Stained Glass Masquerade

Somehow, during cluster last night, the topic morphed from tithing, to the way "the church" (for the sake of discussion we were referring largely to the local expression of the American church) spends money, to church membership, to hypocrisy within the church, to the fact that church too often feels like a not quite safe place to be - regardless of the denomination.

This came shortly on the heels of one of my friends opening up a forum that could be a safe place for people share their "why I left 'church'" stories.

It seems to come up several times a week, the fact that church as we know it is broken and that its brokenness has the ability to break already hurting people.

I wonder sometimes (most of the time) if that doesn't have something to do with the fact that we forget too easily what pure religion looks like. If we could remember that, really remember that (BOTH parts of it), would our churches become safe places to be?

Back when I was in high school, just before the youth group morphed into the safest place that I have ever seen it be, our youth pastor told us that he was praying for sin to be revealed within the youth group. It seemed a little harsh at the time, but it happened. Sin was revealed, and it was confessed to accountability partners, and it was dealt with - and youth group became more and more safe.

If we admitted our weakness and stopped just assuming that hypocrisy happens, would our churches become safe places to be?