Seeking Christ’s Direction in Harmful Religious Spaces

You did not know it was a lyncher church. You were handed a pew, a bulletin, and a theology — and told it was the house of God. In many cases, you stayed because leaving felt like abandoning your community, your family, your God. In some cases, you stayed because no one told you there was another option.

This essay is for you. It offers a biblical framework for the three options that God places before every believer who finds themselves inside a church that covers, enables, or perpetuates the destruction of Black, Native, Latine, immigrant, LGBTQIA+, and other oppressed image-bearers: stay, transfer, or plant something new.

The oppressed are not sinless; like all people, they stand in need of repentance and the saving grace of Christ. Yet Scripture repeatedly calls God’s people to defend, protect, seek justice for, and restore the marginalized and oppressed.

None of these three paths is automatic. All three are submitted to the leading of the Holy Spirit. And all three are grounded in the witness of Scripture and the practices of the early church.

I. What Is a Lyncher Church?

Before a framework can be offered, the situation must be named honestly.

A “lyncher church” is a congregation that, by doctrine, practice, or systemic silence, currently functions as a “false shepherd” — wielding religious authority not to protect and restore the oppressed, but to cover, enable, or perpetuate their destruction. I use the term “lyncher church” analogically, not merely historically, to describe churches that participate in the destruction of vulnerable image-bearers through action, enabling, or systemic silence.

This is not a new phenomenon. The prophets of Israel confronted it directly:

“Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered…” — Ezekiel 34:2–5

“Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of My pasture!” — Jeremiah 23:1

Jesus Himself used severe language for religious institutions that obstruct the oppressed from God’s grace:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.” — Matthew 23:13–15

And the prophets condemned the systemic legal and institutional structures that crushed the poor and marginalized:

“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of My people.” — Isaiah 10:1–2

A lyncher church need not burn crosses. It may simply remain silent when it should speak, comfortable when it should be disturbed, and institutional when it should be prophetic and evangelistic. Silence, in the face of the destruction of image-bearers, is not neutrality. It is complicity.

II. Option One — Stay

Staying inside a lyncher church is not weakness. It may be exactly what God calls you to do — for a season, for a purpose, for specific people who need your witness and your presence.

The apostle Paul received a direct word from God to remain in a hostile city:

“Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” — Acts 18:9–10

Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and a half — not because the environment was comfortable, but because God told him to remain. The presence of hostility or compromise does not automatically constitute a call to leave. Sometimes it constitutes a call to endure, to witness, to intercede, and to serve those within the institution who are also suffering.

Staying requires discernment, not passivity. It requires knowing why you are there, what God has called you to do there, and what signs would indicate that your season of staying has ended.

Stay as long as God wants you there. Not one day less. Not one day more.

III. Option Two — Transfer

There is a moment — sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden — when God lifts the call to remain and issues the call to depart and transfer to a safer alternative. When that moment comes, leaving is not abandonment. It is obedience.

Jesus Himself authorized His disciples to depart from resistant spaces:

“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town, and shake the dust off your feet.” — Matthew 10:14

The apostles acted on this authorization repeatedly:

“So they shook the dust from their feet as a warning to them and went to Iconium.” — Acts 13:51

“But when they opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, ‘Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent of it. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.’” — Acts 18:6

And the book of Revelation issues a direct summons to God’s people to separate from corrupt systems:

“Come out of her, My people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues.” — Revelation 18:4

Leaving a lyncher church is not giving up on the Body of Christ. It is refusing to allow a congregation’s sin to become your spiritual home. You are not the building. You are not the denomination. You are not the legacy of those who harmed you. You are a member of a Body that is immeasurably larger, two millennia older, and immensely more faithful than any single institution.

Abandon them when He leads you to do so. And when He does — go without guilt.

IV. Option Three — Plant

The third option is often the most demanding and, God blessing, the most productive: plant a repentant church. Especially a house church.

The earliest churches were not institutions. They were households gathered around the risen Christ:

“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes, and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.” — Acts 2:46

“Greet also the church that meets at their house.” — Romans 16:5

“Give my greetings to the brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house.” — Colossians 4:15

The church planting mandate comes from Jesus and was carried out by His apostles.

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” — Matthew 28:19–20

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” — Acts 1:8

A repentant church is not simply a church without the particular sins of the lyncher church. It is a church that actively names those sins, refuses to replicate them, and builds its community life and mission around the liberation, healing, restoration, and renewal of those whom the lyncher church wounded.

This is the vision of Isaiah 58:12 — not just escape from the broken institution, but reconstruction:

“Your people will reconstruct the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.” — Isaiah 58:12

And Nehemiah did not merely lament the broken walls of Jerusalem. He organized, prayed, worked, and reconstructed — under opposition, without the resources that the powerful had, and sustained by the conviction that God had called him to the task:

“I also told them about the gracious hand of my God on me and what the king had said to me. They replied, ‘Let us start reconstructing.’ So they began this good work.” — Nehemiah 2:18

V. Don’t Worry About Resources

The lyncher church model requires buildings, budgets, branding, and institutional legitimacy. The apostolic model does not depend upon these things for legitimacy or effectiveness. It requires the Holy Spirit, a commitment to love and serve, and a community gathered around Christ crucified, risen, and already reigning.

Jesus sent His disciples with explicit instructions to travel light:

“Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts — no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep.” — Matthew 10:9–10

“Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals.” — Luke 10:3–4

This is not carelessness. It is a theological statement about the source of the mission’s power. The mission does not belong to those with the most resources. It belongs to those who are truly sent, protected, and empowered by Christ.

God supplies what the mission requires:

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 4:19

We are rejecting their models and methods. We are following the model and method of Christ and His apostles.

VI. Our Liberator, Healer, and Reconstructor Is With Us

Jesus announced His own mission in the synagogue at Nazareth by reading from Isaiah 61:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim the good announcement to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” — Luke 4:18–19

He is our Liberator — freeing us from every evil spirit, oppressive system, tyrannical institution, false theology, deceptive philosophy, and destructive ideology that has held us captive.

He is our Healer — binding up what the lyncher church and others wounded, restoring what was taken, recovering what was lost.

He is our Reconstructor — not merely delivering us from broken structures, but building through us something new, something repentant, something that bears His name rightly.

And He has promised to be with us for life:

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” — Matthew 28:20

Stay, transfer, or plant — He is with you in all three. The question is only which one He is calling you to do right now.

Conclusion

There is no single answer that applies to every oppressed believer in every lyncher church in every city. There is only the question: what is God calling you to do, in this church, in this season, for the people in that communion?

If He is calling you to stay — stay with your eyes open, your prophetic and gospel voice intact, and your exit available when the season ends.

If He is calling you to transfer — leave without guilt, without bitterness, and without looking back as though leaving that congregation meant leaving Christ Himself.

If He is calling you to plant — plant without waiting for permission, without accumulating the resources the lyncher churches told you were necessary, and without replicating the models and methods of those who harmed you.

#PlantRepentantChurchesUSwide. Especially house churches. In Emperor-Healer Jesus. By the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.

God bless, guard, anoint, and direct us all in Christ’s name through the Spirit.

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Glem Melo is an imperfect repentant evangelical missionary.

With research and composition assistance from multiple AI tools.

AI-free pastoral warning: Kevin De Young, Stephen Coleman, Franklin Graham, and Gordon Robertson have been behaving as Nazis.