Leadership Journal

The most humiliating day of my life was the day I walked into my doctor's office. I looked around, alone and ashamed. My face grew hot, and I whispered, 'I came for an AIDS test.'"

Pam was sharing a painful season in her life, but more than that, she was confronting the pain of being wounded and the subsequent loneliness of feeling isolated from her church.

"After my husband walked out on our twenty-year marriage for another woman, I was devastated," she told me. "I wish someone from the church expressed care, understanding, or support. But instead people avoided me. No one called or came to pray with me. After meeting with Pastor, I realized even he had no clue how much pain I was in. I rarely go to church any more. It hurts too much."

I wished Pam lived closer, so she could find a church like ours that was finding new ways to comfort broken people.

At Western Seminary I teach a class called "Women in Pain." Each school term I hear students tell stories of wounds—divorce, widowhood, abortion, infertility, death, sexual abuse. Women often tell me my seminary classroom is the first place they could admit their source of hurt and feel accepted and understood.

Women process pain differently than men. Women need to talk about it, to get it out in an affirming environment before receiving direction. Empathetic listening skills are critical. Understanding is essential. In some ways, women desperately need the comfort only other women can give.

I have discovered that once my students hear the story of a woman who has experienced the pain of abortion, divorce, or domestic violence, they begin to grow in compassion. They open their hearts for a deeper understanding of the pain, and an eagerness for helping those who feel it.

At the same time, a woman who has had the opportunity to share her own story of pain in a safe environment also grows in healing and compassion. A woman who has overcome intense hurt often feels an intense desire to help those with similar wounds.

I began to see my students as Titus 2 at work. In that passage, Paul exhorts Titus to train the older men, the younger men, and the older women. But Paul directs the older women of the church to take charge of training the younger. My students were demonstrating that a woman inexperienced with a certain emotional wound could find great comfort and guidance from another woman who had experienced it. Paul's instructions addressed exactly what our church was missing—an empathetic friend and mentor our hurting women could turn to.

I began to wish we had a group of women who had experienced divorce (for example), received grace and healing, and were available to help other women through this kind of pain; women who had felt the tremendous pain and could say, "I've been there, I want to help."

This was the very element my friend Pam was missing. We needed to bring this concept from my classroom to my church.

Our first step was to uncover the often hidden hurts that our church's ...