Graphic by David Hayward, The Naked Pastor
From your earliest recollection you remember the church.
You remember the preacher, the piano player, the deacons, and your Sunday School teacher.
You remember the youth group and all the fun activities.
You remember getting saved and baptized.
You remember being in church every time the doors were open.
You remember everything in your life revolving around the church.
You remember praying and reading your Bible.
You remember the missionaries and the stories they told about heathens in faraway lands.
You remember revival meetings and getting right with God.
You remember…
Most of all, you remember the people.
You thought to yourself, my church family loves me almost as much as God does.
You remember hearing sermons about God’s love and the love Christians have for one another.
Church family, like blood family, loves you no matter what.
But then IT happened.
You know, IT.
You got older. You grew up. With adult eyes you began to see the church, God, Jesus, and the Bible differently.
You had questions, questions no one had an answer for.
Perhaps you began to see that your church family wasn’t perfect.
Perhaps the things that Mom and Dad whispered about in the bedroom became known to you.
Perhaps you found out that things were not as they seemed.
Uncertainty and doubt crept in.
Perhaps you decided to try the world for a while. Lots of church kids do, you told yourself.
Perhaps you came to the place where you no longer believed what you had believed your entire life.
And so you left.
You had an IT moment, that moment in time when things change forever.
You thought, surely Mom and Dad will still love me.
You thought, surely Sissy and Bubby and Granny will still love me.
And above all, you thought your church family would love you no matter what.
But, they didn’t.
For all their talk of love, their love was conditioned on being one of them, believing the right things, and living a certain way.
Once you left, the love stopped, and in its place came judgment and condemnation.
They are praying for you.
They plead with you to return to Jesus and the church.
They question whether you ever really knew Jesus as your savior.
They say they still love you, but deep down you know they don’t.
You know their love for you requires you to be like them.
And you can’t be like them any more…
Such loss.
The church is still where it’s always been.
The same families are there, loving Jesus and speaking of their great love for others.
But you are forgotten.
A sheep gone astray.
Every once in a while someone asks your Mom and Dad how you are doing.
They sigh and perhaps tears well up in their eyes…
Oh how they wish you would come home.
To be a family sitting together in the church again.
You can’t go back.
You no longer believe.
All that you really want now is their love and respect.
You want them to love you just-as-you-are.
Can they do this?
Will they do this?
Or is Jesus more important than you?
Does the church come first?
Is chapter and verse more important than flesh and blood?
You want to be told that they still love you.
You want to be held and told it is going to be all right.
But here you sit tonight…
Alone…
Originally written in 2010, slightly edited and corrected
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