“God desires his church to relish in his glory, share his glory among the nations, and reflect his glory in word and deed. The church is a body made in his image, sent on his mission, to be his glory.” [1]
In 2022, I conducted a research project among victim-survivors of abuse. Individuals who had been abused within their faith community. My goal was twofold: 1) to raise awareness of the spiritual impact of abuse in order to create safer environments in the church for children and youth, and 2) to identify key themes that victim-survivors of abuse testified as being instrumental in their spiritual healing.
I am convinced that trauma-informed churches will empower God’s people to fulfill their mission and mandate to make disciples among those who have deeply experienced trauma during their lives, meeting individuals at their point of need. As a result of this research, it was discovered that the spiritual healing of victim-survivors of child sexual abuse has been significantly influenced by incarnational discipleship, which includes sensing the presence of God both through the people who ministered to them and the spiritual practices in which they engaged.
Milfred Minatrea, in her book Shaped by God’s Heart, states, “Complete victory in anyone’s life can be found only in Jesus Christ.”[2] Diane Langberg writes, “How has such a thing [as healing] happened? It has happened because there is a Redeemer. I know him, and I have seen his work. It is good work, and he is faithful to it.”[3] Jesus came to offer people healing and wholeness, to proclaim good news, and to set prisoners free. Thus, “healing is a holy sign of hope, a promise; fundamentally it is a gift. Always associated with the in-breaking realm of God, signs of healing signify that the landscape of justice is not just a mirage or simply wishful thinking.”[4]
We learned that healing was a result of an outflowing of the transformed life of the believer, who walked alongside the victim-survivor. Incarnational ministry is living out the transformed life as a disciple of Jesus Christ. This is living out discipleship, practicing spiritual disciplines, sharing the mighty acts of God in your life, and planting seeds of hope in someone else’s life. For the participants, these individuals reflected the image of God. They were the very hands and feet of Jesus, as they journeyed alongside them when they were brokenhearted. This is incarnational discipleship.
Robert K. Martin in Cultivating Disciples in the Way of Jesus Christ, states,
“Incarnation can generically refer to any material manifestation of an invisible reality, whenever the incorporeal becomes to some extent enfleshed. … We may not think about ourselves very often as incarnate beings, but that is exactly what we are. For, as scripture reveals, we are created to be the image and likeness of the One True God.”[5]
Nothing speaks to this better than one participant’s words that serve as a tremendous call to action for the church.
“I am amazed and grateful that the place of my greatest wounding—the church, is also where I found my deepest healing. Decades later when I could no longer hide, and the wounds refused to allow me to function normally, I released my secret to my pastor. He believed me. He apologized on behalf of the church and spiritual authority. He helped me to find a counsellor and to receive prayer ministry. He treated me with the respect I thought I didn’t deserve. I suspect my scarred soul will forever remember and hurt, but now peace prevails and I can function normally without festering wounds torturing me. I know an intimacy with my Healer, the Lord Jesus, because the church listened, believed, and did everything they possibly could to help me.”
Robert Mulholland concludes his book, Invitation to a Journey, with what this researcher considers a key to what was heard from the research participants: that one ought to live their lives in pursuit of being confirmed into the image of Christ. This pursuit is not for just for personal gain but on behalf of others. This pursuit will be unsettling and create agents for God’s kingdom,
“To be formed in the image of Christ for others not only calls us to the fullness of life in the body of Christ, but it thrusts us into the world as agents of God’s healing, transforming grace. Social spirituality designated our spiritual pilgrimage within and for the culture we live. John Wesley repeatedly stressed that there is no personal holiness without social holiness.”[6]
If the heart of discipleship is to become like Jesus, then it seems that a missional reading of this text requires us to see that Jesus’ strategy is to get many little versions of him infiltrating every nook and cranny of society by reproducing himself in and through his people in every place throughout the world—it goes to one of the central purposes of Christ’s mission among us. Jesus not only embodies God in our realm but also provides the image of the perfect human being. We are told by Paul that it is our eternal destiny to be conformed to this image of Christ (Romans 8:29, 2 Cor. 3:18).[7]
What does this look like in a very practical way? The participants attributed their spiritual healing to the community of faith and the spiritual disciplines that were introduced to them.
The practices that were role-modeled and adopted among the participants varied. Some listened to the audio Bible on a Bible app as being very instrumental to healing. Two women spoke of the value of verses they had memorized as children, and the practice of prayer as being key to their spiritual healing. Five of the participants spoke of journaling, one spoke of blogging.
We know that discipleship comes with a cost and effort on our part. Douglas Hall confirms what Bonhoeffer instructed long ago. He writes, “There is, therefore, a cost involved in discipleship. It cannot be undertaken without suffering, (whether that be entering into the suffering of others, or vicarious trauma, caregiver fatigue). But the suffering is not more than we can bear as friends of the crucified One, who continues with us and in our midst.”[8]
Yes, the cost of discipleship will come with suffering, but Jesus, who also suffered will be close as one lives incarnationally. The church is called to a love that requires sacrifice, and true discipleship is a sacrifice.
[1] Milfred Minatrea, Shaped by God’s Heart: The Passion and Practices of Missional Churches (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 9.
[2] Ibid., 49.
[3] Diane Mandt Langberg, On the Threshold of Hope: Opening the Door to Healing for Survivor of Sexual Abuse (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers Inc., 1999), 138.
[4] Thornton, Sharon G. Broken Yet Beloved: A Pastoral Theology of the Cross. (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2002), 195.
[5]Robert K. Martin, “Cultivating Disciples in The Way of Jesus Christ,” Journal of Youngsan Theology 34 (2015), 81.
[6]Mulholland, 184.
[7]Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways, 109.
[8] Douglas Hall, God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986), 133.
