Description
In all aspects of life there are always a minority of people who, sometimes despite best intentions, make toxic what was intended to be helpful and life giving. So too there are a small amount of churches out there that somehow turn the good news into bad news. Those churches tend to be led by leaders who for varying reasons exchange manipulation for encouragement and legalism and condemnation for grace. Toxic Churches is written in both an encouraging and sensitive styles that effectively identifies abusive characteristics of churches that severely cross those lines and see the sons and daughters of God simply as tools and assets.
Marc deals with some of the hard questions related to spiritual abuse such as how can a Bible teaching church become so poisonous and how does one actually identify what a toxic church is and isn’t. The heart of the book, however, is not to simply point out problem churches or simply condemn abusive leaders. The goal is to help authentic victims of spiritual abuse come into restoration and relearn that the ‘joy of the Lord is their strength’ and that serving God and being active in a healthy church can be amazingly good.
