For Churches
Your congregation already has this in it.
The question is not whether domestic violence is present in your church. It is whether anyone in leadership would recognize it, and what would happen next if they did.
If you are in danger right now, call 911.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is free and available at any hour: 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.
Please note that this website is not a confidential service, and that internet activity on a shared device can be seen by others.
The gap
Good intentions are not a plan.
Churches want to help. What most lack is preparation. Research on congregational response has consistently found that a large share of churches have no plan at all for helping someone experiencing abuse, that many pastors do not know whether anyone in their congregation has been affected, and that only a minority refer people to professional domestic violence services.
The cost of that gap is not abstract. Well-meaning counsel offered without training can send a person back into danger. And when a church responds well, survivors say it mattered — the response itself becomes part of how they get out.
The training
What we teach
Our training is built and delivered by Shauna Green, who works professionally in this field, including with offenders. That vantage point matters: it means the training does not stop at sympathy for victims but teaches leaders to see the behavior that produces them.
- What abuse actually is. Coercive control, patterns of behavior over time, and why the common picture of abuse as isolated physical incidents causes churches to miss it.
- Recognizing it from both sides. What warning signs look like in a person being harmed, and what they look like in a person doing harm — including the ways an offender presents inside a church community.
- Responding without making it worse. What to say and what not to say, the specific counsel that increases danger, confidentiality, and safety considerations at the moment someone discloses.
- Knowing your limits and your referrals. How a church works alongside advocates, shelters, and law enforcement rather than in place of them.
Our posture
We are not here to indict the church.
We are here to equip it. Most churches that respond poorly to abuse do so because no one ever taught them, not because they do not care. Ezer Ministries serves across the breadth of the Christian witness and does not adopt any single denominational tradition.
We also work alongside the professional domestic violence system rather than substituting for it. A trained church is a better referral partner, not a replacement advocate.
Now booking
Bring this to your church this fall.
We are scheduling our first church trainings now and looking for congregations to be among the first. We are based in Montana, we travel regularly, and some of this material works well remotely. Tell us about your church and we will follow up with dates and format.