Posted by darryl on July 18, 2012
This post by Frank Turk from a few years ago is really good, and well worth digesting if you are considering leaving your church. Here is an extract
Listen: I have advice for you who are in these [something about this church is not right] situations which you are not going to like, and you are going to think that I have somehow gone soft when you hear it – but I am actually telling you how to buck up.
My advice is this: God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love—like Christ in everything….
See: the example Christ gives us is to die to sin and to do this for the sake of others. If our personal holiness is a matter of the highest importance, I think it turns out that it’s not in order to make ourselves into moral paragons: it is to make ourselves into offering poured out for the Lord
His focus is that we are not there to be served but to serve.
The comments are also very good. There are people who are in the process of leaving church who he interacts with. This is very helpful. This extract of one persons comments in particular stood out to me:
In the wake of that exodus I was forced to re-examine exactly why I attended church – and it turned out that I had been been coming there to be served, and not to serve. I hadn’t been loving people, I had been loving the attention that was given to me, and I found myself loving only those who gave it. When they left, I found I had no love for anyone else – and this awful truth jarred me deep down where it counts.
It isn’t a long read, but well worth it. Read it here. There is a followup post also worth reading here and another here.
