Dear Friends,
Some of you may have noticed that we have not been to church for a long time. This letter will serve as an update of the most important features of our lives since we stopped attending church.

Since you have found your way to our website and presumably read some of what we have to say about church, the clergy and various doctrines, you may be wondering if we have gone off the deep end or what. Be assured and comforted that we are OK. No, we are better than OK. Actually, we are great in terms of spirit and soul. We do have some body issues (eyes, teeth, etc.) that we deal with from time to time, but by and large we are doing very well on all accounts.

We understand that by publishing this website we have created a rather awkward situation regarding our relationship with people with whom we shared beliefs. Since most of our relationships were formed while we attended a church, the things we are reporting here may be cause for feelings ranging from concern to anger and perhaps betrayal. If we were in your shoes, we would probably feel the same way.

But we are not in your shoes. We are in a new place in terms of our religion, and we must deal with that best we can. How we got here has been reported in some detail in Moderator’s Religious History. There you read that we have been on a remarkable journey since we stopped attending church. While we did not attend church during that time, we studied the Bible like we have never studied it before and learned like we have never learned before.

Just as you may be shocked to read what we have learned, we were shocked to learn it. We have been consistently challenged to rethink what we thought we knew so well about the Bible and were forced to the conclusion that there is a lot of error in what we thought we knew. More to the point, we have been consistently shocked to find that much of what we have been taught in church does not line up with what God says. If you have the courage to read any of this website, we think most of you will be similarly challenged in your beliefs, and we hope that you will respond affirmatively as we did.

We are prepared for the possibility, however, that some of you may react adversely to the challenges to your beliefs that we present here. We do not particularly enjoy provoking people, but sometimes that is what we need to do. And this is one of those times. For those of you who find that there is some (or a lot) of truth in what we have disclosed here, we hope that this website will be a prompt to reconnect.

You may find things to challenge you, but you may not know quite what to do with your new knowledge. We have given some suggestions on how to follow up in STUDY. Beyond that, be assured that we are ready to help you in the process of disengaging from the institutional church, abandoning comfortable religious traditions, and exchanging familiar beliefs for new convictions about what God really wants for His people.

We have been through this process, and to a degree are still going through it, and we know it is hard. Fortified by that experience, and extremely glad to be where we have landed, we have great compassion for others who may want to go in a new direction (actually it is a very old direction that just seems new because we did not understand it before). Therefore, we would love to come along side anyone who may have questions and be in need of encouragement while they venture into unfamiliar territory.

For those of you who react adversely to this website, we hope you can avoid the trap of taking it all personally. We have tried to be careful not to place blame for the errors on any one group or person. In a very real sense all of our spiritual fathers (from the Jews to the Catholics to the reformers, to those we have called “pastor”) own some of the blame. In each generation, traditions and doctrines have been added and refined and affirmed through practice. To the degree that we (you and us) in this current generation participate in this ongoing process we also share the blame for error. Therefore, we cannot blame you for error any more than we can blame ourselves.

Whether you are in the group that accepts or rejects what we present here, we hope that you will apply good judgment. We think we did and we are glad we did. Furthermore, we are confident that, sooner or later, you will be glad that you accepted the challenge to see things the way we see them.

Sincerely,
Paul and Barb