that time in my life. And I have to also say that at the same time, there were wounds that happened and eventually I realized we need to attend to some of these wounds, not just to myself, but the people around me back in those days we baptized a lot of people in our church, but a lot of people also went out the door and I remember these midnight moves. of roommates and people that I thought were my brothers and sisters, like they were so close and why were they just leaving? And so suddenly, and eventually I realized, oh wow, like we're good at obeying the first part of the Great Commission as a church, at least my family of churches. But we're not so great at obeying the second half, which is to teach them to obey everything I've commanded. So. We're good at conversions, but we're not so great at maturing the disciples. And so I, I realized I need to get better. At one point I took myself out of leadership because I realized that I'd been granted the power of an elder, but had almost none of the qualifications. And that started me on a journey of therapeutic practice. I became a counselor and eventually a professor who teaches counseling at a graduate level. Very nice. Thank you for sharing. That's very impactful always. So talking about spiritual trauma, what is spiritual trauma and how does it manifest differently from other types of trauma? Yeah, people, some people don't like that term spiritual trauma. Every so often I get someone in. Who asks me, how could trauma be spiritual? Isn't it an oxymoron? Like anything that's spiritual shouldn't be traumatic. And I didn't put this in the book, but what I'm getting at, isn't that we're traumatized by the Holy Spirit. That's big S when you read about the Holy Spirit in the Bible. I'm talking about our spirit, little s. Every human being has a spirit within them, and that can be wounded. Trauma is just a Greek word that means wound. And, maybe I should have called my book Spirit, or Spiritual Wounding, or something like that, but, with a little less But at the end of the day when we boil everything down, human beings get hurt all the time. And it's just a part of life. Learning to walk, you fall down a thousand times. We get bruised knees and, I cut myself, I burned myself at a marriage retreat. I still have scars from it, like on a tea, electric tea kettle. We're always getting hurt in, mostly in little ways, but also in big ways. And our bodies are designed by God to recover and heal. In the same way, Our spirits can be wounded, our emotions can be wounded. And what causes the wounding is when the capacity is overwhelmed. So if you if you get cut, it's because the capacity of your skin to protect you is overwhelmed by the sharp thing that pierced it. And in the same way, somebody can be emotionally wounded when they find themselves in a situation that outstrips their capacity. It's usually something emotionally shocking, something extreme. And I think we all get this when it comes to things like war or like a car accident. We may not always recognize when it's something as benign as like a conversation between two people in the fellowship after church, and maybe somebody said something that really hurts you and. One of the challenges is that if somebody's wounded already, they could, that you could be hurt quite easily by. Maybe a careless word. It's not the wound itself, but it puts salt in the wound. And so as Christians weaken, sometimes think, oh, that brother or that sister, they've, they're doing something hateful or hurtful to me when really we've bring in wounds from the past That are, we are being reminded of. When that person makes that comment, so it can get really complex and nuanced pretty fast. So one of the challenges with the term spiritual trauma is that it was ill defined. And so I realized I needed to bring some clarity to the concept. People use the word trauma all over the place, and rarely we know what it means. And what I recognize is that. In order to understand what's happening to people in real life in churches, we had to bring a more nuanced understanding. So that's why I built the ABC model of spiritual trauma and abuse. Can you explain the ABC model? I want to make sure we understand the differences and nuances. We are now talking about the ABC model, the psychological framework often used in cognitive behavioral therapy. So could you explain what it means to you and in this context, please? The ABC model has three components atrocious abuse, that's the A, biblical lording over is the B, and conformity culture is the C, and they're all different. The best way to describe A type abuse it's, it is truly. Atrocious and egregious. No one's arguing about, oh, is this a traumatic thing? Is this a hurtful thing? We're talking about things like sexual abuse, physical abuse, humiliation in front of a group, things that you're not going to get much pushback on. And they're really bad, and they're also often illegal. We call the police when we hear about them. And so hopefully not too many people are debating whether or not This is harmful. Jesus Jesus had some really intense words. If anyone causes one of these little ones to sin, it's better for them to have a millstone tied around their neck. Abusing others based on our power differential is flatly condemned by Jesus. We should be able to put that one to rest pretty quick. Thankfully, in churches, it's not the most common. Of the three kinds, but it is the most severe and intense when it happens. And it's often not even the abuse, but the coverup of that kind of abuse that leads to the most damage for a church. Biblical lording over is where I simply allow Jesus in the Bible to define what it means to be harsh and a bully as a leader. And he does, and the Bible does. And again, it's not rocket science. These are things like belittling people, bullying being belligerent. It's using your power in a way that gets you something or takes something from the person you're interacting with. And it's taking advantage of your relative power in some way. And it's the opposite of how Jesus says to lead. He says whoever wants to be first will be last. And he demonstrates that in Philippians 2, being in very nature, God. He made himself nothing. We're called to obey that. So again, this is not like this progressive out there theology. This is basic Bible 101 where things get a little more nuances with what I call conformity culture. This is by far. The number one way that I believe people get hurt within churches, and it's not so much from a perpetrator. It's usually people acting in good faith. Like when somebody commits egregious or atrocious abuse, you can't say they're acting good faith. Like I didn't mean to abuse that person. That's it's not defensible, but how often can we think back to situations where somebody might've said something harsh to us? Or made a decision that affected us maybe thoughtlessly where, yeah, they're not like, they really thought they were doing the right thing, like sincerely, but it still hurt us anyway. The truth is that in tight knit churches, groupthink is so powerful. And that's often why we don't even recognize how we've been hurt until we move on to a new place. Maybe we move cities or churches even. And then in the rearview mirror, we can see, Oh, wow, I was really damaged in that place. That was a really toxic kind of place. It's because it's in the water. Does the fish know that he's wet? And so that can be the harder thing. To shift in a culture, but it's, but it tends to be the thing where we we can do a lot of good with everyday choices and how we do church. Because perhaps it is isolating, we think that we are different from the group, which is, which can be emotionally scary, right? Because we do like to be conformed and belong, and we think perhaps church is a place where, a safe place where we can do that and be that. Just obedience. The God to be in a part of the church but so how would you define church hurt then? And how can it affect someone's faith in relationship and relationship with God? Yeah that's a crucial question. At its core, church hurt is hurt that happens at church or with the church. I don't believe we go to church, I believe we are the church. So if you're interacting with any other Christ follower and if they're a sinner, and guess what? We're all sinners. We all are, right? We're gonna, we're gonna hurt each other. And this becomes really self evident when we think about marriage. Of course we married perfect people who never sinned against us ever. That's not true. In fact, we have a front row seat to their sin and they have a front row seat to our sin. And because we're so close as married people, we're going to be constantly bumping up against each other and hurting each other. I actually would argue that if you've experienced no hurt in the church, maybe you're not even in a church, which might sound judgy and weird. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In order to get all the good stuff, you have to risk some of the bad. Now, I've got to be careful when I say that, because there's some really bad stuff that's happened. And it can sound really invalidating when I say that. Oh you're just is you just gotta take the knocks and you just gotta get over it and move on. Of course, that's a horrific thing to say to someone who's been wounded, but we also can't be naive to the fact that we're going to sin against each other. The reason it's so bad, and so risky, is because it can damage our hearts. This is that spiritual wound, like little s, like it damages our hearts. Our hearts are the core of us that wants to love Jesus. Who's going to live with God in heaven for an eternity. It is the thing that Satan actually wants to destroy. He wants to hurt and destroy our hearts. And what happens is when we get hurt, Satan has an opportunity To tell us a lie that we might believe and it's the lies that take us away from God. And so that's the catch. Satan plays a role. And yes, I do believe in an actual Satan, um, who really doesn't have your best in mind. Hmm. Very true. And so in your opinion, what role can the church play in either contributing to or healing this trauma yeah, it's a good question because when we say church, we could talk about everyone in the church. We could talk about the leadership of a church, we could talk about the pastor or minister. And I think they have different roles. I think one thing that makes everything worse is darkness. My family of churches has said for decades, sin loves darkness, and I believe that to be true. All sin loves darkness. And sometimes the instinct of a church leadership, when something bad happens, is to cover it up. And the reason They often give is, Oh, we don't want more people to get hurt. We don't want to hurt people's faith. But the problem with that is that you're only protecting a naive faith. And so when the truth eventually comes out and it always comes out, it will rattle the faith. It's it's a way of infantilizing the flock. It's like we, we want to prepare the road for the children, not the children for the road. And the truth is, part of how we grow is by being exposed to stressors. Being exposed to, to dire and dark content in our lives so that we have to wrestle with it and go back to God for answers. And that includes, yeah, somebody who is a purported Christ follower who shouldn't have done that thing. Yeah, they did that thing, and just like you say in You know that we are the church and so if we all have a responsibility to speak up to find to reconnect with God. And so the antidote you would say to spiritual trauma would be Jesus following his example. At what point would you say, would you recommend getting professional help? Yeah, it's a good question. I think it depends. If you have a history of. Early childhood trauma, or any sort of family of origin trauma. And you suspect that might be coming into the room, or into the church building, so to speak. That, that could be an invitation to get help professionally. Certainly, I built the ABC model so we could make it black and white, like when to get help. If you've experienced A type abuse, get help. The end. Like, don't wait get help and not just for yourself, but consider that if you have been abused in some way, how many other people have also been abused and they're not saying anything either, and who's going to be abused in the future. So there needs to be a reaching out of course, it's your choice. You have agency, but know that you can act courageously to help yourself and other people. When it comes to biblical alerting over, I would say, go back to the word of God. The, we belong to an upside down kingdom that is in direct opposition to the way the world thinks and acts. So chances are you're doing at least some of it exactly the wrong way. Thank you. Paul says, why not rather be wronged? It, like the Sermon on the Mount blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are you when when you're persecuted, woe to you when all men speak well of you, like it's opposite world. And so to think that you need to lead in a certain way, I would weigh that against the scriptures and see if that's true. Maybe it's better for you to become smaller the way John the Baptist did. He said, I need to become less so that you can become more. Maybe that's the key to true maturity. When it comes to C type harms and abuses and wounds. We just need to be able to talk about this stuff more, like it needs to be in the culture. It needs to be okay to talk about it. Now, I know what the fear is. There's a fear. Oh, we're just going to become this church of victims and always just whining about what's happening to us and navel gazing and not actually obeying God, not actually living out the Great Commission. And you know what? That is a risk. That's a very real risk. The problem is, we don't, we never get over things. We can only ever work through things that happen to us in our life. So yeah, there might be a season where we're, Oh wow, it's like everything's about the trauma. And it's every second word is my trauma or whatever, my hurt. Yeah, that there might be a time for that. But I really believe that God will, God is faithful. He'll keep calling us back to him over and over again. And I believe he's calling us back to him right now. He's calling us to repentance right now. And that repentance involves. Acknowledging our humanity and the ways we've been wounded, it's true vulnerability. It's not naive vulnerability. It's wise vulnerability where we recognize the degree to which we can be hurt and then choose to love anyway. Yes, and it always reflects back to who we are and how we've wronged others. Forgiveness, I'm assuming, also ultimately played a role in order to grow through it, like you said, instead of getting over it. So for those who have distance themselves from church, what advice would you give them to rebuild trust with God and re engage with the church community? You mentioned that sin loves darkness and so, being part of a community, exposing things, talking through things are crucial to, for healing. And so what advice would you give people to to reconnect with the church community? Yeah know that you have that choice. It's a real choice let's not just assume that's going to be the push, that the only reason if you haven't been coming to church for a while, the only reason we're meeting is that because I'm trying to convince you to come back. I want to honor your sense of agency. If you're someone who's left the fellowship I actually believe that submission is impossible without choice, because without choice, it's not submission, it's subjugation. So we actually have to invite people and give them choice to come back. And sometimes it takes a while for them to sort themselves out. So we, as the body, need to be very patient. The other thing is, and not to belabor this point, but because we're the church, we don't go to church. We're two or more gathered. There I am also. So I would invite you to consider who's the one, who's the one or two people who I can be in fellowship with. Like I love Jesus. I want to be a Christ follower. Who's one person who I can be in fellowship with? Find that safe person. Yeah, God knows whose are his and we get a little bit funny about who's on the membership role and what does that mean? And it's, the truth is we're growing beyond that. We're not letting go of our convictions. We're actually strengthening our convictions. And questioning what we thought were convictions. In the Bible, which is growing and fighting, wrestling with the word. And again, it's like a marriage. Like you can say, Oh, I forgive you and pretend like nothing happened and you didn't get hurt. But how well is that going to work long term? Like even, can you imagine what it would be like to be married to Jesus? Like actually married to Jesus. What that would mean is every time you have a fight, it would be your fault every single time, which I think would get really tedious after a while. But the truth is, even with Jesus, you would have to be honest. You just have to say, look, this isn't working for me. And I think we're invited to do the same thing with God. He doesn't want us to suck it up and just praise him. In a hollow way, he wants to be in relationship with us. And so if we have issues with God, like, why deny it? Prayer, we think it has to be this pious, very reverent, religious thing sometimes. And it's just a conversation. Yeah, we need, and this is what confession is. It's agreeing with the truth. It's laying ourselves bare before God. And in fact, it's the safest place to lay yourself bare. If you can't. Lay yourself before God privately in prayer, then it means there's something there. There's something, there's a wound that needs some working on. And I would say start with you and God. Spend time in the scriptures. Yeah, the Psalms are useful too. The Psalms are a great example of just that. People who've, oh yeah, read Psalm 88. If you're, if you think you have to pray a pretty prayer read Psalm 88. That's not pretty. There you go. Psalm 88. Thank you. Thank you. And we are almost getting to the end of our conversation, which was really very helpful. Thank you so much. And as we wrap up, I, what message would you like to leave with our listeners? Is there anything that you'd like to share, especially for those following Christ and all the things that the reservations that they may have to to choose again, to love God with their whole lives. Yeah. First love is awesome, but mature love that grows over decades is better. It's superior. And, when you're in love and dating someone, it feels really good. Like you get those supercharged emotions where like the hair on your arm will stand up, and you can get these sort of body rushes when you're around the person. And, hey, that's exciting and exhilarating. And that's what a lot of us experienced in the early days in campus ministry. But again, just like marriage, we're in this for the long haul. God is inviting us to walk with him again in a real way. It will never look like it did when we were teenagers or in our 20s. The call's there nonetheless. And it's for our benefit. It's only for our benefit at the end of the day. So I guess my question is are you allowed to Enjoy and savor your life. Do you have permission? Because I think that God wants us to enjoy and savor our lives. That's why he gave us lives as a gift. And so of course, painful things will come. Suffering will happen. It's predicted all through the scriptures. It's God's number one tool of refinement. And so again, naively when we're dating, it's yeah, my husband, my wife, they're going to be perfect. Our lives are going to be perfect when we get married and then reality hits. And I think that in the same way, God wants us to mature together. He wants to be our friend. And if we just hang on, just cling to God, we're going to get there. He's going to get us there. Yes. He is faithful. He is. Amen. You mentioned your book, Spiritual Trauma a guide for healing your heart from church hurts. Where else, where can our listeners find you, find your work, where can they get your book? A few different places right now I'm doing a lot of work with eromosministry. org. Eromos is just the Greek word for wilderness. It's E R E M O S. So eromosministry. org I'm building a course with Joel Pede and Christy Pede and my wife, Erin, where we're building this course about walking in the wilderness and how to. how to grow and how to do ministry in a way that doesn't bring you out and wreck your heart. And so we've been hard at work there and that should be coming out in the next couple of months here. So keep an eye on that. We've got a YouTube channel putting out content every week or two, so be great to check it out. What is it called, Ermos Way as well? The YouTube channel? Yeah, it's the same name. And there's a link from the website to that. And if you join our mailing list, we've got a monthly newsletter with all kinds of goodies and tidbits for you as well. And I receive it. And I'm a proud recipient, I will put all the links in the show notes and we had the pleasure also to have Christy and Joe Pede on the podcast. So I put a link to that episode. Thank you so much for today and I wish you the best with your course. Sounds amazing. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. I really enjoyed my conversation with Dr. St. Jean. And if there's one thing that I want you to take away from today's episode is this healing is possible and God is faithful spiritual trauma. is real, yes. But so is the hope we have in Christ. Healing comes through honest conversations, wise vulnerability, and ultimately, a deeper relationship with Jesus. It's kind of a new commitment to have with Jesus every day. If you've stepped away from church or struggled with faith because of past wounds, know this, God sees you and he's inviting you back to himself. I also want to remind you of this first Corinthians 12 verse 27 says now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it as Believers We are not just attending church. As Dr. St. Gene also reminded us, church is not a building, we are the church. We are integral parts of the body of Christ, contributing to its health, growth, and healing. It's about first falling in love with God, and then falling in love with his people. That is why the church is so important. It is the place where Jesus is king, and you play a vital role in it. So God is inviting you back, not just to a building, but to help his people to go back with him. So he can work through you, be an agent of healing for others, and use others to help you grow and heal as well. It's kind of a mirror of where you are at, where you need healing, if I may say. And God is patient, so please be patient with yourself as well. Healing takes time, and it's not always a straight path forward. There may be setbacks, but that's okay, because God is in control, and He will always be calling you home. He is right there with you. If you found this episode encouraging, I'd love to hear from you. I want you to do two things for me, subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to share your thoughts. This will also help others find this episode and be encouraged as well. Also, if you're not currently attending church, I encourage you to find one locally and engage. After the surface. Reach out to one person, even if it feels awkward. You're not doing it for them, you're doing it for God. To be an agent of healing for others and yourself. Make yourself available for God to use you powerfully. And know that I believe in you. I know that if you're listening to this episode, you want to be close to God and to do His will. And that is His will for you. You are deeply loved. I will see you next week. Hi, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If so, would you like to take 30 seconds and share it with a friend who may also struggle with knowing God and His purpose for their life. Also, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Podcast, and let me know what topics you'd like to hear about in the future. Your voice matters. I'll meet you back next Friday for another episode.