Member-only story
To the Church: How to Offend a Christian the Right Way
Recently, my husband and I made an important decision: we chose to leave our church of the past three years. Let’s call it the Bible Church. Though the choice had been staring us down for about fourteen months, it took us a long time to make the decision, because we have never had to do that before.
When we met, I hadn’t found a church yet, and my husband was going to the Bible Church. When I attended, I enjoyed it, so we decided to make it our home church. We liked the pastor and the format of the services.
Why We Left
We tried for three years to get involved in Bible Church. No small groups were in our age group and area, though we lived within walking distance of the church. A pastor suggested other options, so we tried to attend a young-marrieds gathering and felt so ostracized we didn’t go back. We volunteered in the kid’s ministry and became friends with the organizer, but not with any other members.
Other than having no friends in the church, my husband and I had multiple reasons for leaving. The church hadn’t spiritually fed us in a long time. The pastor we liked preached more and more sermons that didn’t relate to the verse indicated.
The sermon that spurred the first “maybe we should leave” conversation was about slavery. The head…
