When we first walked through the doors of our new church it was like coming home. We found a welcome, a chance of healing after losing a baby at a few days old, and an opportunity to find our vocation and purpose as well as a community of fellow travellers. For five years that is what we had. We didn't realise then that it would also be the place that almost would destroy our faith completely.
It all started with the appointment of a new vicar. He seemed competent, visionary and ready to take a growing and successful church to the next stage. We got on personally with him and felt part of the team.
One problem with success is that it often encourages a culture whereby those who cannot keep up are left behind. The gospel might offer hope to the perpetually broken, depressed, sad and limping disciple, but for the church on a mission they can become a hindrance to success. We found that the culture of the church started to shift, and in ways that we struggled with.
Although I was in leadership, having been elected as church warden, we didn't really fit in. We asked awkward questions. We home educated our kids in a church that saw the relationship with local schools as an indispensible part of their mission. We looked for nuance and shade when the pulpit offered a simple faith. We wanted radicalism when the church was encouraging normality.
I'm not saying that we were right and they were wrong, simply that the paths were already diverging. However, we still clung to the idea that the church is a diverse group of pilgrims travelling together in spite of their differences.
I was still in a leadership position when the problems started to get out of control. One Sunday morning my 13-year-old daughter burst into tears as we entered the building and cried throughout the service. Not spiritual tears of revelation or worship, but sad, angry, lonely tears. She couldn't look at anyone or explain what was wrong. We had no idea what to do. It took a couple of weeks to find out that other girls in the church were bullying her.
Normally I would know what to do in this situation, but there was a problem. One of the other girls was the vicar's daughter and attempts to raise gently the issue were ignored. We tried to get her moved into a different group – the next age group up (she was old in her school year) – but that was rejected as a solution. The bullying continued until we had no choice but to take some time out.
It all came to a crisis when the vicar visited us to say that our daughter had disturbed some of the other girls by claiming to be self-harming. To be clear, he didn't come to see how he could help, but to tell us that if she didn't stop saying these things she would be excluded from the youth group entirely. When I suggested that perhaps her experience of bullying had led her to find some way of expressing her hurt by 'boasting' he wasn't interested. She was rocking the boat and that wasn't allowed.
That was the last time our daughter showed any interest in Christianity or Christians.
At the same time our marriage was going through a very difficult period, and we were just about hanging on. My wife was suffering from depression and life was just feeling unbearable. I stood down from my position as warden and we begged the leadership for some sort of help. No one felt able to offer any advice. The referral to a counsellor for my wife was an abject failure. Any further requests for help and support were ignored.
Other problems started to manifest themselves. Dominant personalities among the women's group caused painful hurt through rejection. Insinuations that we were incapable of educating our kids and doing them harm cut deeply and shook who we were as a family.
All of a sudden we found ourselves isolated. Those in leadership stopped calling – in fact we were being ignored on a Sunday morning, almost as if we were the cause of conflict that had to be avoided. We were, I admit, difficult. We still asked awkward questions, we were sad and frustrated, and we found our church community lacking at the very time we needed them the most.
After four further years of trying to remain part of this community we finally, 12 months ago, walked away from it all. We didn't say goodbye, we just stopped going. So far, we haven't had one email or phone call from the vicar or any pastoral volunteers to ask how we are doing or why we left. Awkward encounters in town left the same questions hanging.
We still don't have a church to call home. That church is so dominant in the area that there are not many other places that can thrive and we haven't had the emotional strength to be the ones to make it work elsewhere. We have lost so much, but we are still hanging on. Just.
The author lives in England along with his family, and his work takes him around the UK and further afield.
