Just as a per­son can be healthy or unhealthy, so can churches. Recently, I have met with a hand­ful of peo­ple who have come to Ada Bible Church because of wound­ing expe­ri­ences with past churches they have attended, and so there­fore, I have been read­ing some books on these types of prob­lems.  As a sum­mary, here might be some of the typ­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of a legal­is­tic or spiritually-abusive church (or person):

• At the heart of it, the mes­sage over­all through­out the min­istry that is spo­ken on a weekly basis is that God is a book­keeper, keep­ing a check­list of do’s and don’ts. He is imper­sonal and maybe even vin­dic­tive. If you mess with him, he’s going to get you. The reli­gion and over-all expe­ri­ence is based on fear and not on grace. The church overly empha­sizes and talks about sin (either of your own or of oth­ers). Over­all, you often leave church feel­ing like you are always miss­ing the mark and just aren’t good enough.
• The church strongly empha­sizes doc­tri­nal or the­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ness. They overem­pha­size minor the­o­log­i­cal issues (e.g., bap­tism, the spir­i­tual gifts, which Bible trans­la­tion you should read, etc.) which in real­ity seek to divide other Chris­t­ian groups from theirs. This may even lead to the mes­sage that they are the only “true” church. This may be lit­er­ally spo­ken from the pul­pit or sub­tly sug­gested in other ways. Lead­ers or the church as a whole exhibit a spir­i­tual arrogance—other churches are not quite as good as theirs and are miss­ing the mark.
• Scrip­ture is said to be of pri­mary impor­tance, but in real­ity it is the leader’s inter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture that is essen­tial. The Bible isn’t the end-all, rather the leader’s ideas about what they think the Bible says, is what is impor­tant. With this, the lead­er­ship tends to often teach that sub­mis­sion to author­ity is cru­cial to being a “good Christian.”
• Reli­gious tra­di­tions of the church are what rule the day and bib­li­cal pas­sages are used to man­date these tra­di­tions. Scrip­ture is often mis­quoted or used out of con­text. Verses are sin­gled out-and used to sub­stan­ti­ate the church’s posi­tion on issues they hold dear. These verses are not weighed against what other verses say, which may sug­gest a dif­fer­ent view. The con­text or the over­all mes­sage of the Scrip­tures is not allowed.
• The church staff and lead­er­ship are dom­i­nated by fam­ily mem­bers or per­sonal friends. There is a lack of objec­tive account­abil­ity: lead­er­ship is account­able to itself only and if any crit­i­cism about this is offered, it is shut down imme­di­ately. Intel­lec­tual devel­op­ment is lim­ited to fit the doc­trines that are taught at the church; schools or classes offered by other churches or orga­ni­za­tions have lit­tle, if any worth and you should prob­a­bly steer clear of “these types of peo­ple.” There are two types of dys­func­tional churches in these cases. Some churches may overem­pha­size the intel­lect (doc­trine over expe­ri­ence); oth­ers may dis­trust any­thing “book­ish” and rely only on the expe­ri­ences of the per­son (expe­ri­ence over doctrine).
• Church mem­bers who do not con­form to all these doc­tri­nal issues or opin­ions are black­listed, labeled as rebel­lious or ignored for lead­er­ship posi­tions. If you don’t fully agree with the lead­er­ship, you have no voice and may even be asked to leave the church.
• Per­sonal and emo­tional bound­aries are often over-stepped and rela­tion­ships can become too close. The lead­er­ship asks you to be vul­ner­a­ble emo­tion­ally, but they them­selves rarely, if ever, show or dis­cuss any weak­nesses. These lead­ers have the pro­to­typ­i­cal Savior-complex. If you ask them about their own strug­gles, they always seem to avoid the question.

These are just some of the pos­si­ble traits of a spir­i­tual abu­sive church. If you believe this may be the case for you, you may want to read one or two of the fol­low­ing books to learn more about this impor­tant topic:

• Toxic Faith, Stephen Arterburn
• The Sub­tle Power of Spir­i­tual Abuse, David Johnson
• Tired of Try­ing to Mea­sure Up, Jeff VanVonderen
• Heal­ing Spir­i­tual Abuse: How to Break Free from Bad Church Expe­ri­ences, Ken Blue
• Bring ‘Em Back Alive: A Heal­ing Plan for those Wounded by the Church, Dave Burchett

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