Sometimes, my church feels like the triage wing of a hospital.
To my right, I see the pain in a visitor’s eyes as he lamented the stain on the gospel his previous church had become. To my left, a few of our members—who themselves had left a large church over their former pastor’s egregious moral failures—are praying over another couple who only now have come to reckon with those same discoveries. I turn yet again to greet some new faces and discover they’re here because they too can no longer attend their previous church. The leaders have become too corrupt. One of them shared a few thoughts, but it was difficult for him to speak. Two others seemed to communicate nonverbally that if they uttered even a few words, they wouldn’t be able to compose their grief.
I wish I could say I’ve not seen this before. But our congregation is rife with these stories. One couple began attending our church so that they could recover from money-hungry, abusive leaders who had convinced the rest of the congregation to shun this family once they had decided to leave. They lost their friends. Another woman left when she discovered her previous
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