Is Your Church Actually Safe for Abuse Survivors? Here's How to Find Out [379]

Flying Free

Natalie Hoffman

Divorce, Religion & Spirituality, Spiritual, Self-improvement, Narcissism, Christian, Education, Christianity, Abuse, Emotional, Marriage

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode I’m answering a pressing question Christian women in difficult marriages ask: how do you find a church that will actually support you instead of silence you?

Because not all churches are created equal, and the difference between a safe church and a harmful one can change everything for a woman trying to find her footing. I’ll break down exactly what to look for, what to ask, and what red flags to run from.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

There's a question you can ask a pastor before ever setting foot in a pew that will tell you almost everything you need to know about whether that church is safe.
What a church puts on its website (and what it leaves off) reveals far more than you might think about how they actually treat abuse survivors.
One word in a pastor's answer about couples counseling is a dealbreaker. Do you know what it is?
The church's leadership page can disqualify them before you ever walk through the door.
There's a theology that sounds biblical and even beautiful to some women, but I make a case that it's actually setting the stage for harm.

Get Today’s Free Resource:

📒 Take a free Emotional Abuse Assessment by going to emotionalabusequiz.com

I will also send you my weekly Hope Letters for Christian women in emotionally and spiritually abusive marriages.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Natalie Hoffman of Flying FreeNow.com, and you're listening to the Flying Free Podcast,
0:08.9	a support resource for women of faith looking for hope and healing from hidden emotional and spiritual abuse.
0:18.0	Welcome to episode 379 of the Flying Free podcast. Today I'm going to share an excerpt from a recent
0:26.8	live Q&A that I did with our kaleidoscope butterflies. Now the word for a flock of butterflies
0:34.4	is a kaleidoscope of butterflies. So that's what I call my private training and
0:40.0	support program for Christian women. There are hundreds of us, and we all live together in this beautiful and
0:48.2	safe kaleidoscope space online. These butterflies have access to each other and to a group of experienced and trauma-informed
0:57.2	professional coaches in a private forum. They also get to go through my training program to learn
1:02.9	tools and skills to unhook from their programming and the mind control of other people
1:08.5	so they can feel better in their own skin, discover their
1:12.6	true identity, and feel more confident about their parenting, their ability to manage their
1:18.6	own emotions, and their ability to make good choices for their futures. Each month this year,
1:24.9	we have a live bonus class or Q&A or something extra special,
1:29.9	and a few weeks ago we did this two-hour live Q&A. I'd like to share the first 10 minutes of it,
1:36.6	where I answer a question related to figuring out whether a church is safe or not.
1:42.5	Now, I answer questions every day in our private forum,
1:46.7	but this event was a concentrated opportunity to just focus on big questions for a couple of hours,
1:54.2	and then the entire thing gets published in our private podcast, just for our butterflies. Some of the questions that I answered
2:03.3	in this particular Q&A were, how do I deal with the fear of being alone, unprotected, and
2:09.5	unable to handle life on my own, after leaving? How do I stay safe and sane while still living
2:16.1	with my abusive husband in a place I love? How do I gr safe and sane while still living with my abusive husband in a place I love?
2:19.6	How do I grieve the dream of being deeply loved without becoming bitter or hardening my heart?
	...

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