Our engagement with the Psalms demands a response. It’s not enough to nod in agreement and carry on as before. If your heart and hymnbook are full of defeat and despair, it’s high time for a reformation. We need to ditch the weak-kneed theology that has infiltrated our ranks and put on the whole armor of God, ready to fight the good fight with the confidence of those already on the winning side.  Remember, the Psalms don’t call us to a passive, defeated life, waiting for the end times. They call us to action, dominion, to take up the mantle of our King and push forward His Kingdom here on earth, as it is in heaven.

If you want to learn what a culture values, and if you’re going to understand the worldview that underpins a nation, then you must look no further than their songs. No matter what the whompyjawed ideologues say behind fake smiles and teleprompters, and no matter what manufactured narratives are peddled by the bobbleheaded pundits in the fake news media, the hopes and dreams of a people will be found most clearly stated in their anthems, ballads, and refrains. If you want to know what a society believes in, where their hopes lie, what they think about the purpose of life, and why we are all here, then pay attention to the lyrics and hymns they produce. It will be telling.
For instance, let’s say that I have been living under a rock for a few decades, and somehow, I end up washing up on the shores of this strange land called the USA. If I wanted to figure out who these people are and what things they value, I might look up their ten most popular songs for that year. If I did that, I would find out that these people believe our purpose in life is to engage in womanizing, emasculation, promiscuous and filthy sex, getting drunk, doing drugs, and being a thoroughgoing moral degenerate. But it’s all good, as long as we have a good time, right? That is the attitude our songs are celebrating. While I wish I could say that I am being hyperbolic, I read through the lyrics of the ten most popular songs right now, and if anything, I am being excessively modest. That is the discordant melody and the seedy song we are singing about who we are. And based on our cultural anthems, we are not only a very sick and disgusting people, but we are unashamedly proud of it.
However, this was not the case in ancient Israel, whose hymn book tells a much different story about who they were and what they valued as a society. Amid the hundred and fifty songs that we have preserved in our canon, we can see themes of trust, praise, and worship of Yahweh, lament, and suffering in times of struggle, repentance and confession, thanksgiving, His love, and covenantal faithfulness to His people, as well as His sovereignty and Kingship over all things. In fact, one of the most prominent themes in the book of Psalms is how God is going to take a sin-laden world that was handed down to us in Adam and, through His Son, establish a Kingdom that fills the world with worshippers, which ties in perfectly with the themes that we have been talking about so far.
If you are new to the party, we are in a series called a practical postmillennialism, where we have been talking about what postmillennialism is. We have been arguing that postmillennialism is the story of how God will fill the world with worshippers before the curtains close on this old world. This is the promise He made to Adam in the garden before He sinned (Genesis 1:28). This is the promise God repeated to Noah after sin (Genesis 9:1). It is the hope that Abraham’s line will bless every family on earth (Genesis 12:3) and every nation on earth (Genesis 18:18). And it is the promise that humans will never be able to do this on their own, because we are all like Adam, so a messianic Shiloh will come and bring obedience and worship to all the nations (Genesis 49:10), filling them with worshippers. We have seen that Jesus will take the promises given to all those men in Genesis and accomplish them as the true and better Adam.
Last week, we saw how those world-filling promises are not only contained within the book of Genesis but spill out into the pages of the Exodus, or in the law found in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, or in the conquests narratives of Joshua, and in the lead up to and all throughout the era of the kings from Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. We saw that these cosmic promises that were given by God would be fulfilled. God would not abandon His plan. And before the last grain of sand falls through the hourglass of time, God will have filled the world with worshippers through His one and only Son, Jesus. These are His promises, and He is going to fulfill them.
Now today, we will see how the book of Psalms takes these glorious themes and sings them back to us, even shouting them at us like a metal concert with loud crashing symbols going off in the background so that we would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to miss the throbbing chorus. Today, as we move out of the history of Israel’s kings and move into the poetry and songs of Israel, we will see how the hymnbook of God’s people echoes the promise of a better King, a ferocious King, who will put all of His enemies underneath His feet so that He can fill the world with worshippers as God has promised.
A Song of Crushing Enemies
As men have become increasingly emasculated in our culture and radical feminism has run through our societal veins like rat poison, the widespread view of Jesus has shifted away from the warrior priest-king to the humble, loveable wuss. If that stings, it is because it is true. In art and movies, we shamefully depict Him with long flowing hair, soft, supple skin, and longing eyes, looking like a woman with a well-manicured beard. In popular evanjellyfish music, Jesus has become the emotional boyfriend in the sky, to whom we belt out all our emotive mantric babblings, so He will wrap us up in warm worshipful hugs. This is ironic because the songs we see concerning Him in Scripture are masculine and ferocious, and they focus not only on His affections but also His wrath against the wicked.
No matter how sappily evangelicalism has painted the Lion of Judah, and no matter how loud they roar that we lose down here, the softening of this King and the defeat of His people does not work in the Psalms. He is not a mere savior of souls working for a Kingdom filled with harp-playing, toga-wearing cloud riders. This prevailing notion suggests that the church’s role is essentially to crash and burn in this lifetime, to retreat from the world like cowards in anticipation of a heavenly reward, sidelining the Kingdom’s advancement on earth. Many argue that Jesus is not actively building His Kingdom on this earth because He is focused entirely on spiritual things. However, this image starkly contrasts with the robust, authoritative Messiah depicted in the Psalms.
In these God-breathed hymns, Jesus is not depicted as a distant, passive figure; instead, He emerges as a mighty warrior, a king not only concerned with the afterlife but vigorously involved in the here and now, establishing His rule, authority, and dominion across the globe. And there will be setbacks. There will be enemies who rise up and pop off at the mouth. The Scriptures are not silent about those moments. But, they are also not quiet about the Messiah standing as the indomitable General leading the charge against the hordes of hell until every single enemy of God has been crushed under King Jesus’ feet. In that sense, the Psalms aren’t just songs; they are war cries, declarations of victory by a King who will bring utter devastation and ruin upon His enemies.
Take Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 for example. These aren’t gentle whispers of a far-off distant hope; they are booming thunderclaps of God’s immutable promise.
Psalm 2:7-12 says:

“I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; you shall shatter them like earthenware.’ Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that he not become angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in him!” – Psalm 2:7-12

Although David wrote this song, He is not talking about himself. He is an outsider to this scene. He is nothing more than a privileged spectator who returns and reports all He heard and beheld within the Godhead. He is writing a song about a conversation God the Father and God the Son are having with one another. A song where the Father will bring His Son to this earth as His only begotten Son. A song where the Father will give His Son all of the rebel nations on earth as the inheritance for His obedience. And, after assuming His global dominion (alluded to in Matthew 28:18), He will begin the process of overthrowing all of the sedition on earth, breaking into pieces all of those who are in ongoing insurrection against God.
Because of Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, He will rule over the nations of this earth with a rod of iron and shatter all of His Father’s rebels like pottery shards. This is why the world’s kings are told to be wise and take this warning very seriously. They are not told to repent in terror because Jesus is building a Kingdom that loses down here and has no impact down here. No! They should be terrified because if they do not turn from their evil in order to worship the Messiah King on this earth and pay homage to Him in His rule on this planet, then He will overthrow them here, displace them here, and bury them here in His righteous wrath.
God the Father is promising that Jesus will win down here, rule down here, and crush everyone who opposes Him down here. That is a far different tune than what we are used to hearing in modern Christianity. But, alas, there it is in the text. We see that this Messiah doesn’t come as a passive observer of world history but as the relentless conqueror of it. He is the one who claims every inch of this earth as His rightful domain because He won it as His inheritance on the cross.
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In respect to what is on display in The Mission of God, Boot lacks the requisite skills of an historian, which concerns me as my own academic interests have addressed how evangelicals can use and abuse the past.[4] The purpose of this review is narrower than noting The Mission of God’s overall demerits.[5] Rather, I address one of Boot’s key arguments, which is that the puritans were the prototypes of the modern Theonomic or Christian Reconstructionist movement and that for one to be a true heir of the puritans one must be a Theonomist or Reconstructionist. I am not going to argue whether a case can be made for a relationship between Theonomy and puritanism, rather I am going to look at whether Boot successfully makes that case.[6]

Many Christians do not have a worked out political theology. We are aware of the importance of being good citizens, as Paul tells us in Romans 13, but it’s not until we find ourselves in the throes of political conflict that we are forced to work out what we believe about living faithfully in a civil society that is openly hostile to our faith. Certainly Covid-19 has caused the church to think more about our relationship to politics. As we’ve moved from mask mandates and restricted worship gatherings now to vaccine passports and possibly even vaccine taxes, Christians are struggling to understand what obedience to government really looks like. To make matters worse, the Canadian government has now legislated against basic Christian sexual ethics in such a way as to make all Christians, not just pastors and counselors, liable for any advice they give on sexual orientation or gender identity. In these troubled times we want answers, but often such answers don’t come pre-packaged, nor do they have the power of universal explanation, much as we’d like them to. The problems that we are facing are not easy to work through and require prudential study of the bible and the Christian tradition. As the church has been equipped over the past two thousand years with sources to help us think through these important matters, searching them out requires patience, nuance, and ability to rightly appropriate the past. We should be turning to the ancient church to understand how those Christians dealt with state persecution and martyrdom, we should look to the medieval church for help understanding the pros and cons of Christendom. Protestants especially have a wealth of resources at their disposal, especially in the Magisterial Reformers, to help us think about the two kingdoms, natural law, obedience or resistance to the magistrate.
One particularly rich stream of Protestantism that we could be drawing from is the English puritan tradition that, in all of its variety, has much to teach us about holding the government to account. The puritans had to wrestle through a civil war that culminated in regicide; surely they have something to say that’s worth hearing in our context. However, the puritan era, like any other in history, is subject to misinterpretation. A classic example is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1804-1864) portrayal of them as narrow-minded bigots in The Scarlet Letter (1850). Confusion about the puritans by those who criticize them is one thing, but misunderstandings by those who sympathize with them is another. This often happens with those who approach the past looking for some kind of golden age that our own will never live up to. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), who more than anybody was responsible for the renewed interest in the puritans in the twentieth century, observed that many were tempted to theological ignorance by “using the Puritans and their writings as a substitute for thought.”[1] When we are approaching the past for our political theology, or anything else, we want to rightly appropriate it for use today. We must pursue truth, even if our pursuit of it leads us to unlikely conclusions. Failure at this level can have long-lasting consequences as our misunderstandings can blow up in our face. What is required is a patient, non-compromising, and irenic engagement with our culture that is informed by the bible, theology, and church history.
The Mission of God
The book under review attempts to engage culture effectively using the past, especially the puritans. In what follows I will evaluate whether The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society, is successful in its appropriation of puritanism as an antidote for today’s political ills. The book was first published in 2014 by Joseph Boot, a British apologist working in Canada, though my review is of the second edition of the book as it was published initially with the now defunct Canadian publisher Freedom Press International.[2] Boot opted to self-publish his second edition in 2016 with Ezra Press, an arm of his think tank, the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Boot is also a pastor at Westminster Chapel in Toronto, a church he founded, and is involved in Britain with the Wilberforce Academy and Christian Concern. Boot’s book garnered him a Doctor of Philosophy in Christian Intellectual Thought from Whitefield Theological Seminary in Lakeland, Florida. It is surprising that he would be awarded such a degree, as the book does not meet academic standards for a PhD.[3] In respect to what is on display in The Mission of God, Boot lacks the requisite skills of an historian, which concerns me as my own academic interests have addressed how evangelicals can use and abuse the past.[4]
The purpose of this review is narrower than noting The Mission of God’s overall demerits.[5] Rather, I address one of Boot’s key arguments, which is that the puritans were the prototypes of the modern Theonomic or Christian Reconstructionist movement and that for one to be a true heir of the puritans one must be a Theonomist or Reconstructionist. I am not going to argue whether a case can be made for a relationship between Theonomy and puritanism, rather I am going to look at whether Boot successfully makes that case.[6] In what follows I briefly describe Theonomy and Christian Reconstruction, generally survey some of the book’s aims, addressing his treatment of the puritans with my own criticisms interspersed throughout, and conclude with some general observations of the value of Boot’s book.[7]
Theonomy and Christian Reconstruction
Before engaging The Mission of God’s treatment of the puritans as Theonomists, it is worth describing Theonomy.[8] Christian Reconstruction was developed in the mid-twentieth century by the Armenian-American writer Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001), a missionary, activist, author, and founder of the Chalcedon Foundation.[9] The movement gained traction and controversy through its popularization by the apologist Greg L. Bahnsen (1948-1995) and economist Gary North. It is to North that we owe the term “Christian Reconstruction,” which he first used in 1974 for his Journal of Christian Reconstruction. Bahnsen was the most serious Reconstructionist and his works Theonomy and Christian Ethics and By This Standard are erudite treatments of the major themes addressed by Theonomy, particularly the relation of the Old Testament to Christian ethics.[10] North is the late Rushdoony’s son-in-law, though the two had an acrimonious split that saw North move from Vallecito, California, where the Chalcedon Foundation is located, to Tyler, Texas, that became the home of his Geneva Ministries and Institute for Christian Economics.[11] The movement largely dissolved after the North-Rushdoony split and the death of Bahnsen, with thinkers like Douglas Wilson, Peter Leithart, and James B. Jordan, who had varying degrees of relationships to the movement, leaving the fold.[12] Though a number of definitions of Theonomy have been articulated by exponents, for the sake of this review, I will go with Jordan’s. He argued that the movement is concerned with advocating the sovereignty of God under three headings: postmillennial eschatology, the presuppositional apologetics developed by Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987), and the abiding character of Old Testament law (hence, Theonomy).[13] Theonomy is sometimes described as “Dominion Theology,”[14] that relates to their victorious view of postmillennialism, where they argue that society will be Christianized at the return of Christ. Relatedly, presuppositionalism makes the claim that all knowledge must explicitly accept the lordship of Jesus Christ for it to be true knowledge.[15] When Christ returns, society will be governed by the Mosaic law. Hence, these three distinctives are the Theonomists’ way of advocating for the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ over all things.
With this general overview of Theonomy and Reconstructionism in mind, we can turn to evaluating Boot’s book. In light of what has been said in defining the movement, it should be observed that Boot seems to be concerned with the earlier brand of Reconstruction as developed by Rushdoony. Little mention is made of the other Theonomists like North, Jordan, or Chilton. They appear in the bibliography, but not in the index to the book. Bahnsen also does not appear in the index, though his work is in both the bibliography and endnotes with some frequency.
The Purpose of The Mission of God
Before engaging Boot’s claims about puritanism it would also help to explain the aim of The Mission of God, as best as possible for a book that is quite large and that tackles a variety of subjects. My focus is to summarize aspects of the book that pertain to puritanism – it would take me far afield to get into specifics of missiological debates, questions of exclusivism versus inclusivism, Canadian politics, apologetic method, holocaust denial, etc.
Missiology is Boot’s overarching concern: “[P]art of my motivation in writing this study is to help stimulate and encourage critical reflection on the biblical missiology that did so much to shape our liberties and free institutions that are eroding before our very eyes.”[16] This is a noble aim, one that all Christians should think seriously about. He argues that the church needs a full-orbed gospel of the kingdom in order to combat societal decay, a gospel exemplified by the puritans and Theonomists. Boot is not content with a gospel that is merely about saving lost souls, he wants an evangelism that is rooted in societal change.[17] The gospel is about all of life and thus has cultural implications for the lordship of Christ. With this most Christians should agree, generally speaking. It’s Boot’s argument that to remedy this weakness evangelicalism needs an injection of the Theonomic understanding of the kingdom of God. This will help it grow in cultural effectiveness as we encounter new challenges and problems.
The Mission of God and Puritanism
Boot is critical of those who only read puritan spirituality but who do not take their view of the law seriously. Rhetorically, he asks: “Is it not disingenuous to claim an affinity for the Puritans, delighting in the vitality of their prayers and piety whilst ignoring its source—their vision of God’s covenant and reign in history?” He goes on to argue, “There is no accurate understanding of John Knox, Samuel Rutherford, John Owen, John Elliot [sic], John Cotton or Oliver Cromwell to be had, whilst ignoring their view of Christ’s present reign at God’s right hand as King of kings and Lord of lords, to whom all men are subject, under whose law all men are held to account (whether king or commoner), and by whose gospel alone men can find redemption and restoration.”[18] He points to the “contemporary evangelical indifference” to puritanism as a reason that the Theonomists, whom he refers to as the puritans’ “most consistent modern heirs,” have been denigrated in the church.[19] Boot argues that the Theonomists have been censured because “they have taken up and revived key elements in our Puritan heritage that the rest of the modern evangelical community has chosen to forget or ignore.”[20] Those key elements include the puritan view of the law. What is unhelpful about this quote is that Boot does not cite those who love the puritans but ignore those key elements. Even worse, Boot does not take into account recent studies of the puritan view of the law, pre-eminent among them are Ernest Kevan’s (1903-1965) two books The Grace of Law: A Study of Puritan Theology and The Moral Law, which are important for our understanding of the period. In them, Kevan draws heavily from Anthony Burgess (1600-1663) and his view of the law, a puritan who, incidentally, does not appear in Boot’s book.[21] Most significantly, neither book makes the case that Theonomy is the consistent puritan view of the law. As we will see below, the puritan view of the law does not fit so nicely with the arguments of The Mission of God.
Boot regularly–and rightly– outlines the decline of the West due to its abandonment of Christian faith. For Boot, church and society need to go back and recapture the holistic view of the puritans who applied biblical law to all areas of life, from economics, education, politics, and family. Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) is, for Boot, the preeminent example of this application of the Christian faith to all of life by a political leader who honors God’s law. Cromwell is the quintessential puritan who, in Boot’s words, is “generally seen as the most important Puritan statesman in European history.”[22] It was Cromwell and the other puritans who laid the foundations of the freedoms that we enjoy in the modern West, and to abandon them is to abandon the gains they won for us. Again, it is to the Theonomists that we must turn to recapture the puritan view of life, where a total reconstruction of society will start with the family as the first stage of renewal and then move on to other spheres of life like church and state.[23]
One philosophical culprit that Boot takes aim at throughout the book is dualism, that he describes as the contrast between religion and other aspects of life. The Reformation broke down the secular/sacred divide, rendering all of life as intrinsically religious. Boot locates dualism in Greek thought that has dogged the church since its inception, particularly with heretics like Marcion (ca. 110-160) who gets regular mention.[24] We have, since the puritan era, been mired in a “progressive re-Hellenization” that marks a return to dualism. What Christianity is called to do is return to its non-dualistic, Old Testament heritage expressed by the puritans.[25] Instead, the church is mired in what he would describe as versions of the Marcionite heresy, one of which is premillennialism, especially the dispensationalism of “J. N. Darby and C. I. Schofield [sic].”[26] Their dualism is between the soul—the focus of premillennial evangelism strategies—and the body that can be disregarded in the pursuit of spiritual aims. Premillennialists are retreatists, but what the church needs is the puritan eschatology of postmillennialism, that is non-dualistic, optimistic, and victorious. This eschatological vision comports with how a Christianized society can be reconstructed according to God’s law as laid out in the Old Testament and recaptured at the Reformation. It was the Enlightenment that marked the unraveling of God’s law in the West, and the dualism that insidiously encroaches on the church witnessing a return to ancient Marcionism.[27]
Alongside premillennialism, Boot also argues that certain Reformed “two kingdoms” views are likewise a form of Marcionite dualism.[28] In a section titled “Cultural Cowardice,” Boot takes theologian Michael S. Horton to task for advocating a kind of cultural retreat. Though he devotes fifteen pages to discussing Horton, Boot does not deal with the broad scope of Horton’s work, instead he focuses on a single article he published in the 9Marks journal, a popular periodical issued by 9Marks Ministries.[29] Boot claims that Horton’s two kingdoms theology “seems to be that of double sovereignty or two kingdoms (with similarities to the nature/grace dualism of scholastic philosophy).”[30] Due to his sharp law-gospel distinction, that Boot asserts is “not a Reformed perspective,” Horton’s two kingdoms theology has “neo-Marcionite tendencies” that “lead also to an antinomian tone in his writing.”[31] The two kingdoms “leaves space for [Horton’s] ‘secular callings’ (religiously neutral spheres) and ‘common grace’ (or natural theology/law) as areas where a specifically biblical and Christian approach to life is completely unnecessary, from education, to arts, politics and science.” This “strange dualism” is due to Horton’s view of Christ’s absence from the earth.[32] Boot’s critiques of premillennialism and two kingdoms theology—both of which are guilty of the heresy of Marcion—explain why the puritans and Theonomists need to be rediscovered.
As part of the rejection of the lordship of Christ, Boot argues correctly that we live in an historically rootless society that will lead to eventual collapse as our “barbarian” culture “ceases to value and identify with the past” and thus will have “no ability to navigate forward responsibly.”[33] While Boot is right to argue for the importance of history as a way of steering our culture back to some form of sanity, the irony is that his reading of history is often anachronistic and unhelpful. Nevertheless, he argues that a Christian view of history must be grounded in the doctrines of creation and providence, as argued biblically, in Augustine, and in the puritans. Such views have been eclipsed with negative consequences for law, politics, and the church. Christians are “humanistic and antinomian” in their views of history, some even being captivated by occultist “positive thinking” views, or the retreatism of Christians who want to escape the calamities of creaturely affairs.[34] Here, Boot is right to note the historical amnesia of the church today, especially in evangelicalism, but his own historiography does not push the church forward in a way that will help us make good use of the past. If anything, Boot is an example of how not to use history in service of the church.
Much more could be said of The Mission of God but space constraints are already being pushed. In sum, the thrust of Boot’s argument is to demonstrate the collapse of society and the church due to a Hellenized and Enlightenment-influence rejection of the law of God as espoused by the Reformers and the puritans. The church suffers from a dualism that results in a cultural retreat and a tacit betrayal of the lordship of Christ over all domains of life. Boot’s remedy to rebuild society and the church is to recapture the puritan spirit of law exemplified by the Theonomists.
Defining Puritanism
Boot’s book raises many questions. If his argument is that we need a return to a theonomic society and that the puritans can help light the path toward that end, the first question to ask is if his account of the puritans is actually correct. It is not. Of the importance of defining puritanism, historian Richard L. Greaves (1938-2004) said, “The debate has been salutary, for without an accurate understanding of these terms it is extremely difficult to engage in constructive dialogue about any of the facets of Puritan history and the broader historical pageant of which it is an integral part.”[35] In 2010 I published, “Hot Protestants: A Taxonomy of English Puritanism,” where I traced the history of the interpretation of puritanism and, noting the difficulty of trying to define it, came up with a broad definition. I argued that the puritan movement developed at the end of the Elizabethan Settlement and roughly ended with the death of John Howe (1630-1705).[36] My definition noted that puritanism was not solely a Calvinistic movement, that though it was Protestant, it was indebted to catholic thought, and was grounded in experiential piety.
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Prioritize healing, but don’t use recovery as an excuse to become apathetic. Seek the help you need and do not walk alone. No one should navigate a difficult season solo. Make phone calls to your mentor, counselor, and close friends. Be grateful for those who respond positively. 

When the church causes hurt, it pollutes God’s calling and creates a toxicity that works against the gospel.
The goal is to minimize church hurt and maximize church unity. Here is reality. Something will happen in almost every church because ministry includes people. In some cases, the pastor is the cause of the hurt. In other cases, the people of the church hurt the pastor. Pastors can be responsible for church hurt, but this article focuses on how pastors should respond when experiencing a toxic church culture.
Pastors can experience various forms of church hurt, some more painful than others.

“I’m not being fed, so I’m leaving.”
“People are saying. . .”
“I love you, but. . .”
“I noticed you bought a vehicle. How can you afford that?”
“You should listen and learn from my favorite YouTube preacher.”
“I support you, but I don’t want to talk to my friends about their negative attitudes.”
“Why do your kids act that way?”
“Why is your spouse not more involved?”

Now, there is a difference between hurt and toxicity. The former is personal. The latter is cultural. You may experience toxicity but not be personally hurt. You may be personally hurt but not in a toxic culture. Or you may feel the compounding effects of both.

Not toxic or hurtful: A healthy church acts as God designed.
Toxic, but not hurtful: The culture is poisonous, but the people are not after you personally.
Not toxic, but hurtful: In these cases, an individual or small group is attacking you unbeknownst to the rest of the congregation. This situation is usually short-term, as even a small group will eventually affect the church’s culture.
Toxic and hurtful: The culture is hurtful, and at least some people are after you personally.

Though there is much overlap between toxic church culture and personal hurt, making this distinction is critical for pastors. The pathway to reconciliation is clearer when a toxic culture is not present because the process involves a small group of people (perhaps just two) rather than the entire congregation. What are some warning signs of a toxic church culture?
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