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Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Biblical fellowship
At the outset, I want to ask that if you know me in real life, and you know the congregation(s) of which I'm speaking... please keep this post to yourself. Thank you.
We've left churches in the past. I left the Methodist church, where I grew up, at the age of eighteen when I accepted Christ and knew that the place I'd been going most Sundays since birth was not going to feed a healthy personal relationship with Him. My husband and I left a group we loved when we were told by the leadership there that we had to, because we wouldn't cease fellowship with a brother who had angered said leadership. We left a home fellowship when it whittled down gradually to only two families; we left a small Baptist congregation because the pastor and his wife (dear brethren and friends of ours to this day) started saying things like "Well, we know what the Bible teaches, but..."
We've been in our current congregation for six years. That's the longest we've been anywhere, except for my many years as a socially awkward little Methodist. We have put up with minor differences in those six years, knowing that since local congregations are made up of human beings who are sinful, there will never be a perfect one no matter how hard we look. We've stayed at times simply because we are relatively certain that our chosen congregation is as close to perfectly Biblical as we'll be able to get in our local area, where selection is rather limited. We already drive fifteen miles (out of town, where we live) to meet with these people whom we love, where our kids have friends and so do we. So even thinking about thinking about leaving is terrifying in a way, and thoroughly disheartening in, well, in every way. But how many instances do we need of leadership putting aside the Bible to follow the dictates of some other book or idea -- even when a good portion of the men in leadership disagree with the action -- before we decide that we have found yet another place where we can't in good conscience sit under this kind of leadership?
Ack. I guess I'm just thinking out loud here.
