On Church Hurt–And Not Walking Away: Dave Harvey

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On Church Hurt—And Not Walking Away

Guest:Dave Harvey

From the series:The Clay Pot Conspiracy: God’s Plan to Use Weakness in Leaders (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:May 28, 2026

Dave H. (00:04):

I’m so grateful to God that I have a wife who understands the gospel and can point me to the providence of God and remind me that because of what Christ did, I am the object of God’s goodness. I’m not what’s been done to me. I’m not the ways that I’ve been sinned against. I’m the object of God’s goodness.

Dave (00:32):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann (00:38):

And I’m Ann Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

We’ve got Dave Harvey back with us today and his book, The Clay Pot Conspiracy: God’s Plan to Use Weakness in Leaders. This is going to be a great conversation.

Dave (00:57):

We get to talk about weakness today. Something nobody wants to talk about, but God wants to meet us right there and take us on a journey, which is an epic journey. So let’s go.

How did you navigate the sadness of losing your ministry, in a sense, at the church, losing your daughter?

Ann (01:20):

—daughter.

Dave (01:21):

There’s an emotion that—

Ann (01:22):

—and the sadness that Kim probably was walking through.

Dave H. (01:25):

Yeah. I think 2 Corinthians was a huge help. And I think chapter four was a—there were seminal moments in chapter four because part of that visual of God storing treasure in jars of clay is to realize that in order for the surpassing power to shine, the jar has to be broken. And that God consistently steps into our lives and busts up the jar in some way. That sometimes that can be a small thing, sometimes that could be a large thing, that it can hit close to home, that it could be a financial thing, but there are ways that God weakens us. And each one is handpicked and customized for who we are and for the road that He’s called us to walk down.

(02:22):

So I think not allowing the sovereignty of God to be attacked, not just the sovereignty of God, but the providence of God. So sovereignty of God is God’s rule and reign over all things. Providence of God imports His goodness into His sovereignty. And so when faith is defined in Hebrews chapter 11, it’s anyone who would draw near to God must believe that He exists. And so we’re good on that one. Even in suffering, we believe He exists. And He’s a rewarder for those who seek Him. That’s the one we jettison because that goes, no, you’re not rewarding me in this situation. So I had to be able to come to terms with the reality that there are things that God is doing, even in this most horrific circumstance that represents His blessing and His kindness. I may not be able to see that for a while. I may not even be able to see that in this lifetime.

(03:20):

These might be the momentary light afflictions that are going to be representing an eternal weight of glory, not a temporal one, but they’re there and they’re happening. And part of what I draw from in that is the life of Joseph.

Ann (03:36):

Oh.

Dave H.:

I think about Joseph. I think about Joseph as being the entitled child, boasting about his dreams and getting the coat of many colors from his dad because his dad kind of loved him best. And the older brothers knew that. And apparently Joseph conducted himself in a way that ticked them off so bad. It’s not just that they just wanted to beat him up.

Ann (04:02):

They wanted to kill him.

Dave H. (04:03):

They wanted to kill him.

(04:05):

And then they decide they can’t kill him without having to tell their father or risk having their father find out. So they say, You know what? Let’s not kill him. Let’s throw him in a hole and sell him into slavery, which they do. And Joseph is sold into slavery to never return to the land in which he was born and raised again in his life. And then he goes to Potiphar’s house, and you think, “Oh, okay.” So this is how storylines go. The story arc is it’s a bad thing. And then everything’s going well in Potiphar’s house, but then Potiphar’s wife is like a sexual predator and she’s hitting on him and all of a sudden, he’s taking the high road, and you think, “Oh, he’s going to come out great here.” No, off to prison, falsely accused, falsely imprisoned. In prison, you think, “Oh, well, maybe this is what happened.” No, he’s just used for his gifts.

Ann (04:56):

And he’s there for years.

Dave H. (04:57):

And he’s there for years and he’s forgotten. He’s bringing people on the basis of his interpretations and he’s forgotten. His brothers come to him. So you fast forward to the end of the story in Genesis chapter 50 where Joseph goes to give the grand interpretation of how all of that should be understood. And this is years later, he says to his brothers, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” So what I love about that is he acknowledges—what you did, that was evil. It wasn’t incidental, it wasn’t accidental, it was evil. And you intended it to be evil. So when you think about it, that’s some of the hardest things to face in a fallen world is that family members would try to assassinate you or kill you or—

Ann (05:49):

That’s as low as you can get.

Dave H. (05:50):

That’s exactly right. You meant it for evil, but God meant all these evil things. God meant it for good. And so what I take away from that, and the way it applies to what we’re talking about here is that I am not what’s been done to me. I am not how I’ve been sinned against. That’s not the statement over me. I am the object of God’s goodness. That’s what Joseph is saying. Yeah, being sold in slavery. Yeah, God meant it for good. Being the object of Potiphar’s wife, God meant it for good. Falsely imprisoned, God meant it for good. Yeah, being forgotten in prison. Yeah, God meant it for good. Shelby dying—

Ann (06:34):

It’s a cute name.

Dave H. (06:34):

—God meant it for good.

Ann (06:38):

And it’s so interesting too, because I’m thinking of myself as Kim, as a mom. It’d be so easy to retrace of that group of people who started questioning your parenting with your oldest daughter and how it affected your youngest daughter. And so it’d be so easy just to cast blame. These people are the ones that hurt my daughter. And some of us in society, in culture, in the church, can’t get out of that blame game where it’s their fault. How do we get from “It’s their fault” to “God, you’re with me. You’re intending it for good”? Romans 8:28. You work all things together for good. How do you get from that point if somebody’s just stuck or wounded from the church or have just been betrayed so horribly? How do they get from there to what you experienced and what you’re saying Joseph experienced?

Dave H. (07:43):

We have to look together at the cross because at the center of our faith, because at the center of our challenge in those moments is that there is a great injustice that plagues me and that will not allow me to move forward and that this injustice must be addressed. I have been sinned against. And we’re not disputing that, but if you’re asking what helped me—

Ann (08:11):

Yeah.

Dave:

It was to recognize that at the center of the Christian faith, that the faith I say that I hold lies the greatest injustice in the history of the world where He who knew no sin was treated as the worst of sinners. That the spotless lamb of God who’d never sinned one moment of one day of His life received the wrath of God as a substitute for me in all of my sins and I deserved it. I deserved that crucifixion. He took it on my behalf and then He turned around and gave me, imputed to me His righteousness so that when God looks at me, He no longer sees me in my sins and in my lying, my longings, my lust, whatever it might be, He sees the perfect righteousness of Christ dripping off of me. That’s what elicits His well done, good and faithful servants, why He can move towards us in all things.

(09:11):

But the thing is, that greatest injustice in the history of the world happened by the intentional will of God and happened for the greatest good for us. So when Christ was slain, we meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And marriage exists in part to remind each other of that reality. And that’s what Kim and I try to do for each other, is to remind each other of the gospel, particularly when the memories of these things can become oppressive. And I am a melancholic type already.

(09:54):

And so I’m never far from that door. The introduction of Clay Pot Conspiracy is me sitting outside while I’m descending down into the pit and I’m describing the descent and I’m describing what I’m seeing and then I’m describing what it is that pulls me out of the pit. That experience is not like, “Oh, I had that experience happen a couple times.” That’s like a monthly thing that I have to deal with. But I’m so grateful to God that I have a wife who understands the gospel and can point me to the providence of God and remind me that because of what Christ did, I am the object of God’s goodness. I’m not what’s been done to me. I’m not the ways that I’ve been sinned against. I’m the object of God’s goodness.

Dave (10:44):

Is it like Kim’s the eighth wonder?

Dave H. (10:47):

Yes. Well, I’d move her up.

Dave (10:50):

Yeah.

Dave H. (10:51):

Yeah, I’d move her up if I was going to put her as a wonder.

Dave (10:53):

She’s definitely in the top three, huh?

Dave H.:

Yeah.

Dave:

Hey, walk us through the wonders. I mean, you have in a sense, but just briefly articulate each one.

Dave H. (11:02):

Yes, I would love to do that. So wonder number one is store treasure in clay. We talked on that is the treasure being the gospel and the clay being our bodies and our souls. So store treasure in clay. Wonder number two is make death, produce life. And that’s again, 2 Corinthians 4. It’s how God uses death to produce life. That’s at the center of the crucifixion resurrection matrix as well. Number three is let repentance stoke resilience. Number four is learn love when the church wounds you.

Ann (11:43):

You have a couple quotes in that chapter that I was like, “Wow, these are so good.” Any discussion of church imperfections must start with a personal mirror and we’ve talked about that. And also pastoring is where an imperfect person leads imperfect people in an imperfect church to reach an imperfect world.

Dave H. (12:04):

Yes.

Ann (12:04):

That’s such a good reminder. We’re all flawed. We all have imperfections and that’s how we love the church with all of the wounds.

Dave H. (12:15):

Yeah. I mean, part of the challenge, it’s the beauty and the challenge that we experience is that we join good churches, we experience community for the first time preaching, transformation, and you feel like you’re almost touching heaven.

(12:30):

And it elevates your expectations for what relationships should be, for what church should be, for what leaders should be. It’s almost like an over-realized eschatology. We feel like we—basically, we’re bringing heaven to earth here. And then when something goes sideways, we have no paradigm to understand that because all we’ve had is this heaven-like experience and we feel defrauded by that. And so part of what we’re trying to do in helping people to grow in Christ is helping them to right size their expectations of the church with the reality of the imperfection, not simply of the leaders and not simply of the community, but just the church itself is—the church has a history of being a pretty messy history and yet God chose His people and He loved His people despite the fact that we were like that.

Luke Middendorf, President of FamilyLife (13:30):

Hi friends. I’m Luke Middendorf, President of FamilyLife, and I’m glad you’re here for FamilyLife Today. Wherever you are today, we’re glad you found us. Through this program, events like the Weekend to Remember and a growing network of local guides building into families every day, God is changing lives around the world. That’s happening because of you. This month, every dollar you give is matched dollar for dollar. Would you give today? Go to FamilyLifeToday.com or call 800-FLToday. Thank you.

Dave (14:09):

You expect the imperfection and the injustice from non-church people. They don’t know better. That’s their sin nature. But when it happens from people that you think, “Oh, they know Jesus.” There’s an expectation you go, “No, wait a minute. This hurts so much worse.”

Dave H. (14:28):

That’s right. That’s right. Yeah.

Ann (14:29):

And I also think it’s a lot like marriage. When you get marriage, you’re like, “This is amazing.” Like, “Look at him. He’s meeting all of my needs and hopes and dreams.”

Dave (14:38):

It lasts about two hours.

Ann (14:38):

No, it can last longer than that. And that happens at the church too. This is incredible. I feel like I’m touching heaven. This is a piece of heaven. But then you hear like, oh wait, what happened? Somebody sinned and fell and you see the flaws of the body too.

Dave H. (14:55):

Yes.

Ann (14:56):

And it doesn’t mean the church is necessarily broken or marriage, the institution of marriage is broken. We’re just all broken.

Dave H. (15:02):

That’s right. And so part of what we’re saying here is that resilience doesn’t come by ignoring that. Resilience doesn’t come from rewriting the past or sanitizing the past from the reach of our sin. Resilience comes when we honestly acknowledge not only the failings of the church, but we examine our role in those failings as well. We paint ourselves into the picture. And even as we’re doing that, we’re resisting both cynicism on one side and idealism on the other side. And we’re trying to live in the reality of being people that are broken, desperately need the gospel each and every day, but are also being renewed day by day. I think what you were saying, Dave, is that the trap of ministry is thinking that your greatest challenges, the betrayals, the opposition, is going to come from the world. And that may be true in times of persecution and depending upon what country you live in, it is true.

(16:07):

But in the West, particularly in the United States, the church for leaders is most often the cross upon which we must consent to be impaled.

Ann (16:19):

Best friends.

Dave H. (16:20):

And that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. And most of the greatest heartaches, like when I think about me, most of the greatest heartaches over the last 40 years of ministry has not come at the hands of unbelievers. And so just being able to wrap your brain around that, because all along we were kind of aiming our game at the world, didn’t expect the church to become the source of that kind of anxiety and pain. And so you have to kind of rethink that without downgrading the church.

Dave (16:51):

Right. Well, number five is, remember God uses enemies to enlarge your soul.

Dave H. (16:57):

Yes.

Dave (16:57):

What does that mean?

Dave H. (16:59):

God has a plan for everything. And in all the things that God does, he’s always working towards transformation in us. To be attacked and not respond, to be lied about and not respond in kind, to be misunderstood and not feel like you have to defend yourself, to live in those spaces affects and impacts the soul. It deepens and broadens and enlarges the soul.

Ann (17:27):

But you also say it uncovers our idols.

Dave H. (17:30):

It does.

Ann (17:31):

What do you mean by that?

Dave H. (17:32):

Our idols are things that we treasure apart from Christ. And we all have these things like in orbit in our life and they touch down at certain points, and we’ll invest a lot of confidence and trust in them. And oftentimes when we’re under criticism or when we’re being attacked, we begin to see things in our heart that we wouldn’t see if we were outside of attack. For instance, we can see, we were talking earlier about how important it is to us to be right, to be perceived as right. And there’s somebody out there who has the audacity to believe that I’m not right, and that’s driving me crazy. Well, we idolize our leadership or we idolize our rightness or our doing things correctly.

Ann (18:22):

Yeah. And it exposes pride.

Dave H. (18:23):

Certainly does in me.

Dave (18:24):

I love number six. Wonder number six, build strong teams through weak leaders. I highlighted this quote: “All over the world, team cultures are developed so that strengths are celebrated over weaknesses, gifts are elevated over character, and statistical success is equated with ministry faithfulness. Leaders cultivate appetites for fast and famous fruit.” Been there, done that.

Dave H. (18:53):

Yes, me too.

Dave (18:55):

Yeah.

Dave H. (18:55):

Me too.

Dave (18:56):

I mean, you read that and you go, “Oh, that is so wrong.” That is not the heart of Jesus, and we do it and it’s applauded.

Dave H. (19:06):

Yeah, it is. It’s applauded. We’re particularly vulnerable in the West, particularly vulnerable in America. I mean, it maps onto the narrative that is genetically appealing to Americans. We’re successful. We’re raising money. Here are the statistics. These are the numbers. We’re growing. We’re doing what God wants us to do. And it’s not like that can’t be a part of success in God. It’s just that the overwhelming majority of churches throughout history have been like under 90 people. It’s not like that’s surprising God. It’s not like He’s up there saying, “Oh, I thought this was going to work better. I thought I’d be able to grow churches larger than that.” No, churches throughout church history are kind of small and pastors pastor small churches, and that’s pretty much the story of Christian history. And then occasionally you’ve got the breakouts, but those have always been exceptions. And it’s just small congregations doing small things in quiet places, glorifying God and receiving amazing treasure when they go to heaven. So that’s harder for us to wrap our brain around.

Dave (20:19):

Last one, run together the finish well.

Dave H. (20:22):

I think I’m making an appeal in that final chapters to say that this is what life is supposed to be like. This is what ministry is supposed to do. We don’t charge forward alone. We need one another all the way to the end.

Ann (20:38):

I’m not sure how we would’ve done it over the years without those friends that are praying for us, that are alongside us, that know all the dirty details, but continue to love us and encourage us, not cast blame or point out sin in other people, but they can point out the truth about us.

Dave:

Sin in us, yeah.

Ann:

Yeah. And I think that’s been really life changing for us.

Dave H. (21:01):

And that’s where I’d want to say to the listeners, there’s a real temptation in the day we’re living to kind of do Christianity more on your own, or to spend Sunday mornings watching it on TV. But the reason the three of us are able to say what we’re saying is because we’ve believed something about how Christianity is lived in community and that we can’t experience community simply by texting other people. That we believe in the local church, which means we want to be there on Sunday mornings. We’re receiving the preaching of God’s Word. We’re connecting with other people. We’re getting connected into smaller groups so people know us so that they can ask intelligent questions about the reality of our life. We can pray for each other.

Ann (21:50):

I agree with that. And if you’re listening or watching this and you’re not in a local church, find one that they’re preaching the gospel, they’re preaching the Word. When you go, you’re like, “Yeah, I feel like I’m growing here. I’m connecting to some people.” And get to know some people. Don’t just sit and leave, get to know some people.

Dave (22:10):

Yeah, we all need Jesus with skin on.

Ann:

Yes.

Dave H.:

Yes.

Dave:

And that’s clay pots. That’s Jesus with skin on and it’s messy.

Ann (22:16):

It is messy. It’s not going to be perfect.

Dave (22:18):

Yeah. And it’s going to be hard. And you’re going to be tempted to stay, I’m going to step out of this community. They’re not treating me the way I should be treated. Well, guess what? You’re part of the problem. I’m part of the problem. I don’t want to admit that, but it’s—

Ann:

We all are.

Dave:

It’s true.

Ann (22:32):

This has been so good.

Dave (22:33):

Yeah, Dave, thank you.

Ann (22:34):

Thank you.

Dave H. (22:35):

Oh, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this and to open up my heart a little bit and to talk about the book, which I believe in. And I just so hope that it helps Christians. I so hope that it helps leaders.

Dave (22:48):

Yeah, you can get the book, The Clay Pot Conspiracy. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click on the link in the show notes. And while you’re there, you have some free resources. What are those?

Dave H. (23:00):

Yeah. So I’m offering to anybody that would want it a book titled Rescuing Ambition. Rescuing Ambition is a book I wrote probably 14, 15 years ago. It was during the Young Restless and Reformed where there were versions of humility that were emerging that seemed to militate against godly ambition. And I was beginning to see men and women who were so modest, they aspire to nothing. And I realized for some reason, we have a vision of humility that’s competing against what we need to be able to start businesses, what we need to be able to plant churches, what we need for civilizations to move forward. We need ambition. And so I wanted to think deeply about that. I wanted to have a theology of ambition. And so I wrote this book called Rescuing Ambition. And what I want to do is I want to offer it to anyone listening that would be willing to give me your email address, and I’ll send you a PDF copy of this book.

(24:03):

And then with your email address, I’ll also register you to subscribe to the weekly Tenacious Tuesday Devotional. I release a devotional each Tuesday and then an article, two Tuesdays a month, an article, a more thoughtful article on the third Tuesday of the month, and we would register you for that as well. So free book for your email is the deal, and I hope the book would be of service to you.

Dave (24:28):

That’s great.

Ann (24:28):

Yeah, that’s great.

Dave (24:29):

FamilyLife Today, click the link in the show notes and you can get that. Thanks, Dave.

Dave H. (24:34):

Thank you.

Dave (24:45):

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