I learned early on in life that Christ’s reputation on earth could be marred in a moment by sinful human leadership. When I was seven, a deacon in my church committed adultery. Then came the bearing of false witness, shifting theology, and still more sin covered up by church leaders. All this resulted in a church split.
Ten years later, my pastor converted to Catholicism. Several years after that, the autonomous leadership of his successor led the entire congregation to disintegrate.
While attending Bible college, I joined a healthy church and I thrived as I saw imperfect Christians living in harmony under the Word of God. For the first time, I felt as if I was genuinely seeing God at work among his body here on earth. My husband and I met and married, then moved back to Washington State where I’d grown up—fearing we’d never again find a church like the ones we’d loved and left. We packed water for the proverbial desert experience.
As we walked through the doors of various new churches, struck up conversations with believers, and sat under preaching from different teachers, we wrestled with the line between preference and belief, between well-meaning mediocrity and
To continue...read the full-length post originally published on this site.
