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When he started questioning the church's policies, financial and otherwise, the former lay leader says his "golfing buddy" relationship with the pastor quickly deteriorated.

E-mails slowed, although each time he asked the pastor if there was a problem, he was assured there wasn't.

"I kept saying, 'Are we OK?'" the man recalls, seated around a coffee table with a half dozen others, most of whom are slowly nodding their heads.

Soon, the man just stopped showing up for services.

A woman sipping coffee nearby is also one of them, a so-called former "walking wounded church worker," who after bad experiences left her congregation, choosing to stay home on Sunday mornings.

She had felt "so righteous" being angry at her pastor, she tells the group.

"I felt he should have known I was hurting," she says, pointing out that she had previously sought counseling for a personal situation. "I never considered the fact he was a human being ... until I finally approached him and he said, 'I had no idea.'"

This gathering isn't a gripe or gossip session. Instead, the group has come together to plan a free three-week recovery workshop for others who have been wounded by bad church experiences.

"If you live in your experiences, you will never heal," says Carol Peastrel, the conference's presenter, who initially gathered information to help herself after a bad situation. She soon realized there were others who had gone through the same thing and hadn't been able to recover.

The year-old Presbyterian Community of Joy church in High Point will host the three weekly sessions. A man called recently after seeing a flier. He wanted more information and couldn't hang up without sharing his story with church pastor Ray Mims.

A longtime member of a church, the man had a simple request when his mother grew ill, Mims says. He asked for prayer and a visit from the care team to pray with his mother.

"No one called him," Mims says. "No one visited his mother. He was hurt that his church family didn't step forward. She died a week later."

Those gathered here, most of whom do not want to be identified or bring unwanted attention to former congregations, say it's easy to say, "Just get over it."

The reality is it's not as easy to walk away from a place of spiritual worship as it is to, say, quit a job.

"Church should be a place of healing," another woman says. "When you are hurt 'in his name,' it can be devastating."

The focus of the sessions includes acknowledgement: "They leave the church; nobody comes after them," Peastrel says. "They've never had anyone acknowledge their pain."

Another focus is on forgiveness, "a place most people don't want to go because it requires something of you," Peastrel says. "It's easier to hold a grudge."

The last session focuses on getting back into the ministry.

"The church is like any other human institution. It has sin and selfishness," Mims says, "but it also has love and caring people, and our goal is to make that (aspect) stronger than anything else."

Contact Nancy H. McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nmclaughlin@news-record.com