By Ryan Johnson, special to the Baptist Message
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a pair of articles about how to share the Gospel with people who have experienced trauma.
NEW ORLEANS (LBM) — Obedience to the Great Commission requires churches to be ready for the complex realities of ministry, including the kinds of situations where trauma has fractured trust, distorted identity, and left people wary of both God and others.
Preparation for these situations is the focus of a new field known as trauma-informed evangelism, which equips believers with strategies to respond with grace, truth, and intentional relationships, as they invite those who have experienced trauma to find healing in Christ through spiritual formation, conversion, and discipleship.
COMMON SCENARIOS
It’s Wednesday night, and a 9-year-old first-time guest hits another child in line for snacks. You’re told he has “anger issues.” Will you let him return next Wednesday?
A new visitor to your women’s group won’t make eye contact during the Bible lesson on forgiveness. Will anyone notice her detachment, or will they dismiss her as being introverted?
A teenage boy in the youth group constantly jokes, derails conversations, and never opens up. Will you lash out in annoyance at his constant humor or attribute it to immaturity?
A woman walks into your church for the first time after leaving an abusive partner. She doesn’t sit during the service—she stands near the back, ready to flee if anyone raises a voice. Will any of the women welcome her, or will everyone eye her suspiciously?
TRAUMATIZED TO TRUSTING
Sadly, these kinds of behaviors could be signs of trauma.
Evidence reveals that in the U.S. 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually victimized by their 18th birthdays. Meanwhile, according to research from Tulane University, 200,000 adults experienced domestic violence in Louisiana in 2023. In both cases, victims face betrayal that forces them into isolation.
According to the Scripture, God has hardwired us for relationships. Consequently, betrayal in relationships can cause immense pain and resistance to trusting others.
Importantly, because of our relational nature, healing does not happen in isolation.
Indeed, the early church modeled habitual biblical community, leading the writer to the Hebrews to remind his readers not to forsake the gathering of the saints (Acts 2:42-25; Heb. 10:24-25).
If done right, trauma-informed evangelism expresses the Gospel as an invitation into a healing community and challenges the church to cultivate what Rosaria Butterfield calls “radically ordinary hospitality,” yet explicitly evangelistic. In her book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key, she writes, “Radically ordinary hospitality is this: using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers neighbors, and neighbors family of God.”
You’ve heard the old axiom, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Trauma-informed soul-winning counseling begins with being “swift to hear, slow to speak” (James 1:19) so that everyone, even those persons who have withdrawn into the darkest, most wounded places, can hear the Gospel and experience “the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).
At its core, trauma-informed evangelism sees biblical truth confirmed in modern neuroscience research. However, while many modern ideologies create victims that the church needs to be ready to receive, trauma-informed evangelism does not adapt the Gospel to the culture. Instead, it calls the church to embrace the timeless truths of God’s design to help victims of culture find healing as members of God’s family.
In the second article on trauma-informed care, I will share specific steps a counselor and a congregation must take to be ready to respond when traumatized individuals step forward in worship, Bible study, times of ministry, or evangelistic outreach.
Ryan Johnson is a husband, father, foster/adoptive parent, Trust-Based Relational Intervention practitioner, non-profit leader. He serves as a pastor in North Alabama and is a PhD student with New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
