Disaffiliation is such a strange phrase. After a career as a pastor among Baptists who spent most of my career tearing ourselves to bits with anger, division, and preacher fights over theology and politics, your story is so reminiscent of my journey and observations—that God often is not to be experienced in our institutional thrashing about. A staff member we interviewed once asked me, “Who do I have to hate to be part of your church?” I was stunned, but it was such an honest and revealing question. I recall the twelve who walked with Jesus—envious, politically divided, so different, unified by only one reality, they were drawn to seek Him.

Congregations are roiled by these storms that ignore the very thing you described—the,ongoing for God. We pay attention to so many things undeserving of a moment of energy.

I don’t know if you are familiar with a song Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary wrote in1968 called, “Hymn.” It goes,

Sunday morning, very bright, I read Your book by colored light
That came in through the pretty window picture.

I visited some houses where they said that You were living
And they talked a lot about You
And they spoke about Your giving.
They passed a basket with some envelopes;
I just had time to write a note
And all it said was “I believe in You.”

Passing conversations where they mentioned Your existence
And the fact that You had been replaced by Your assistants.
The discussion was theology,
And when they smiled and turned to me
All that I could say was “I believe in You.”

I visited Your house again on Christmas or Thanksgiving
And a balded man said You were dead,
But the house would go on living.
He recited poetry and as he saw me stand to leave
He shook his head and said I’d never find You.

My mother used to dress me up,
And while my dad was sleeping
We would walk down to Your house without speaking.

I sit in worship every Sunday amid people who see everything as I do and many who do not. I have, as a pastor for nearly three decades before retiring, chosen, with my new pastor’s kind invitation, to still be here, among blue and red, lovable and irritable, easy to love and begging for love with stiff arm outstretched. It is a spiritual discipline only surpassed my the miracles of marriage and family.

“Bearing with one another in love,” is not sentimental at all. It is rigorous, frustrating practice of the gospel we claim to represent. Purging the world of enemies is a lost cause before it begins. A community of faith reflects what it believes by how it acts its convictions, whatever its website, media, and slogans say. A community that embodies bearing with each other, belonging for those seeking haven, and perseverance of trust in God that demonstrates itself in depth of love and action, is persuasive. This will not wither in changing times.