Shepherding Through Sorrow: 4 Ways Lament Blesses the Church

The biblical practice of lament is fairly uncommon in our modern evangelical world. Although it is growing more common to have a corporate confession of sin in a worship gathering, congregants are rarely brought face to face with true lament.

Perhaps part of the reason for this strange absence of lament comes from our love for the gospel and our (rightful) joyful response to it. Christ has accomplished so much for us, and there is glorious hope and power available to us through the Holy Spirit, so why should we take time in our gatherings to lament? To some, lament feels at odds with the goodness of the gospel.

Another reason is that most churches tend to orbit around a limited set of emotions in their musical worship repertoire—joy, triumph, celebration—and lament is not high on the list.

There is also a sense that corporate worship is intended to help us leave behind the troubles of the world and to focus on God. We think that we should come to gaze upon Christ and all that He has done, which leads us to see that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18, NASB).

In other words, leaders may feel that the people come to be encouraged and built up, not brought down by sadness and anguish.

However, as true as some of these reasons may be, lament is in the Scriptures because God knows we need it. As I wrote in a previous article, “Lament helps us acknowledge our suffering, to not pretend or deny our plight, but then casts our eyes beyond our pain to our eternal hope and reward.” Lament is needed because this world is still groaning—it is longing for the day of its redemption and renewal—and as pastors, our responsibility is to help shepherd our people as long as they abide in this mortal frame.

Therefore, it is critical that pastors and worship leaders include regular times or songs of lament in their gatherings, because it is a way we love and care for our people.

With that in mind, here are 4 ways lament is a blessing to the church:

1. It Edifies Those Dealing With Grief, Loss, and Pain

Corporate worship is not intended to simply dispel sadness and griefs with joyful singing. Rather, it is intended to help people see how the truth of God’s Word and the rule of Christ’s Kingdom ultimately address the real-life pains and griefs we experience. To lament, after all, is to journey through our feelings with authenticity and dialogue with God, but then to allow the truth of God to bring hope and perspective to our brokenness.

The reality is that there are many people in our congregations going through griefs and challenging life circumstances on any given Sunday, and they need shepherding just as much as the joyful, positive Christians. Instead of treating grief and sadness like annoying impositions, as minor emotions that we must acknowledge but quickly move past, we should see these emotions as opportunities to pastor people into theological reflection and meditation on deep truths.

To the grieving widow who is facing decades of life without her beloved, surely we can offer more than, “God is worthy of your worship, so be joyful.” She would be better served by the truth that Jesus wept over death, experienced it himself, and can empathize with her. Not only that, but he has given her his Spirit to strengthen her with all she needs to face the future. This then promotes authentic worship in the midst of the pain.

People are edified when they are met where they actually are, and then led to the depths of the heart of Christ’s love for them.

2. It Leads Shallow People Into Deeper Waters

As a pastor, I have known many people who are fairly inoculated from experiencing a wide emotional spectrum. Some use shallow sentiments to push back the real emotions they are experiencing but are uncomfortable with; others present as joyful people to create the illusion that they are emotionally unmoved by life’s hard circumstances, which they perceive as “maturity”; while others simply are not aware of the deep emotions they experience because they have been taught to suppress or deny them.

The beautiful thing about congregational singing is that we can lead people through a plethora of different theological concepts and emotions that they might not ever choose to visit themselves. Such people may curate their playlists so that they never encounter songs of lament, but wise worship leaders can guide them to places they would normally not go.

There are many people in our churches who simply live their lives without much thought or feeling, and they struggle to sympathize or show compassion to others who experience their emotions more deeply. We can love those people by modeling for them, through the Scriptures, how to access and understand a broader range of emotions and equip them to become people who can “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15, ESV).

3. It Prepares People for the Hardships and Griefs of Life

If you haven’t experienced serious hardships or griefs in your life yet, I can promise you one thing—you will. If you aren’t suffering now, you are going to suffer in the future. Death, illness, loss, betrayal—all of these things are common in a sinful and fallen world. People who have not experienced these things yet will benefit from being taught in advance how to process and pass through the valleys of this life.

Several years ago, when my wife and I lost our first baby, we realized that we had not been adequately taught how to process grief and suffering. Lament became very real to us in that season and enabled us to not only process that loss but also further trials that came later.

Lament shows us the path that we must walk when those griefs come for us. Lament reinforces that we should not “be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Pet. 4:12). We have a pastoral obligation to not only teach people that the fiery trial is coming, but also to prepare them for it. Lament does that. It tells people not only that hardship will come, but how to navigate life when the dark clouds of suffering gather overhead.

4. It Teaches Visitors that Church is for Real People

Although the Christian gathering is primarily intended for the worship of God and the building up and encouragement of his people (Heb. 10:25; 1 Cor. 14:26; 1 Pet. 2:5), often there will be unbelievers who find their way into our worship services. When that happens, our prayer is that our worship would be so Spirit-filled and powerful that, in the words of 1 Corinthians 14:25, “falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.” One way that we can aid in that is helping unbelievers see that Christians look at the world with both hope and realism.

Christians are not people whose heads live in the clouds and are ambivalent to the suffering around them. We have an eternal perspective that allows us to face head-on the trials of life—miscarriages, cancer, abuse, neglect—and yet we believe that “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). When we live this out, unbelievers see that Christians have a firm hope that gives them stability in the storm, because their King has control over the winds and the waves.

Christianity is not simply a coping mechanism that helps people face death. It contains the metanarrative for all human history and is the revelation that the kindness and love of God our Saviour has appeared in the person of Jesus Christ (Titus 3:4). This God understands our sin, our brokenness, the fallenness of this world, and offers help to his people as sojourners in this world. This means that church is for real people dealing with real problems. Unbelievers will be helped to see this when the church practices and models lament.

Take Heart

There are others reasons, I am sure, why including regular times of lament in our gatherings is loving to the church, but there is one ultimate and supremely important reason: Jesus said this to us, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Jesus longs for His people to have peace in this life!

He tells us that tribulation will come, yes, but he also tells us that we can have peace and take heart because he has overcome the world with all of its sorrows. This statement is a kind of microcosm of lament—sorrows come, we acknowledge the pain, encounter God in the midst of it, and then we experience peace as we are reminded that God has overcome.

May our gatherings produce Christians who are stable in trials, compassionate and sympathetic towards those who are suffering, and trusting in the God who has overcome the world.