I quit the church and found my neighbors.

Pastor John Carnes

I guess I should clarify that statement. I quit a church, not the church. But all the same, I found my
neighbors and a whole lot more when I did.

My wife and I had served for over eleven years as children and assistant pastors in a
nondenominational church. But as the years went by the demands and control of the overseers of our
fellowship increased exponentially. They had adopted the same attitudes which plague many leaders
and many churches in the United States. Believing they were to be like the mega-churches and mega-
ministries, they pressured our ministry to be the best, grow the fastest and demand the most from our
congregants.

In the midst of this pressure in our church, our pastoral team began to make countermeasures to teach
our people a balanced rhythm of life, family and faith. But soon, those over us rejected our efforts in
favor of more works and demanded more time, all wrapped up in the guise of "ministry" and "spiritual
development."

The congregation felt the pressure to be at this activity, this prayer meeting, that class. It was at the
height of this, we quit. It had became no longer spiritually or emotionally healthy for my wife, myself
and my young daughter. Years of “doing” church, running ministries and constantly having to be at
church almost every evening had weighed such a toll on us. We walked away.

Not a popular thing to do, let me tell you.

For the next few weeks, both of us not working and broken by the responses of those we'd ministered
to and with for so many years, we began to sit on our porch each evening, numbly watching our
neighbors come and go. We knew these neighbors, at least by name, but we hadn't ever had the time to
get to know them more than the appropriate 'hello' and 'how about this weather?'

Years of doing Christian ministry had kept us from being Christian neighbors. But now, we began to
meet them.

Over the next few months, as I found a new job and we attended a new church that we had no
responsibilities for, we began to look forward to spending time with these new friends- friends who had
been living beside us all along. One married couple invited us to have a picnic with them in their front
yard. Another couple asked my wife, who was now unemployed, to be their babysitter when they
adopted their first child. (Soon she would get other offers, and now I have nicknamed her "the
neighborhood nanny.") Another family gave to us financially when they found out that we were
without an income, having left both of our jobs at the church.

Now these neighbors are becoming dear friends as our lives and homes are being melded together. The
love of God is being shared as we lay down the false boundaries of titles and ministries and learned the
first step of the Christian life all over again...friendship to our neighbors.

It's been three and a half years and we are in the process of planting our own church now. But the
lessons of the last few years are not being lost.

Never will we demand so much of the people of our church that they cannot befriend those around
them. Paul asked the question: "How shall people know unless they are told?" I ask you, "How will
they be told, if those who do know are too busy in the church trying to keep the program going, that
they can't spend time outside the church with those who don't know?"

May our churches and ministries remember as they plan their activities, classes, and such that we will
never reach the world from sitting inside our four walls, but by enabling those who do frequent our
churches to perform the gospel right where they live, work and play. Let us be mature and release
believers to live the message of freedom, love and grace.