I have been part of an “unhealthy group”. There’s really no need to name one… there are healthy and unhealthy churches under most-if not all-denominational banners.
What makes a church group-or any other group for that matter-unhealthy? There are lists published by people more qualified than I about exactly what constitutes an unhealthy group. My unprofessional synopsis is that if the group is consistently demanding or demeaning or a person finds himself doing things for them or with them in fear, the group is probably unhealthy for that person. Someone else may find the group to be healthy, but for the one living in fear, condemnation, shame, or other negativities, it’s unhealthy. And for anyone involved in creating those feelings, putting others down, acting disdainfully toward others, condemning and shaming others, the group is also unhealthy, though they might not realize or want to admit it. Bullies are victims as much as are the bullied.
What should a person in an unhealthy environment do? Some choose to stay there, hoping things will improve. Some try to change the group from the inside. Some ignore the problem or become part of it. And some leave.
I left. It wasn’t an easy decision, nor have things been easy since. Yet for me, it was the very best choice I could have made.
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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Leaving was definitely the best thing that could have ever happened to me!