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Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, several families I know have adopted children from Eastern Europe. As they grow, some of these children exhibit a set of extremely troubling symptoms: hostility, inability to form close relationships, and distrust of people, particularly authority figures. These children can become self-destructive, highly sensitive to rejection and anger, and blame everyone close to them for the problems in their lives.

Paradoxically, they often idealize their relationships initially and become preoccupied with them, so that they desire large amounts of contact and affection. However, break-ups are rapid, climactic, and destructive, and soon after one relationship ends, they begin to obsess about filling the vacuum with another. Psychologists call this syndrome Attachment Disorder (or AD).

In my consulting work, I interact with certain churches that exhibit the same sets of issues with love and authority as AD children. I call them Attachment Disorder churches.

Like AD children, AD churches are made, not born. They have been abandoned somehow, either physically, emotionally, or both. Attachment Disorder, in both children and churches, makes love and authority relationships incredibly challenging. Fortunately, God offers ways of healing the unique pain they carry.

One AD church I worked with recently had an awesome history. They had sent close to seventy missionaries overseas and placed several leaders into key positions in their denomination. For many decades they experienced spiritual health and blessing.

Then about 25 years ago, they called a pastor whose wife had just undergone a radical mastectomy. Her cancer went into remission, and for three years this pastor labored faithfully with this flock. Then the cancer returned. As his wife grew sicker, the congregation supported both her and him, visiting, bringing meals, and giving him time off as needed. The pastor came to believe that God was going to heal his wife completely. He preached confidently that he was neither anxious nor worried about what was happening because God had told him she would be healed.

He maintained his "stance of faith," and the church continued to provide care and support of all kinds, as she wasted away. Then suddenly, she died. The pastor and his church were devastated. He could not preach the Sunday after her funeral, which was understandable. But that very afternoon, he handed his resignation to the chairman of the church board.

"I cannot do this anymore!" he said. He would not be dissuaded from resigning. This broken-hearted, grieving man left the church and the ministry, bitterly disappointed with God and unable to serve him thereafter.

The church body had been deeply vested in this couple. Then, in the moment of crisis, and despite their attempts to reach out to him, this shepherd abandoned his flock, just at the time they needed each other the most. And the church bore scars for years.

Like the pastor in this account, the parents of AD children are often in such deep emotional pain that they have nothing left to give their infants. In other words, the point is not to blame the shepherd. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that for a flock to be abandoned by its shepherd at such a moment has significant repercussions. Jesus gives us a hint of them when he says: "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep" (John 10:11-13).

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