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Church hurt is something almost no one survives decades in the church without experiencing.
In this special joint episode of Praying Christian Women and Christian True Crime Junkies, Alana and Jaime have an honest, unscripted conversation about church scandal, spiritual abuse, and how to heal your faith when a pastor's moral failure—or a church's cover-up—leaves you wounded, even when you were far removed from where it happened.

Together they unpack why a pastor's affair can trigger a faith crisis in people who left the church years ago, why victims of clergy abuse are so often shunned while fallen leaders get protected, and what Gayle Haggard's memoir Why I Stayed reveals about loving the families caught in the wreckage. They get honest about the spectrum between a consensual affair and predatory abuse, why narcissists are so often drawn to ministry and church leadership, and the pattern of institutional and denominational failures—and cover-ups—that keeps surfacing across churches of every stripe.

Alana also shares her hard-won take on spiritual "premonitions"—the God-given instinct that something is off—and why she believes those warnings are a call to pray, not proof you failed to act. Grounded in Ezekiel 34:2, the conversation lands on a grace-filled but clear-eyed question every church faces: how do we protect the flock from spiritual abuse while still extending real grace to imperfect people?

Whether you're walking through church hurt right now, rebuilding after spiritual abuse, quietly deconstructing, or simply want to guard your heart against cynicism and bitterness, we hope this episode helps you grieve honestly, stay connected to God, and hold grace and wisdom in the very same hand.

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