What makes a Church “Safe”?

For many people, church has never been a “safe place.”  They have experienced or heard stories of emotional and spiritual manipulation and even abuse inside the church.  Whatever True Christianity might be, the reality of day-to-day, life-on-life living with real people in a church setting can be pretty brutal.  I know.  I’ve been a pastor for most of my adult life, and have the scars, bruises and limps to prove it.  And sad to say, I may have given as much or more than I have taken.

Over the course of these many years, I’ve observed three different strategies for making a church into a more safe place for real people.

Uniformity – Life Is Safe When Everyone Is The Same

Or maybe you only let people in who are the same.  Some churches are so uniform – on politics, on doctrine, on ethnic background for example – that for those people who fit in, it is a safe environment.  Its pretty safe with people just like you.

Unfortunately, it can be hard for a church to get very large this way.  We live in a fragmented world that specializes in and values variety and independence.  Uniformity is out.

Even worse, since there are so many different ways to be confused, wounded or prideful inside of ourselves, it can be even more difficult to maintain uniformity on the outside.  Uniformity brings with it a lot of pressure to hide what is on the inside.  Which makes for an unsafe situation.  Sounds like a Catch-22 to me!

Anonymity – Life Is Safe When No One Knows One Another

Create a setting where no one knows you, and you know no one, and you have removed the opportunity for offense or wounding.  That is a kind of safety.  Sort of.

Of course, it is easy to feel discouraged or prideful since inside of yourself, you will always suspect that there are people in this church who are much better/worse than you.

Anonymity is actually fostered by a church getting larger and larger.  It is something of an American Church Growth strategy, even though there is no chance for relationship, encouragement, conviction or the like.

Interestingly enough, if you can self-select a few people who are just like you, you might be able to assemble a small, uniform group contained within the large, anonymous church.  Is this the best of both worlds?  Or a multiplication of dysfunction.

The Gospel – Because Jesus is safe, He Makes Us Safe For Others.

We may not like to admit it, but we ourselves are not safe people to add to a church.  We’re broken, wounded, prideful, self-deceived, defensive and on and on.  On our good days!

Put us with several other people who are as unsafe as we are, and you have a perfect storm for trouble.  No wonder churches are not safe places.  They are filled with sinners!  Redeemed and in the process of transformation one hopes, but certainly not yet complete.

No, there is only One who is safe, really.  That is Jesus.  He will love me no matter what.  He loves because He IS love.  There is nothing I can do to make God love me any more.  There is nothing I can do to make God love me any less.  He has taken my unsafeness and offered me His safeness.  To the degree that I can live in His safeness, I can become more safe for you than I ever was myself.  Because I am loved and forgiven, I have a power at work through me to love and forgive you.  Imagine!  If I could only love you in the way that Jesus has first loved me!

Now that would be a safe place.

I think churches are most often unsafe because, at root, they have forgotten or turned away from the Gospel.  When we find ourselves being unsafe people and unsafe churches, we are just being what we are by nature.  We can try and mask it with Uniformity or Anonymity but God intends more than that.  We need more Gospel.