Letters From Leavers

For the last 33 years or so, I’ve been a Christian.

Church life started for me in Junior High, when I started going to a Presbyterian church nearby.

I wanted to find God, and thought church was the place to do it.

I attended that church through High School, was active in Youth Group, I visited a Pentecostal church off and on that my girlfriend went to.

When I enlisted in the Army and was sent to Germany, the only English speaking I could find turned out to be European Mission Headquarters for a major holiness pentecostal denomination. That challenged a good deal, as I had been well conditioned by the first church to believe the sect wasn’t legitimate. However It was very clear to me that this was where God wanted me, so I stayed, examined what I had been (and was being) taught taught very carefully in light of Scripture. Despite how I had been trained, I found much to agree with in both churches.

Beginning at that time and continuing for a long time afterward, God challenged me to think and evaluate, and listen to Him when I was taught doctrine. I adopted the credo, “ Eat the fish and throw away the bones.” You can learn something valuable from nearly anyone. But nearly every one will give you at least something useless (or even harmful) as well.

After military service I was a young father of 3, and very much felt called into ministry. My understanding at that time was that that meant full time professional ministry. I took correspondence courses, went to night classes at a Bible school 50 miles distant, and was mentored by my pastor.

In the years since I have come to expect the miraculous of God. When my son was born he was crippled, with badly twisted feet and legs. I watched as he was instantly healed at age two. I experienced many miracles in the decades since.

In the late 1980’s I was divorced. I became very angry at God, as I had believed things would work out if I had faith and trusted Him. Instead, the plant I worked at shut down, wife divorced me, lost access to the kids because of her actions for a time, and I felt God had lied to me.

I’d done what I was supposed to, I thought, but He failed to keep His promises. I didn’t want to follow such a God, tried to quit.

In the two years that followed God showed me that it was a teaching, and not He that had disappointed me. In many ways during that time He taught me in the midst of my pain and rebellion. I came out of it with a strong concept of both His love and His sovereignty.

When I returned to going to church, it was not long before I was in full time ministry .

I had a new view of church, not as representing God, but as a bunch of people who follow Him together. And I began to notice how isolationist it seemed, with an “us and them” mentality.

I began to re-examine my concept of church, once again comparing everything had accepted as truth and testing it by scripture and by its fruit.

After about 10 years of this, I’ve concluded that “Church” as we’ve known it doesn’t work:

It doesn’t effectively bring people to a life-changing God; at least the statistics show church folks to be involved in similar proportions to the unchurched in all the vices: Porn, adultery, divorce, abuse… It’s not only not effectively acting as an agent of change in the world and culture, it’s not changing those that comprise its members.

It’s failing to affect the culture; instead of tuning the world upside down as the early Jesus followers did, it seems that the opposite is true and the world turns the church.

I’ve also concluded that to be more effective, we need to stop making converts and start bringing a loving God to people.

Jesus didn’t lead the woman caught in a sinners prayer; He forgave her and treated her with gentleness & acceptance.

He didn’t preach at the cripple whose friends lowered him through the roof.He healed the paralyzed man on the basis of his friends’ faith, and instead of trying to make a convert, told him to pick up his pallet and leave.

He didn’t try to get everyone to follow Him. He hid truth in parables, lest certain ones hear and repent, and actively discouraged some from following Him.

I’ve noticed more people get healed when I pray for them in shops or at work than in church.

That Bread is for the hungry, and Jesus took the bread to people where they were instead of trying to get them to come to the Temple to eat.

My wife (I remarried) and I are leaving traditional church. We invite folks over to the house to get to know us, not to evangelize them, but to know them. And to be known. We have a regular get together at our home, as well.