Book Review: Sighing on Sunday, by Megan Hill

Megan Hill, Sighing on Sunday. P&R, 2024. 102 pages.

I still recall the day my mom told me we were leaving our church. My seven-year-old mind swirled with implications I couldn’t fully comprehend. Why would we leave friends and adults we loved and trusted, the church routines that had been part of our life for as long as I could remember?

This was not the end of the church hurt I would experience. Because we live in a fallen world, the best churches contain the germ of Adam’s sin sickness in members, elders, deacons, friends, family, and ourselves. Yet God has promised, with Christ as the sure Cornerstone, to build his church out of these very stones. Megan Hill’s book Sighing on Sunday offers tender, thorough, and careful counsel to those experiencing the hurt that all too often accompanies church life. Drawing heavily on Scripture, Hill guides us in applying its principles to our individual experiences.

Solace for Wounds

The meditations in this book walk through six sections:

1. What Is Happening?
2. Why Is Church So Hard?
3. Why Should I Trust God When Church Hurts?
4. What Can I Do?
5. Why Should I Keep Showing Up?
6. What Have Others Done in My Situation?

Each day opens with a short meditation on a specific aspect of church life and then follows with the practical applications of reading a passage of Scripture, reflection, and prayer. These forty days offer the opportunity to acknowledge and grieve real pain, to apply the breadth of Scripture to your situation, and to habitually and honestly confide before the throne of grace. Learning to put current situations in biblical terms is a skill in which you will find yourself gently coached throughout this book.

From the opening pages, it’s evident that Hill has a well-pounded path of church hurt. This isn’t because she packs her book full of anecdotes and stories—she doesn’t—but because of the nuance and clarity throughout. Church life is rarely black and white, and Hill honors that tension. If what you’re looking for is a guest at your pity party, Hill is not your girl. If, however, you are looking for truth to feed and orient your mind, this book will offer tender balm for your soul.

Like any good counselor, Hill is neither presumptive nor timid. She doesn’t downplay real hurt, and she doesn’t write esoterically. She is biblical, concrete, and confident in Christ’s love and plan for his church. A pastor’s daughter who is now a pastor’s wife, she has found solace for her wounds and rest in Christ and his words of life. The reader is left certain that she has a well-worn Bible and wants you to have one, too. Her book exemplifies James’s comment that “the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere” (Jas. 3:17).

Not Unique or Alone

If you’ve walked through church hurt, it’s easy to feel alone and unique. After all, the details of your situation are specific and complex. But “[the] hard things that are happening to you have happened to God’s people before you, and just as God was faithful to them, he will be faithful to you,” Hill gently reminds (1). The living and active Word of God speaks to every situation faced by God’s people. Wisdom is rightly applying its principles to your specific scenario. “I may not know the specifics of your hard church story,” Hill writes, “but I do know where to get help. Come and see” (xiii).

Hill lists four main reasons for church hurt: “the fall’s effects, Satan’s schemes, human weakness, and human sin” (17). She also comments on the value of distinguishing between hard situations that have been “deliberately orchestrated” and others that are simply the result of living in a fallen world (17).

Conversely, experiencing a hard church circumstance doesn’t give us a pass. Since we’re also sinners, we can be not only victims but contributors. “Whenever the church is in trouble, we should examine our hearts and see if there is any transgression we ought to confess to the Lord,” Hill writes (43).

Satan is ready to arm us with pride and self-righteousness against the grace of God. When we are hurt, our self-reliant hearts want to run from the very means of grace God provides in the church, and we cannot afford to succumb to this temptation (53). God designed the church as the best means for his people’s healing and renewal, and we must fight to believe that truth when our situation seems to contradict it.

What Is Our Hope?

In all hurt, our hope lies in the God who doesn’t leave us to experience the consequences of sin alone—our own or others’. “The Lord’s love for his church is greater than we can imagine,” writes Hill. “The One who loved his church so much that he died for her (Eph. 5:25–27) will not abandon us now” (36). One day, every wrong done against us will either be judged or covered by the same blood that we claim for our own sins.

Jesus, the great Lover of the church, was himself despised and rejected by those he came to save (John 1:11; Isa. 53:3). Hill reminds us, “If he is powerful enough to deliver souls from eternal death, he is powerful in whatever situation your church faces today” (32). Throughout the book, Hill draws on a rich variety of biblical examples about the Lord’s dealings with his people. She doesn’t just throw around a few psalms of lament, but explores the relational conflict, hurt, and healing throughout redemptive history, including Paul, David, Anna, the Philippians, the returned exiles, Hannah, and Jesus.

Loving the Bride

Hill loves Christ’s church and wants to help you love her too, despite all her imperfection and sin. Though all have experienced the effects of Adam’s sin, our consoling hope is not for a perfect earthly community but for Christ’s coming. We raise our voices in lament with a world not yet made new, but we must not forget that it will in fact be made new. Christ is purifying his bride, and on that great day, he will present her faultless, with no wrinkle or stain. Oh, what a day that will be!

Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Eph. 5:25–27)