Dr Paul Allen

I (Sam) ran into a long-standing church member at the store. We had one short conversation, but it was emblematic of a much broader concern. She’d been going through a bit of a crisis, and we hadn’t seen her at church for a few weeks. So when I ran into her, I told her how much we’d missed her and how lovely it would be to see her in church again. She told me she couldn’t come until she was doing better. She didn’t want people to see her while feeling life’s mess: “I’m waiting until the storm passes and I’ve got things back together enough to be able to walk back into the church building.” Those words were heartbreaking. Church should be the place we sprint to when things are at their worst, not the place we avoid until we’ve got our Instagram-worthy Christianity back. I saw right away that this church member’s perspective was unhealthy. But I sensed something else was wrong, too. There was a mismatch between the beauty of the truth my church proclaimed and the culture we’d cultivated.