"Our failures are known, our successes are not"

Al Pacino said it best when he was addressing a new class of CIA recruits: "Our failures are known, our successes are not." He may as well be addressing the Church. For every psychopath out there holding a sign proclaiming God's hatred for people; there is ten more who are leading a crafts table at a small VBS. Which one will get their picture in the paper? For every pastor that is caught in scandal; there are ten more that are little league coaches or volunteering at a community center. Which will get the news paper write up?

I guess you could chalk it up to a society that is looking for dirt. We want the negative. We would much rather hear stories about the inevitability of a gas price hike, a scandal in a public office, or just another homicide. Society grasps hold with white knuckle grip to the reality that our hopeless conditions are only worsening. So society is not really to blame, because we look for the negative in all conditions. The purpose of this writing is not to place blame; but to give you a glimpse of the depth to which our failures go.

I saw how deep it goes tonight. I have seen it for a number of years now.

Growing up I attended a church here in North Topeka. I had been attending for about 6 years when I left for college. During my freshman year at Ozark, I received a letter describing a situation concerning my home church. Seems that there had been some misunderstandings amongst some of the leadership and some of the congregation. Without going into details, some were asked to leave the Church. It was pretty rough on me. Suddenly, my graduating class was split in half. Some left, some stayed. From then on, my relationship with a lot of the church was lost. Some of my best friends and I were divided along the lines that none of us were involved in making. Luckily, since then I have been able to reconstruct many of those relationships, some are still very distant.

I spent many hours discussing the whole situation with a couple men that I really admire: Mark Moore; Phil Maddux; and Jon Kehrer. In C.S. Lewis' classic book, the Screwtape Letters, Wormwood advises his nephew that the Church can be a very good hindrance to accepting of the faith. I would not go that far in this situation, but the Church could be taken to that extreme.

Recently there has been a death of a family friend. I was over talking to the family tonight. The conversation turned to this situation. The family in the midst of grieving, spoke of this situation. Friends still mention it. My family still attends the church, but there has been a questioning in their minds still 5 1/2 years later. Our CPCC basketball camp brought back a couple guys from the church and reunited them, which lead the conversation back to it.

The greatest problem comes in the reputation amongst the community. Some in the community have expressed concern to me. "Are you from that church that kicks people out?" People who have never graced the presence of a pew, have heard more about this church than anything that goes on inside one. Some have heard more about the outfall of this situation, than have heard about gospel.

Our failures are known, our successes are not.