I've slipped

Over the passed month I have changed churches.
It feels so strange.
As if a silent transaction has taken place.
As if no one has noticed.

I leave a huge story behind.
From cult mentality and appearance to present day Christian.
Fifteen years of growth and friendships, of confused struggle and increasing insight.

From acceptance and affirmation, to the final meeting I ran, when I realised respect and support for me had faded and I knew it was God’s timing to hand to the group the resignation I had prepared.

And so the penultimate step had been taken and the door was open for me to move on.

My husband and I talk with the Pastor, a kind farewell to me with his blessing and I step away. I still return when James wants me to go with him.

But my focus has shifted to the area of ministry I am most strongly called to and which is wide open to me elsewhere.

There is pain in the parting. So much has happened, unrecorded, left to pass unknown into history. Big things, unspoken. Things that have impacted the church; bits and pieces that I have instigated when in the leadership team, still apparent there today but now just part of the church makeup. It feels sad that no one wants to know the bullet points of these last 15 years, though who would and why would they. I have left unnoticed. God knows it all and can be glorified.

I was in Australia the Sunday my name appeared as having joined the new church family; I slipped in quietly. I am so glad to be part of such a growing and functioning church; I love the vision of the leadership and really want to help it happen.

Yet someone did care that I had left, I saw the tears in the eyes of my dear friend when I mentioned it.

And someone was glad I had arrived, I saw the joy in eyes of another close friend that I had, after several years of living on the fringe, arrived!

It is a very big thing emotionally to slip from one church to another, I wonder how we as a church family could do it better.