In today’s post, author Stephen Mansfield (Healing Your Church Hurt) continues his presentation and discussion of five questions designed to help us heal and restore. 3. Were you clinging to anything that contributed to your church hurt? Stephen states that this question will be harder to answer than the others because we never want to […]
“Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” -Jonah 2: 8 (NIV) Author Stephen Mansfield (Healing Your Church Hurt) continues his presentation and discussion of five questions designed to help us find life in the midst of our ministry downsizing or vocation loss. 2. How did you try to medicate […]
In Chapter 4 of Healing Your Church Hurt, author Stephen Mansfield presents and discusses a series of five questions to help us find life in the midst of our ministry downsizing or vocation loss. The first question is discussed today. 1. Of the things your critics said, what do you know to be true? During […]
Author Stephen Mansfield begins Chapter 4 (“Lessons from a Season in Hell”) of Healing Your Church Hurt by asking us to revisit those agonizing days of our church wounding in order to carefully probe them for lessons to be learned. Speaking from personal experience, he states: “It will take courage, and a brand of humility […]
“But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” -John 2: 24-25 Stephen Mansfield comments on this passage in Chapter 3 of Healing Your Church Hurt, noting that the word entrust […]
In Chapter 3 of Healing Your Church Hurt, author Stephen Mansfield cites the inclusion of the disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over Mark in Acts Chapter 13, noting that the Holy Spirit inspired Luke to be honest about human nature. Stephen writes: “Christianity is not the absence of stupidity and hurt. Christianity is the message […]
Stephen Mansfield begins Chapter 3 (“Man: The Greatness and the Grief”) of Healing Your Church Hurt by describing the glorious feeling we have when we experience the dynamic of joining with fellow believers as we worship the Lord and live as a community of faith. As we feel transformed, we believe we’ve found reasons for […]
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” -Hebrews 12: 1-2 In Chapter 2 of Healing Your Church Hurt, Stephen Mansfield summarizes the lesson we […]
In Chapter 2 (“The Sea Breeze of the Centuries”) of Healing Your Church Hurt, author Stephen Mansfield observes that when we hurt we think we’re walking alone. Since no one else has experienced our specific pain, they cannot possibly understand how we’re feeling- and don’t wish to draw near. This sense of isolation only deepens […]
As Stephen Mansfield concludes Chapter 1 of Healing Your Church Hurt, he discusses three important factors in finding the way out from religious offense syndrome. 1. We need to know how to be clean and free from what we’ve done to ourselves via our church hurt. This is not an attempt to fix the body […]
In Chapter 1 of Healing Your Church Hurt, author Stephen Mansfield notes that through reflection on his own woundedness he became aware that the cause of the offense is not as significant as the common characteristics of the offended soul. He goes on to list five characteristics of a poisoned soul. 1. A poisoned soul is […]
“A man’s suffering times are his best improving times.” -George Whitefield, Anglican priest, 1714-1770 For almost a decade Stephen Mansfield had been pastor of a near four thousand-member congregation that pursued the things of God. Then, amidst conflict and uproar, his pastorate came to an abrupt end. As Stephen describes that time, “Demons danced and […]