The American Spectator

MY WIFE AND I BOTH IDENTIFY OURSELVES as evangelical, or born-again, Christians. Once you’ve made that confession, you are sealed as Christ’s own forever. Nothing can change that.

But, at various stages, I have stopped going to church, because some human fallibility, some shortcoming in the congregation itself, has brought me up short. As a church, we belong to Jesus Christ, not to any particular person, whether he be preacher, teacher, elder, or friend.

But those preachers, teachers, elders, and friends do mean something, and when something goes awry — when the church as a church just plain doesn’t work, and when I start to feel the way I felt as a child, that some of the grownups are faking it, or taking refuge in rigidity — then I start to feel that old uneasiness again, and find it a lot more comfortable to retreat to my Bible and my prayers and solitude.

Of late, that kind of thing has happened again, and I have stopped going to church. We’ll see how long it takes for me to get that old-time feeling again.

Is a church its people, or is it the body of Christ, or both? When you feel like certain people — perhaps key people — have let you down, what do you do?