Private Pain in Public Pews

The challenges we face in life seem at times to be more than we can bear. Unfortunately, the one place where we ought to find solace, peace and healing has too often become little more than a Sunday morning soap opera. We in the church present an image that everything is okay, but if we “lift up the carpet”, we see “a whole heap of mess underneath”. People in the church are struggling to keep it together. Church folk have masterfully taken on false identities that feed the religious community’s expectations of the church, while draining them of who they really are. This creates the ingredients for a downward spiral, where people try to amputate their pain from their reality. In this chapter I will engage in “real talk,” which is a no-nonsense conversation about what we know but don’t want to talk about. “Real talk” is the story that has not been told. This is not an attempt to air our dirty laundry, so to speak, but to wash it clean by acknowledging that there is a problem.

The testimony service that was once tantamount to a public victory proclamation is becoming an endangered species within modern churches. Sadly, it has been replaced by hidden testimonies, not of victories, but of failures experienced behind church walls. These hidden testimonies are not heard in a church service accompanied by songs of praise; they are heard in private discussions and whispers about the lives of saints who have allegedly fallen. Those real testimonies have been archived in the silent screams of church members. The problem is that, because we prefer our own versions of the story, we are not tuning in to the real talk that exists behind the screams. As a result, many of the public displays of infidelity, embezzlement and scandal are never understood in context. Secret acts of indiscretion that have not gone public have stories behind them too—stories that we’ve never heard.

Too often, church folk are like fish in a bowl who have become so accustomed to their environment that they don’t notice which of them are being fed or underfed. One day, all they see is one of their fellows floating at the top of the tank, no longer able to live in its environment. Many church folk today have not been properly fed and so have ceased to thrive in their habitat. Too often, they manage to go unnoticed—until they are belly-up on the surface.

What if we were to pause to learn the story that is never told? Could we retrain ourselves to think before jumping to conclusions about those caught up in sin? In the next few pages, I will introduce some folks who may remind us of real-life members in our churches—members we all may have heard about. A deeper look into the lives of these fictitious characters can help us to connect some dots as to what is going on all around us. But, before we hear the characters’ real talk, let’s listen in on some whispers and testimonies about them.