handling grievances

What happens when someone in a church feels that spiritual abuse has happened or is happening? I have been contemplating the grievance process over the last few days … thinking about how this should go down. First off … spiritual abuse can go both ways … church’s can abuse their pastors as well as pastor’s their church members. There needs to be a better way of handling this sort of thing short of excommunication or termination.

I think there needs to be an independent board established made up of non-biased people that both church and church leaders agree to be held accountable to. An elder board … ah, not so much. If you have an elder board from a new church plant … it’s going to be made up of folks who were selected by the pastor or staff … that’s just not going to work. The old deacon board … ah, not so good either … too much of a power struggle could ensue ending in terminating pastors because of a whim.

There needs to be an outside entity with a “kingdom” mindset available to hear and give direction to those who are out of line. If I am a victim of spiritual abuse … I should be able to go to the group of believers and share my story. If I am at fault … they should be able to walk me through a process of understanding and lead me back to a place of restoration with those I feel have abused. On the flip side … if the pastor or staff is at fault … they too should be held accountable for their actions and appropriate measures followed to correct their errant behavior. Both church and leadership would have to fully support the recommendations of this unbiased committee.

Or we could handle it like my friend from Florida suggested … eliminate salaries all together from church leadership … allowing the pew and pulpit equal ground to handle grievances. My friend suggests that a lot of pastor and staff folks do whatever it takes to protect their salaries … getting rid of unpleasant situations that could effect their salaries down the road. This, I don’t fully agree with … but it is a thought.

WG –

hurting christians grievances in church spiritual abuse church gone bad