I've been thinking a lot the last few days about those who have left the Church in the last few years. Some have held on to Jesus, but have lost all confidence in the institutional Church in America (or at least within driving distance of their homes). Some have left the Christian faith entirely. I know and love people in both of these categories. There are a multitude of reasons - many, many of them valid.
I grieve for the loss, both in the vast numbers and in all the individual lives. For we have lost much in the gifts and love of those that are now gone. We are a Body and losing any part of us should be painful. We should feel gaping wounds. We should weep and mourn, looking to ways we were and are complicit in discouragement and pain so great they felt no other option than leaving. Instead we too often look for ways to lay the blame "out there" and sooth our consciences with our tidy, buttoned-down answers.
I want desperately for those I love that have walked away to see Jesus in our Churches. Not the Americanized version of Jesus. Not Republicans. Not Democrats. Not culture wars. Not liberals or progressives or conservatives.
It is not our perfectly laid out theologies, not our valiantly fought culture wars that will bring them back or prevent others from leaving. Not our perfectly planned and aimed shaming or shouting. Not our power moves or our cancelling. Ultimately, it will be our repentance from all the ways we have misrepresented Jesus.
Jesus. For it is His love that compels, it is His kindness that leads.
It is Jesus.
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