I.
There's a specific type of upholstered chair that triggers childhood memories for me. The chairs at my first home church were blue, faded, and scratchy. The hymnal pockets on the backs were stretched out—some of them ripped open—from years of being stuffed with more than they were intended for. For some reason, I have more specific memories from sitting with other people while my parents were in the choir than I do from actual services. Depending on who it was, I would get to read books, color, or be told to fold my hands in my lap and look up front. The chairs matched the hymnals, the aisle runners, and the carpeted platform. After the service, I would spend a few minutes helping stack the hymnals onto carts before it was too hard to resist joining the other groups of kids playing in all the space we now had. The chairs were stacked, the platform broken down, and the choir loft turned back into bleachers. The sanctuary was now a Christian school gymnasium; I would be back the next afternoon for P.E.
We used the same songbooks and similar chairs at nursing home services. I accompanied my dad to preach there most Sundays because I loved being the center of attention (but also because we'd stop for snacks at the Texaco across the street).
The church and school were on a large wooded property in north Georgia that was especially gorgeous in the Fall. Sometimes teachers would motivate us with lunch outside, where we'd take a short hike to a deck in the woods to eat and play. We'd have run of the whole property during dinner-on-the-grounds Sundays, and it felt a little magical to have so many good places for hide and seek.
The “building fund” had been a thing for as long as I could remember. We had nice school facilities, but not a dedicated worship center/auditorium. They finalized plans and set a construction start date shortly before we moved away.
When my dad began ministry on the side, we got to know all kinds of churches. I've been to more than a few with nearly identical features: floor to ceiling wood paneling, center aisle leading to a cross-or mural-adorned baptistery, carpet in one of only three different shades of red. Missionary letters and sometimes international flags lined entire hallways. We attended one of these regularly while my dad was a pastoral candidate. It was a 3-hour drive from home, so we would stay with a host family on Sunday afternoons and attend the evening services.
Once, as I followed the boys outside, one of them stopped and said, “Wait. You're going to play kickball in a dress?” “Yes?” I said, confused as to why this was an issue. “Shouldn't you go gird up your loins or something?” I went back in to ask the adults what this meant and couldn't understand why they laughed so hard.
We made our way to Texas, and it was comforting that the churches looked and smelled familiar. Adjusting to a new school was hard, but our congregation treated us like family immediately. No one left when the services were over, we would all just inch our way to the parking lot as a group. Finally, someone would take charge and decide if we were going to eat at Las Flores, Casa Ole, or Joe's BBQ, and just about the whole congregation would go. Kids my age were few, but that gave me opportunities to learn how to teach and minister to the younger ones. I don't know at what point I realized that was a calling, but I've certainly never doubted that it's what I'm meant to do.
I will refrain from excessive bragging about my pk credentials, but just know that I've been through all the clubs and earned all the badges, pins, patches, and scripture memory trophies. I've done so many different iterations of a nautical-themed VBS that I could come up with an elaborate pirate costume in about a 3-minute search of my closet. It's safe to say that I have been thoroughly churched. My teenage years were marked with a lot of change and instability...but I have always been loved. Maybe not in ways I perceived at the time, and maybe not in the ways I needed to be loved at times; but from my current perspective, I know that it was there.
Somewhere along the way, someone introduced me to God. They showed me who He was, what He said, what stories people had about Him. They pointed out their personal revelations, saying, “Look! That is God, right there!” They shaped the way I perceive every single thing. They showed me His voice through not only scripture, but also their words and their actions, so that I could eventually recognize it on my own.
Because of my environments—the ones I chose and the ones I didn't—this has been repeated countless times throughout my life.
It was both intentional and accidental. Of all the things I've learned, each person who taught me can probably say both “I always hoped ___” and “I never meant ____”. There are ways I see the world that I will never be able to separate from myself.
Some voices were louder than others. Some voices were so close to God's that I fell for the counterfeit. Some things I wanted so badly to be from Him, I convinced myself my own voice was His. Things naturally get more complicated as you get older, so it wasn't always clear who was who.
There was a long time He didn't speak to me at all.
I've written about it before. I found myself unhappy, unloved, in a place I didn't belong. When offered a step-by-step path to remedy those things, I took it. When offered a God who rewarded good deeds with His presence, I made the good deeds a god. Humans can make idols out of any good thing. When I realized I was prone to failure, I assumed I was intrinsically unlovable. I didn't realize I was centering myself in the universe. I thought the problem would always be me.
I didn't know how small and fragile I'd made my version of God. The foundation I'd been building my life on only appeared to be impenetrable. I doubled down on the good deeds and the doctrines and my accepted theology. I gripped them so tightly in my hands, that the more human I was, the more they crumbled. They became dust. There was no god left to hold on to. And if God is love, then my idea of it was so warped to its core, that I could no longer love—or be loved, either. And without love, what reason is there for...anything?
II.
It felt like God didn't speak to me for years, but it was really that I didn't recognize his voice anymore. When other people spoke into my life, I filtered them only through one set of teachings. I didn't trust myself. I was taught not to trust myself. I was so intimate with my own fallibility that I ignored what I knew deep down to be true.
There were glimmers of His presence—usually in my hardest, darkest, most painful moments. But then I would feel guilty that the desperation I felt for Him in those moments was not what I felt in my everyday life (as if turning to God in a crisis is somehow wrong). I would convince myself that I had brought on whatever awful circumstance I was in and didn't deserve to be comforted, by God or anyone else.
Going to church, serving in ministry, studying Scripture, letting your faith influence the lifestyle you lead...all fine things to do, but I saw them mis-prioritized. They became the sum total of who I was. They became the way I accessed God. It was only who I was in relation to others and what they could see, or what I could prove on paper. There was no intimacy with Him.
There was so much shame and fear surrounding every single decision I made. You can go on like this for years, convincing yourself that everything is fine. I did. My husband did. Our marriage did, and we did a really good job of making sure our son felt that way, too.
I just couldn't get past being inherently unworthy of love.
I felt like I could never get things right, and that struggling meant a lack of faith, so I could never be honest or allow anyone else to get too close. I don't think most people have ill intentions, but when someone shares a burden and the response is “Well, we just have to keep praying about it”, it doesn't feel like a kindness. It allows you to distance yourself, satisfied that you've done your duty; rather than being willing to sit in the weeds with the person, and to feel what they're feeling. You don't have to have experienced a path yourself to be willing to walk it with someone else. But that takes honesty, and it allows room for anger, doubts, and unbelief; it requires acceptance of not having answers or being able to fix it. It allows things to be messy and incomplete and clumsily in progress. I only had a few of those people in my life, and it was difficult to drown out the noise.
The gospel is a multifaceted reconciliation story, and there are so many truths to mine from it. I believe that people who are fully known and fully loved are people who can fully know and fully love others like Christ.
The point is not the enormity of your sin. It is the unfathomable, unspeakable depths of your belovedness. Beloved is what you were created to be. It is your inheritance that people can certainly make you blind to; but no one can take it away.
The gospel is a story of God eventually making everything right, but there is so much more to it. This is the perspective I have from the life I’ve lived, and I’m sure that not everyone has experienced it this way. But still: When you focus on just one part of the truth–the sin–and repeat it across pulpits and classrooms and counseling sessions and private conversations, generations of people will believe that it is the only thing that matters. They will ignore the “fear of God” meaning “awe and wonder” and replace it with actual fear.
If you’ve been in an abusive situation or close to someone who has, you’ve already read between the lines: people who think they’re fundamentally unworthy of love and live in a state of fear are easier to control.
III.
At one point, the presence of God was so great, that even its shadow was enough for Moses to come down from the mountain visibly changed. It was so untouchable that a man simply reaching out to steady the ark of the covenant fell dead immediately. It was so unseen that when its message appeared to a limited few people, the words were meticulously documented and preserved for centuries; not just out of dedication to the holy…but also out of family tradition, simply passing down stories from generation to generation.
At one point in history, the presence of God became so human that it was felt as the unease of morning sickness.* It was felt as the strange sensation of tiny kicks and in-utero acrobatics. He traded the mystery of the Divine for the mystery of a new life being formed. God’s presence was felt as the sharp pains of labor, that at their peak seem too difficult to even survive. And then, he appeared. Blood and flesh and screaming lungs and inexplicably sharp fingernails. He was seen: a helpless newborn, completely dependent on humans for every need. His mother may have even seen her own features in his tiny face.
They were expecting a hero to overthrow the government; instant vindication, an immediate end to oppression. They got a newborn baby, which is probably the most human you can be.
As I’ve tried to get to know Jesus better, the moments that stick out to me are all the times we see Him act with a distinct tenderness. I wonder, did He learn this from His earthly parents? So many times he dismisses the rich and religious for the ones who had nothing to offer him. He calls the children over and admonishes us to learn from them. He heals a woman without even touching her, and yet stops to look into her eyes and pay her attention. He defended a woman–not the things that she’d done, but the personhood she deserved. Imagine watching men who were ready to kill you walk away one by one! Yes, he told her, “sin no more”, but first He said, “Neither do I condemn you.”
He knew He would raise Lazarus from the dead, and yet he wept. He grieved. He could have casually walked right up to the tomb, but he took the time to love his friends where they were.
Tenderness is the thing I think of when I try to describe what changed in our marriage. I wrote about it 3 years ago, which means the facts are the same but I’ve had more time to understand it. The long and short of it is that our relationship was an abusive dynamic because neither of us understood what it was like to truly love or be loved. I did not marry Anthony because I loved him, I married him because he made me feel safe. I thought how he treated me was normal, because I didn’t think I deserved any better. I didn’t feel safe in the home I came from, and once I didn’t feel safe in our marriage, I didn’t think it was possible to feel safe anywhere. I wasn’t expecting love, just bare minimum tolerance. That is how I got to the point of deciding to end my life.
It is so hard to think about now that we’ve spent years working and healing; but I didn’t know what kind of relationship I was missing out on.
When my attempts kept getting interrupted, I decided to leave him instead. His reaction to me informing him of my decision was the first step of saving our marriage. No one ever intends to break their vows; it’s a terrible thing. I wanted him to yell and scream and blame me for everything and refute every reason I had, but he just let me go. He listened to everything I said and didn’t argue with a word. He told me to do what I needed to do, but that if I’d stay, he wanted to change. It wasn’t even that I believed he really would, I was just so thrown off by this reaction. I was more honest and shared more of myself than I ever had with anyone. In other words, for the first time, he fully knew me, he still loved me, and even though I was wrong about plenty of things…he just let me be who I was right there.
This was tenderness. It was brand new to me. Being loved like this changed every. single. thing.
—
I could write volumes about it. He changed, I changed, we changed. Drastically. We’ve had low points since then, but we’ve never gone back to that place.
I wrote about this before, too: being fully known and fully loved in such a real way by Anthony enabled me to dare to believe God could also love me like that. That was the turning point of our whole existence.
It was not that I was introduced to a whole new set of doctrines or that I started reaching back to something I was taught as a child. I went asking, seeking, knocking for myself. Each new concept I came to understand about God didn’t actually seem that new. It was like I was discovering things I’d always known. It was like excavating the truth that I had been created to know.
I had found “home” in the truest sense of the word with Anthony. Now I was finding “home” with my faith, too.
I kept being confronted with situations that brought me to the end of myself and forced me to be honest. Birth, death, loss, grief, illness, pain, infertility, loneliness, injustice, abuse. These brought me closer to God not because of the suffering but because they are inescapable human experiences. To be extremely human is to be close to God because human is what he created us to be. We don’t start reflecting him when we have worked to possess Christlike character traits. We reflect him. Period. We were made in his image.
I admit that this is an imperfect understanding of the concept but y’all, I am an imperfect person. This is just where I’m at today and what I feel compelled to share.
IV.
It makes sense when you do this kind of growth that some things no longer fit. You have to make adjustments that allow for new ways of living. You gain a lot and you lose a lot in the process. I would say the good outweighs the bad, but it doesn’t really work like that, does it? You just hold them both at the same time.
I keep trying to write about what it was like to leave our church home. Sometimes it comes out like anger or self-righteousness or inappropriate humor. It’s been more than three years now, and I have finally started to recognize it for what it is: grief. The loss of a person, a relationship, a dream, or a life you thought you would have–are all things you embody in similar ways.
Grief and I are closely acquainted. Unfortunately, that still doesn't make me an expert. I can only be honest about what I know; and what I know is that each time I’ve prepared myself to lose someone, it still surprises me. It is still an unfathomable reality that someone can be so real and so present one second, and gone the next. A person can be on this earth for decade after decade and then just...not. I think we can all agree that the people we love are still with us in a million different ways, but it doesn't make it easier, does it? When a memory surfaces that seems so comforting and real, it's impossible to escape the jarring moment you have to remind yourself of the loss again. Sometimes it physically hurts. Like falling hard enough to get the wind knocked out of you as a kid...your chest burns and for a second it feels like you'll never breathe again. The circumstances that surround losing someone can make it more difficult than others; the times you have to go without closure...but regardless. There are never ending depths and layers to grief and the many ways it changes you no matter how hard you resist. The fact that we can hold all of these things and continue to live each day is an awful and beautiful thing.
I hope part (I) read like a love letter to the churches I was raised in. I could fill pages more of good people who shaped me, who loved me with the love of Christ. I could also fill pages with the ugliest parts: the unchecked abuse I've experienced firsthand in churches, christian schools, homes. Even my most idyllic childhood memories–the places I want to believe were perfect–were also full of human fallibility. Shortly after we moved from Georgia, the pastor's financial misconduct forced the church and school to close the doors there and merge with another one. A 40-year work that at one point boasted 7,900 members—over. The property was sold to the amusement park next door. +
My point is that I have as many reasons to stay as I do to walk away from Christianity entirely.
When I made contact with God personally, it was really hard to hang on to my god on paper. It was certainly more comfortable, but it was so much less real. I now had a relationship that couldn’t be manufactured; mysterious in the same way that you can use a million words and never really explain what it means to love your spouse.
I tried desperately to make staying at the same church work. Anthony’s parents were married there years before he was born. It was the kind of “legacy” I always wanted for my son: moving through life with people you met in the nursery. We had many conversations about it that ultimately resulted in deciding it wasn’t yet time. It was important that neither of us was dragging the other as we worked out our walks with God individually. I thought that continuing to just check the boxes was the right decision for our marriage; but that meant I still had to keep my faith (and myself) hidden. I thought it was an acceptable reason to live a “double life”. I’m talking about choosing between what I knew God wanted from me (my whole self) and idols that have been made of secondary, mis-prioritized preferences. Certain things became harder to ignore.
V.
At the beginning of 2020, I had an early miscarriage that is still difficult to talk about. In fact, I don’t talk about it. I gloss over secondary infertility sometimes as if it is not a huge part of my story. I find it painful to even refer to it as having lost a baby. No matter how much a person can grow, it is comforting to revert back to old, negative habits. I was familiar with guilt, shame, unworthiness, loneliness, and blaming myself for everything; so that’s where I went. I didn’t let God go there with me or anyone else.
–
I had gotten married after my first (and only) year of Bible college, which obviously affected the friends I’d made there. By the time they graduated and stopped coming back in the fall, I had not made very many new connections. It may have been the age gap between me and Anthony/his friends, it may have been the social anxiety I never really grew out of, or it may have been the fact (still true) that I’m a little different. Know that I don’t mean I was not loved or treated kindly. I was, for sure! I just didn’t have much of a circle; and an even smaller one that I regularly saw outside of services. Somewhere in college, I’d gotten the impression that I was supposed to completely forsake the life I’d lived before, so I burned more bridges with older friends than I’m probably even aware of. When it started to feel abnormal, I convinced myself that I was just comparing my life to others.
Before she died, my mother-in-law had asked me to sing at her funeral. I was strangely looking forward to it, as I hadn’t gotten to sing since college. I got a cold the day before and was certainly not at my best. I interpreted this as God humbling me for feeling prideful and I never really asked to sing again. I became very prone to internalizing…everything over the years.
I fought feelings of being an outsider everywhere except for children’s ministry. Children’s ministry is without a doubt where I belong. 100%. I have worked with kids in some capacity since I was a child myself. At this church we had a bus route, then helped in children’s church, then for the last 5 years, Anthony was the elementary superintendent and I taught 5th grade girls. With kids, being different is an asset. I connect with them so much better. At the risk of sounding creepy: adults liking you is great; but when kids like you? It’s one of the best feelings in the world.
–
By the time the darkness of that loss had lifted, the covid shutdown had begun. Do you remember how everyone’s lives felt upside down and confusing and…unprecedented in those early pandemic times? We had made church our whole world and now it felt like we didn’t even have that. Online sermons are important for many reasons! But we all know it is not the same type of community we need. I already felt so disconnected. The time we usually spent at church was now time Anthony and I had to be together and talk. The spiritual conversations were deeper and more frequent. There was less noise, more Jesus’ voice. We both felt the exact same way in different amounts:
How can we possibly stay here?
How can we possibly leave?
VI.
I feel uncomfortable saying that the Holy Spirit led us away from our church in the same way I feel uncomfortable saying that I’ve seen Him do miracles. I am uncomfortable with a God who knows me and cares deeply enough to guide decisions with my best interests at heart. I am uncomfortable with it because it is difficult to wrap my mind around. I am uncomfortable–no, angry, because the implication is that He would know the pain and suffering a path would cause me, and still allow me to choose it. I am angry–no, disgusted, that He would allow my child to suffer from something He could choose to heal, or not allow him to experience in the first place. I am disgusted–no, heartbroken, that He would take people from this world I wasn’t done loving yet. I am heartsick—and relieved—that He doesn’t find questions or doubts sinful, that he doesn’t hold it against me when I choose to walk away. I am thankful that I am just as loved when I return. I am in awe, that I am loved, and that He thinks I deserve it.
I’ve chosen to believe God is real, that He is good, and I am willing to be wrong about it.
VII.
The time came several weeks after the church reopened in May 2020. The Sunday night sermon was on pride. It is his story to tell, but Anthony says it’s really as simple as being convicted during the service that his pride–his name, his legacy–was the only reason he was staying. He came home and told me that we’d just attended our last service. I was shocked at how simply he had decided that, but I knew it was right. We were already in the same place.
This is where the church-leaving part of the story should end.
The whole time I’ve been sharing about it, this is the part where I struggle the most. I’ve made humorous little paragraphs, and I erase each one. There was nothing funny about leaving. It was just sad.
We made an appointment to inform our pastor. This seemed necessary because our positions would need to be filled when Covid restrictions were over and children’s ministry resumed. We had started googling churches but had no plan for what to do next; we were just sure it was time for us to go.
I don’t know what we were expecting from that meeting, but it was not that the relationship would be completely severed by the end of it.
We had no interest in defending a decision that had been so long in the making—one that was between us and only God anyway. It was devastating to hear him push back that this could not possibly be His will.
It was an excruciating hour in his office. I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he was shocked and emotional and the reaction was because he cared. When I first started dating Anthony, his “faithfulness” was always the thing people brought up. He was set in his ways, always doing something at the church, and there’s certainly something to be commended there.
But everyone deserves to grow, and everyone deserves to be respected.
There were a lot of things said that I won’t repeat publicly; I have no intentions beyond being honest and sharing how I was affected.
There were two things that impacted me the most: First, that my choice to wear pants (outside of church) disqualified me from teaching Sunday school. I wasn’t surprised; but this still stung to hear it confirmed and have my personal ministry taken away for something so small. Small to me, at least; again, I believe this is a sorely mis-prioritized standard.
Secondly, at one point I was speaking directly to our pastor. He stopped me mid-sentence to refute my incomplete statement; angled his body away from me, looked at Anthony and said, “Let’s talk about this man-to-man.” He didn’t look or speak to me the rest of the meeting.
I don’t know how I was supposed to feel anything other than worthless. I don’t know how that wouldn’t be hurtful in any context.
I took this information in along with everything I’d spent my whole life learning: this is how pastors, men, Christians tend to behave. It’s the rule and not the exception. The hurt of that moment overshadowed everything else. It was like decades of my worst fears that I’d tried so hard to work through were confirmed: I didn’t belong here, I never had, and I would never be good enough. He ended the meeting having found no common ground, and I walked out the door fully intending to never enter a church building again.
If you’re reading this, you probably know I was lucky enough to find a soft place to land and had a change of heart about that, too.
VII.
Three weeks later, a co-worker who still attended there suggested that I listen to the previous night’s sermon. I hadn’t listened to any since we left because…obviously. But she knew a small part of what happened, and curiosity got the best of me, so I did. I wouldn’t mention it here if it were not another twist of the knife.
I’m not going to dissect the whole thing, but for context, the message is about how to handle church members who leave. He defines 4 categories (Members who die, members who leave to serve elsewhere, members who go to the world, members who leave because of bad doctrine) and uses scripture to indicate how the church is supposed to treat them. He uses Romans 16:17-18 to support the 4th category:
“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.”
The following statements are copied directly from the YouTube transcript, with my added punctuation for clarity. ^
“There are some people that are missing from the church rank because of bad doctrine. Because the doctrine no longer equals the doctrine of the church they attend.”
“There's always going to be those whose doctrine is contrary to our doctrine and instead of causing division then they will leave. Now what is the church to do?”
“We are to avoid. Yeah, the Bible’s very clear, I didn't write the book, I just tell you what the book says. We are to avoid and here's why: because at the expense of discussion you can violate ‘proper treatment of others’.”
Later he quotes another preacher about being “kind, but not nice. Because to be nice is to compromise.”
I am not foolish enough to assume the sermon was about us or get into all its other problematic content. But the fact that he quoted things we’d said to him in the meeting in a tone full of mockery tells me we were among the leavers he had in mind.
I will not assume what his intentions were, because at a point your intentions really don’t matter—people will hear what you say, and because you’ve conditioned them to believe that those words are from God, they will obey.
The livestream cuts out after he begins a prayer, “Heavenly Father God, I come to you this evening, having done your bidding…”
He drew a line in the sand that day. It may have been subtext before, but now it was loud and clear: they are doing things the right way. The rest of us are not. I never thought it would be spoken so boldly but it didn’t surprise me. It just hurt.
These people had been my church family for 9 years. Now I’m supposed to interact with their members and just pretend I didn’t hear him say all of that?
We don’t live in a large city, running into anyone you know is inevitable. They did as they were told, indeed. I don’t mean awkward interactions; time after time, it was direct and intentional coldness, rejection, and terrible comments from former friends we least expected.
Every single person? No. Some people went out of their way to continue a relationship and still today find opportunities to be kind and love us from a distance. They have become so, so dear to me.
But it didn’t take many painful meet-ups before I started trying to avoid them, too. I’m talking people who were part of our wedding, who served alongside us, who taught our child while we taught theirs.
My hurt was deep, but I really ache sometimes to think about how Anthony must feel. 34 years, literally your entire life in one place—and people are told to turn their backs on you because you’ve dared to listen to God’s voice.
According to the sermon, they may have been kinder if we would have renounced Him completely.
For awhile, I had dreams that the letters of our last name would fall off the dorm building one by one.
We both reached out to our former pastor several months later to attempt to reconcile or at least reach a mutual respect. We never received a reply.
VIII. Epilogue
About 8 months post-fundamentalism, I was out for a late dinner with friends who had also attended that church. We started eating as soon as the food arrived, and it took a few minutes for me to notice that one of us hadn’t touched her plate.
“I’m so sorry, y’all,” she said. “I know it should be intentional instead of just doing it as a habit, but I just can’t not stop and pray.” We quickly apologized and put down our forks. My family always prays before meals when we’re together, but I usually don’t think about it when I’m alone. She began her prayer thanking God for the “fellowship” and all of us burst into laughter—herself included—at that true but cliche christian phrase. We spent the rest of the time in between laughter and tears because we all got it…some of these things are really funny until they’re not. We were discovering new things all the time that we’d spent decades enshrining in shame and fear.
Three more years of marriage and motherhood—and life—keep revealing how much I ignored my own instincts for this false idea of doing the right things the right way and earning my keep. Sometimes I feel the loss of time immensely; there is damage that can’t be undone. But sometimes I can see that I traded my small world and certainty for life as it was meant to be: abundant.
I can’t help but feel that it’s my fault when Abbott says, “I’m sorry I wasn’t good today.” It makes me feel sick and desperate and I squeeze his face and try to explain that regardless of his choices he is always, always good and my love for him only gets bigger and nothing he could say or do could ever, ever make me love him less or make him any less “good”. He will never not deserve all the love and grace and patience and connection I can give him and more. He deserves it all just because he’s mine.
On the best days, I try to believe that God thinks that way about me, too.
Footnotes:
*This was not an original observation and is derived from a quote by Scott Erickson in his book, Honest Advent. Scott’s words and images were one of the “runway lights home” for me and continue to impact my faith.
+I have recounted this as I understood the events in real time. Obviously, I was a child and may not be remembering correctly. I checked with my parents, who confirmed the details I knew, but I can’t find anything else online. The statements I made have only to do with that specific former pastor and event, and not the church as a whole or the current pastor and membership. I have nothing but love for them. One current member, who has known me from birth, remains a sideline cheerleader and encouragement in my life.
^The sermon is entitled, “The Church”, Sunday PM, 6/28/20
