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Review: Healing Your Church Hurt by Stephen Mansfield

Review: Healing Your Church Hurt
Stephen Mansfield
Barna
2012

Mansfield wrote this book out of need he saw among those that had experienced a church hurt. The need as the title suggests is healing. He is no stranger to the hurt he writes about here and does not dance the around the deep wounds that he received from a congregation that he had pastored for several years. In fact, he is brutally honest in some instances. What he has to say is not new territory or a magic bullet that will fix everyone and everything. So if that’s what you are hoping for from him, don’t’ say I didn’t warn you up front.

What he does have to say is how to actually do the things that will lead to your healing. The ideas are not novel. They are biblical. The same stuff you have read over and over again but tried to find a way around, especially the forgiveness thing. What he does is to help guide you through that process drawing from his own experiences, failures, and finally healing.

His section about forgiveness is the best I’ve read in a long time. For those of us that have heard the “forgive and forget” advice but have ended up discouraged that we just couldn’t do that, this book will free you from that unneeded or deserved guilt. Read it for that if for no other reason.

It does have a few places that didn’t work as well as the forgiveness section, but that may be a matter of style preference on my part. His writing can be as direct as Hemingway and that is enough said about that.

I do recommend this book. It is a fast read, an easy read, but slow down and absorb what he has to say.

To make that even easier for you I have one free via a gift certificate to give to the first person that requests it. Please leave your contact information so I get your mailing address to send the certificate to you via snail mail. No other contact or selling your info will happen. Promise.

I received this book from Tyndale Publishing in exchange for this review.

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