Becoming a Church that Cares Well for the Abused

Standalone session September 26, 2026 Led by Keith Verburg

Keith Verburg, a counsellor, draws on the Church Cares curriculum to help church leaders recognize abuse and become men to whom a victim can safely disclose it. He defines abuse as the misuse of power to control or exploit a more vulnerable person, contrasts graceful relationships with graceless ones, and describes the marks of physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual abuse and of religious addiction.

Outline

Approaching a difficult subject

A subject that needs attention. Abuse is common, yet it seldom receives attention in the church. Pastors may avoid preaching on it for fear of handling it badly, but a reluctance to get it wrong can mean that it is not addressed at all.
Witnessing abuse is not living it. Most of us have witnessed abuse, whether a classmate who was picked on or a teacher or coach who mistreated someone. Driving past an accident and seeing the carnage is very different from being in it, and different again from being unable to remember it because it was so severe.
Making room for those who are affected. Even hearing the subject discussed can overwhelm some. Anyone who needs to step out should feel free to do so, although men are taught always to appear strong, and a friend who steps out should be checked on.

When someone discloses abuse

The response becomes part of the gospel they hear. Rachael Denhollander, an attorney and one of the victims of the former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, contributed to Becoming a Church that Cares Well for the Abused. She writes that ministry leaders are very likely to receive disclosures, because victims desperately need what those leaders preach and promise. How a leader responds therefore becomes intertwined with the survivor’s understanding of Christ and the gospel.
A disclosure is usually partial. A victim who discloses faces paralysing fear, shame and self-doubt, and the trauma may have left gaps in memory. Victims are unlikely to use the word abuse, are likely to minimize what they have experienced, and may disclose only a small part of it to see whether the listener is safe. What a victim has been through is almost certainly far worse than what is first heard.
A careless response crushes. The lies a victim already hears (that it is their fault, that it is not that bad, that they are overreacting) are so loud that any response which echoes them is crushing. The victim may then retract or soften the allegation, and it often takes years before they seek help again.
Becoming safe to speak to. Confidential counselling offers a place where people can speak the unspeakable. Church leaders must learn to recognize abuse and to become men to whom a victim feels safe enough to disclose it. A leader who has never heard of abuse in the congregation may need to step back, learn more, and look more carefully.

Graceful and graceless relationships

The Trinity as the model. A diagram from Jack and Judith Balswick’s The Family sets healthy relationships against unhealthy ones, and the model for healthy relationships is God himself. The Father shows steadfast, unconditional love that never sets aside righteousness and accountability (Psalm 85:10). The Son shows grace, by which God declares that he is for us. The Holy Spirit empowers, building up and encouraging, and bears the fruit of the Spirit in us. Relationships of this kind draw people into intimacy.
When grace sounds like rejection. We do not deserve grace, but when it is always presented in terms of what we do not deserve, it can begin to sound as though God is not for us. For someone who has suffered great harshness, it can help to begin with Christ, the one who suffered.
The self-centred opposite. Where the flesh takes over, love becomes conditional and must be earned by performance. It is withdrawn as punishment, and it works through shame, control and manipulation, all of which create distance. Shame differs from guilt: guilt confesses a wrong that can be repented of, while shame declares that the whole person is bad. In Christ we are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and that label no longer applies.
When the self-centred appear godly. The danger is greatest when someone who operates from self-centredness presents himself as pious and holy. An abuser who has grown up in the church knows its rules and uses the system against itself. He is the wolf hidden in the flock, and the church must not allow his conduct to become part of its system.
The marks of each. Graceless relationships are marked by perfectionism, blame, unreliability and unpredictability, so that victims speak of walking on eggshells, together with indifference and closed communication. Graceful relationships are marked by acceptance, forgiveness, reliability, predictability, shared experiences and feelings, and open communication.
Men and their wounds. Boys are commonly told from about the age of five to stop crying and to “be a man”, and so men find it hard to speak about their feelings. Yet every man carries wounds. Trauma is the result of being sinned against, and generational trauma corresponds to generational sin, as addiction and abuse are passed down in families.

What abuse is

A misuse of power. Abuse is the misuse of power to control or exploit a more vulnerable person. Husbands are commanded to love their wives (Ephesians 5:25), not to hold power and control over them. Ecclesiastes 4:1 observes that power was on the side of the oppressors and that the oppressed had no one to comfort them. Both the oppressor and the oppressed are hurting, and the church is called to comfort both while protecting the vulnerable.
An imbalance of power distinguishes abuse. A fight between two grown men is wrong, but an adult who assaults a child commits abuse. An affair between two consenting adults is wrong, but a coach who has sex with a fourteen-year-old commits abuse. Power may come from position, size, age, verbal capacity or knowledge, and abuse uses it to force, deceive, humiliate, coerce or shame.
Never caused by the victim. Abuse is fruit borne by the abuser, for what defiles a man is what comes out of him (Mark 7:20-23). Every victim, child or adult, needs understanding and protection, not blame, and a grown man or woman can also be abused.

Forms of abuse

Physical abuse. Physical abuse serves one purpose: control. Because it is episodic, every occurrence warrants serious attention, as drinking and driving does. Like a concussion, a single episode can do lasting harm, and a victim may be beaten only once to establish control. Intimidation without touch, such as breaking furniture, punching holes in walls, or threatening children, pets or treasured belongings, carries the same message. Overt threats may be accompanied by covert mind games, deceit, and the denial of the victim’s reality, which even the victim may not recognize as abuse. Victims commonly endure repeated assaults before seeking help and often return home soon afterwards, which shows that more than logic is at work.
Assessing danger. Indicators include separation or divorce, alcohol and drug use, narcissistic or disordered personality traits, weapons in the home, entitled attitudes and a history of defying authority, past abuse, violence towards pets, road rage, unstable mental health, and suicidal or homicidal threats. A threat of suicide used to control a partner is a shame tactic, even when the one who makes it genuinely needs help.
Emotional and verbal abuse. Its marks are control, humiliation, manipulation, intimidation, contradictory demands, lies, threats, isolation from family and friends, and blame-shifting. It may be financial, as when a spouse is denied access to money, or spiritual, as when Scripture is applied one-sidedly to demand, control or condemn. Its effects are fear, shame and indecision.
Sexualized abuse. Each of these patterns can also take a sexual form. Sexualized abuse includes any sexual contact without consent, within marriage as well as outside it; a refusal to accept no; incapacitating a person with drugs; repeated sleep deprivation; harassment and degrading sexual language; and exposing someone to pornography or to sexual acts.
Respecting a no. A child who does not want to give a hug should not be made to. A child who is never permitted to say no to a parent may later be unable to refuse an authority figure, and abusers seek out people-pleasers. Pressing past someone’s no is itself a warning sign. We are called to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), not to disclose everything as though under oath, and there is a line between privacy and secrecy.
Spiritual abuse. Spiritual abuse is the mistreatment of a person in need of help, support or greater spiritual empowerment, with the result that the person is weakened or undermined spiritually. God has a plan for each individual, and each must be free to hold convictions and values apart from the pressure of the group. A community that requires everyone to think, speak, act and look the same is close to a cult, whereas the body of Christ has many members, with differences within its unity.
Marks of a spiritually abusive system. Authority is claimed by position alone (“I am the elder, so you must do what I say”). Followers are told that God will bless their submission even when the leadership is wrong. The system is image-conscious, showing outsiders only a positive face, and it suppresses criticism, so that whoever raises an issue becomes the problem. It looks for a scapegoat to cast out, demands perfection so that God’s favour must be earned by performance, and claims a special status with God that cannot be questioned.
Religious addiction. Religious addiction, also called scrupulosity, is closely related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Good religious practices harden into compulsive rituals, much as excellence is good but perfectionism is not. Its marks include emotional reactivity with little self-examination; blind belief that treats faith as the absence of doubt, rather than as the discernment that the mature have trained by practice (Hebrews 5:14); black-and-white thinking; theological and social isolation; obsessive fasting, prayer, attendance or Bible study used to relieve pain, which as mere ritual proves no more effective than alcohol or binge eating; harsh and angry attitudes that cut others off; and compulsive efforts to persuade others of narrow beliefs. It often takes a physical toll as well, in stress, headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression and disturbed sleep.
Good and bad together. Manure is harmful to sit in or to eat, yet spread on a field it yields a crop. In the same way God takes what was meant to destroy and brings life out of it. Scripture is full of such paradoxes, which black-and-white thinking cannot hold.
Serving or striving. Faith practised in the wrong way can itself do harm. He closes his presentation by asking what the difference is between serving God and striving for God.

For discussion

If a member began to tell you about abuse, perhaps without using that word and disclosing only a small part, how would you respond so that they would know they had been believed and were safe?
Rachael Denhollander writes that a leader’s response to a disclosure becomes intertwined with the victim’s understanding of Christ and the gospel. What does that require of the elders and minister of a congregation?
An abuser who has grown up in the church knows its rules and can use the system against itself. Where might our own practices be open to such misuse, and how could a consistory guard against it?
Matthew 18 calls a brother who has been sinned against to go first to the one who sinned. How should that instruction be applied when there is a serious imbalance of power between them?
What is the difference between serving God and striving for God, and how can a man tell which he is doing?