Churches Reaching Out
to Divorced Believers …
… Open the Doors to Hungry Spirits
By Gary Broughman
Seven years ago Christian author Larry Davies turned to a secular source in his
desire to help believers suffering through divorce. He had just read a Gallup
poll that seemed to catch the essence of the
dilemma facing newly divorced Christians: just when they are hungriest for
spiritual relief, they are most afraid to pull up a seat at the church’s table.
That poll is now almost a decade old but the problem hasn’t changed. Christians, who many studies have found divorce at a rate at least
equal to the general population, often feel alienated from their congregations
when marriages end. Some survivors of divorce, burdened by a sense of failure, feel too embarrassed to return to their
congregations — too
afraid they’re being judged. A few are angry at God for letting the divorce happen. Others
may feel their churches don’t welcome them, that the church is focused on promoting the image of intact
families —an image the divorced person no longer fits. Davies, who pastors Timberlake
United Methodist Church in Virginia, says sometimes the perceptions of divorced
Christians aren’t entirely off base.
“It’s a 50/50 proposition,” he says. “Half of it is our own paranoia. Divorce can throw you so far off balance that
you can’t think straight. The other half is the church really is judging. It can be hard
to tell. After a divorce people in the church often respond by not saying
anything. The person in the church may be thinking ‘I’m not talking because I’m going to give them space to adjust,’ but the divorced person is thinking they’re not saying anything because they’re judging me.”
Dr. Clyde Walker agrees the terrain faced by divorced Christian can be varied
and treacherous. Walker is a Christian counselor, a Ph.D. Psychologist and an
ordained Baptist minister who feels some churches are making progress in their
attitude toward divorce.
“For a long period of time the church, especially the more conservative branch,
kind of ostracized people who had been through a divorce. It’s fair to say the church historically has not been receptive (to divorced
individuals). The mainline churches have begun to alter their perception of
divorce and how God looks at it. They’ve realized that the old way was not good theology. They still believe that
marriage of a man and a woman for life is the ideal, but they have evolved to
understand that for sundry reasons that’s an ideal many can’t live up to.”
One conclusion of the Gallup study suggests to churches a truth that sales
professionals have long accepted as gospel: what looks like a problem is often
an opportunity in disguise. “From the standpoint of the church, divorced people are an intriguing and
challenging group to try to serve. Their lack of church involvement may make
them appear to be alienated or hostile to religion in general. But their
private religious practices — frequent Bible reading, regular religious television and radio exposure and
dedication to prayer — show that they are far from being a lost cause.”
The view that divorced persons present an opportunity to churches can also be
understood in light of falling church attendance. While data gathering methods
and changes in social structures have fueled debate over statistics for both
divorce and church attendance, it is clear that attendance has been falling
since the mid-60s while divorce rates have climbed. The question should at
least be asked, are these divorced believers a part of the people being lost?
If so, what can be done?
Davies understands that healing takes time and effort. He believes the church
must do more to help. He says every congregation should offer a “divorce recovery class,” adding that even if no one comes, just having the class on the church’s schedule sends the message, “you’re welcome here.”
Ideally, Davies says, the class should be taught by a divorced person, a role
for which he qualified the hard way. As a divorced pastor he brings a personal
perspective to the issue. The author of the book, Live the Light: Five Weeks to a Light that Shines, and of the devotional series Sowing Seeds of Faith, he says that of the thousands of prayers requests he receives online from
Christians around the world, a third come from people suffering from divorce.
Dr. Walker agrees that recovering from divorce is a process, and that suffering
is unavoidable. “From the individual’s viewpoint, they have to deal with tremendous grief because they had these
goals in mind that are now lost. It’s very easy for guilt to slip in. Throw in a lack of understanding of how things
went so wrong and you have a difficult situation — more difficult sometimes, many people have said, than dealing with the death of
a spouse.”
During the early stages of recovery, Dr. Walker says many people have difficulty
looking forward because they’re too busy looking back. He said he often hears grief expressed as a sense of
giving up too easily — “wishing they had gone the 2nd or 3rd mile, done more, been more creative in
trying to hold the marriage together.” While their motivation may be a wish to understand, Dr. Walker is not convinced
the divorced person benefits from such thoughts, which may simply be an attempt
to wish away the pain they’re experiencing
Pastor Davies also sees recovery as a long and winding road. Part of the journey
is coming to understand what part each spouse played. Was it half me and half
him or her? Or was it 80 percent me? People need to know, not for the sake of
blaming but for understanding and acceptance. “Sometimes it takes a year or two to find out,” he said. “In between you can go through the crazies.”
The comparative dynamic of grieving over a spouse lost through death vs. loss
through divorce is something Davies has witnessed in group sessions at which
people in both situations were present. He says the grief process for both
groups is “basically the same,” but the perception of the “surviving” spouse by others is completely different. “When your spouse dies, no one questions you; everyone feels sorry for you!”
Walker adds there are many factors that make the situation more or less
difficult. When children are part of the equation, especially young children,
special care should be taken to make sure they aren’t treated as “pawns” or allowed to feel they are at fault or could have prevented the divorce by
being “better children.” The bottom line for Dr. Walker is to see the divorcing couple emerge with as
little damage as possible to themselves and their families. He often recommends
the book
The Good Divorce by Constance Ahrons.
“The intent is not to say divorce is good,” he explains. “But to say instead, there is a way to do this that is caring and sensitive to
everyone involved.”
Pastor Larry Davies can be reached online at: www.sowingseedsoffaith.com
Dr. Walker can be reached at this publication: www.christianheartbeat.org
All content Copyright © Gary Broughman, 2007
Divorce:
A Personal Pain Best Endured in God’s Presence
By Gary Broughman
Stories of divorce are always so personal, and even in the best of
circumstances, so very painful. We had intended to include some of these
stories as a “sidebar” to our article on divorce in the church, but when we had finished writing them,
they seemed too personal, too painful to be told in detail.
We had collected the stories by various means, some through personal interview,
some through online research. Each told of how a divorced person’s faith or relationship with their church had been affected by their divorce,
often adversely.
For instance, we talked to several women in their 30s whose failure at marriage,
each for their own reason, left them feeling too exposed and embarrassed to
return to their congregations, and unmotivated to find another. For them the
joy of feeling God’s presence in worship had been replaced by a sense of longing for what they once
had. We learned of a woman in her fifties whose pastor had long insisted that
she “stick with it” despite her husband’s alcoholism and abuse, who after 25 years couldn’t take it any more and divorced. For her the result was a sense of wasted years,
emptiness and alienation from the church.
We saw acts of selfishness: a congregation forcing a woman to resign from her
leadership posts because she was now divorced, and a man claiming a
congregation for his own, with no apparent concern for his ex-wife’s well-being, installing his new woman in his rejected wife’s place and leaving the mother of his children out in the cold, doubting whether
this church could still also be hers.
We also encountered couples who found healing within this body of Christ called
the church, couples who realized the end of marriage is not the end of love.
And because they were so publicly aware that God’s love overcomes all obstacles, no one within their church families ended up
feeling defeated by their divorce. Especially moving was a story told by
Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong in a 1984 issue of Christian Century. He describes a public service held to mark the end of the marital covenant in
which the congregation extends it’s continuing devotion to the couple with these words of prayer:
“We affirm you in the new covenant you have made: one that finds you separated
but still caring for each other and wishing each other good will; one that
enables you to support and love your children, one that helps to heal the pain
you feel. Count on God’s presence. Trust our support and begin anew.”
Divorce: Always personal, always painful. Just the kind of thing best endured
while standing in God’s presence. Let’s do what we can to keep the doors open.
