I want to bring some comments from a previous post entitled The Right of Passage to the forefront so that the issue is clear.  It has to do with my leaving my church home of the last eight years.  As pointed out below I did short circuit the formal process at it’s beginning stages by volunteering to leave.  I chose to take immediate action rather than to pursue it through it’s  formal stages.

Here are the comments from that blog thread:

From Dan Martin

RJ, I’m sad to learn of this. I have another close friend that has just been stripped of his teaching responsibilities because he dared to bring a discussion of the Open View of God into a sunday school class he was leading. This led to a doctrinal inquisition that concluded (without ever addressing his biblical and hermaneutical questions directly) that this man did not hold doctrines in harmony with the church and he could not teach.

He, too, has felt he must move on in that a church where one is not permitted to contribute is no fellowship.

This is wrong and unbiblical. In fact the church leadership blatantly violated the procedure Jesus laid out in Matt. 18 while dealing with this friend’s situation. They never acknowledged that problem, either.

The wind of God is moving among the dry bones of the church. Unfortunately, some are so afraid of the rattling of the bones, that they can’t receive the breath of new life.

“Can these bones live? Lord, thou knowest.”

RJ Responds

Dan, I must tell you that in reality I short circuited the process and volunteered to leave upon notification of the proposed formal action. So technically I was not “officially” sanctioned or asked to leave. I think they had intended to comply with Matthew 18 but I chose not to go through that painful and inevitable process.

As I have already said I feel much more saddened by this than angry. Why do we let such things come between us Christians? I truly love my pastor of the last five years and I realize that he was just initiating this action as a result of denominational edicts. He is following the institutional line that was laid out for him by the church hierarchy. So I really put this on myself as maybe forcing this issue. But I could no longer pretend that I believe the earth is 6,000 years old and ignore all the scientific info that the Lord has given us. I was just tired of turning my back on this issue. It was time to take a stand. But I am really sorry that I have brought this situation upon my wife. She was very painfully collateral damage as a result of my public actions.