closing the back door

As a church leader, you know that each person in your worship services or small groups is valuable. You hope that each person will want to grow spiritually as a part of your church family. But you realize that people come and go. Every church will have losses. People move away or graduate to heaven. And it’s inevitable that some folks will leave the church despite its best efforts to help them belong. Sometimes God wants to replant them somewhere else. Sometimes it’s a matter of “fit.”

I was recently walking through one of those two-acre, we-have-everything-you-will-ever-need-plus-ten-thousand-things-you-won’t, megaplex type stores. Strolling down the endless aisles of shiny trinkets, I found myself...