Sundays continue to be a strange time for me. Up until last November I could always be found in a church pew on Sunday morning. At that time I was told by my church of eight years that my views of God no longer aligned with what their denomination expected of members. Instead of going through an inquisition I choose to separate my self from them.
But I must admit that the very restricted and almost solo message of that congregation became somewhat numbing. You can only say “Christ did it all so nothing is expected of us” so many ways. After that you are just repeating the same mantra again and again. To me Christ’s message is so much fuller than that. Being a little gun-shy from this experience I have yet to think about joining another current day Christian sect. There are a couple that are appealing but….
So, here I am on Sunday morning contemplating the words of Jesus Christ on my own. This could be a lonely time for me but I take heart of all the support I get from my like-minded friends in the blogosphere. I know I am not alone in putting the words of Jesus Christ front and center in my life. All the other words in the sacred texts are secondary at best. Jesus has much to teach me even now so I will continue to seek out his messages for how to live while I occupy a space on this earth.
Thanks to all of you out there and God bless you on this beautiful Sunday morning.
RedLetterLiving 
Good friends of ours had the same experience 2 months ago. Disagreements with some programs and conflicts with staff led to this couple being put under church discipline. Rather than put everyone through that circus, they left the church.
Unfortunately, the decided they also had to cut all ties to everything and everyone affiliated with the church. So, the church lost an important couple and several of us lost two dear friends. That hurts, and continues to do so.
While I don’t understand the need to drop friends completely, I know they were terribly upset by the entire episode. I pray that time will allow them to let us back in their lives. After all, they (and we) are more than just what church we attend.
Thanks for the reply Bob.
On the cutting ties maybe their situation is different from ours but it seems for us to be the other way around. We have still maintain a limited relationship with some from our old church but from most part we seem to have at best a tacit response to our reaching out to most others.
Long story short we would love to continue some friendships made there but since we are no longer in their weekly sphere we seem to be easily forgotten. It is disheartening to think that those friendships were so shallow to be that easily broken but maybe they were.
But on the other hand we were the “bleeding heart liberals” among an overwhelmingly staunch conservative congregation so maybe we should not be surprised by the lack of continuing friendships.