Letter Withdrawing My Forty Year Membership from My Church

Mar 29, 2021 | Letters, Correspondence, & Dialogue with Church & Friends on Christ, Faith, & Christian Living

September 24, 20***

Letter Withdrawing My Forty Year Membership from My Church

September 24, 2020

Grace Community Church

Chairman of the Board of Elders

Dear Chairman Board of Elders,

I am writing to withdraw my membership from Grace Community Church. With great sadness, and at times bewilderment, I have seen Grace Church inexorably and incomprehensibly over the years supplant the primacy of Jesus, our Savior and Lord, and His Kingdom and gospel, with an ever present but growing support and involvement in multiple aspects of the conservative political agenda, and one now fully evolved into a protracted and carefully constructed partnership with the president’s reelection campaign, developed and sustained to coordinate a publically proclaimed support for the president, a godless, cruel, unjust, and unrighteous man, a liar, and a man who with perversity in his heart, only uses the church – Jesus Christ, our God and Savior, His gospel, God’s people – for his own corrupt and deceitful political self-promotion. With all the multiple actions promoting this man, the church has seemingly put aside the first great commandment of loving God with our whole mind, heart, soul, and strength, replacing a pure love of God with a half-love of something, someone, else. And, further, the church, through escalating sermons, articles, Q&As, tweets and retweets, broadcasts and interviews, continues to tempt God’s people to do the same.

Additionally, and also grievous, as a church, as pastors and elders, you have also seemingly abandoned the second great commandment of loving our neighbor as ourselves. For the church, through an illogical and convoluted, but necessarily sanctified resistance to social distancing and the wearing of masks, a mandate designed to help lessen the reach of the pandemic within our city and county – and a resistance in shameful mimicry of the president’s own purely divisive and self-centered political reelection strategy – you have committed a graceless offense against the congregation at Grace by putting God’s people, the congregation whom you say you serve, at risk, and, without love or thought, you have also put aside and imperiled our outside neighbors’ health, good, and wellbeing, and damaged their receptivity to the saving and restoring gospel and the reign and rule of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. Instead of Christ, you have factually elevated – with acclamation – this prideful self-exalting man together with the image of Grace as a righteous and God-honoring church, in the sight of all, as far as your media-reach extends.

So, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, I am leaving Grace Church. After years of struggling in thought and prayer and loyal communication to our pastor, the pastors and elders of my fellowship group, and the elders as a whole – to me evidenced by the multiple letters I have respectfully submitted over many years – I now realize, and logically conclude, from our pastor’s recent statement in a public interview where he proclaimed a definition of all “real believers” to the president, as those being “on your side” – this proclamation itself an abrogation of the work of the Holy Spirit in the individual believer’s mind and heart and a usurpation of this right of guidance and rule to himself – that by this definition, I am not now considered a believer by our pastor nor the elders. I have been created in the image and likeness of God. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, I am being conformed into the image of Christ and being made fit for life in His kingdom. This is true of all believers. However, the church’s promotion and praise for the president, coupled with this definition of “real believers” – regardless of how the church speaks, spins, or thinks of it – is moving God’s people to believe and trust in this man and in his policies and statements, and to thus, in a fashion, being conformed within themselves to the image he presents of himself, and not to the image of Christ. And this movement to the image of this man, and the enthusiastic role of Grace Church as the president’s champion, promoting him essentially as he himself does, as the only savior of the nation, a position that all “real believers” should hold, verges on idolatry – an idolatry evil and dark, one erasing the truth, life, and hope of the gospel, and an idolatry replacing and defacing Christ and His image with the honor and support of something, someone, else – a stance approaching worship.

So with sadness over the spiritually decimated and betrayed condition of the church, and with reluctance because of the people at church I care about, and yet within the quiet resolve of the Spirit, and in obedience to the Lord, I withdraw my membership of almost forty years from Grace Community Church, the church where I was baptized, married, and raised my children. I also am finally accepting what I have felt for many years as a loss of community, that I am not truly welcomed at Grace, and that as long as I continue to speak and write as I believe directed by the Spirit and in obedience to the Lord, I have no place at the church, no place at the table, no encouragement or support.

Now, even though, I depart with a profound sadness over the actions and path that Grace Church has taken, I leave, through the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, purposed with continued prayer for Grace Church, its leaders and the people, and without anger, resentment, or with hesitations in my heart towards any – I leave all this with the Lord. And though I also depart with a certain emptiness from these many years of Spirit-led internal and external struggle, I leave with joy and a renewed energy in the assurance of the Lord’s leading me towards good and usefulness. I also have been given an even greater joy in a now deeper and more intimate clinging to Christ and a closer walk with the Holy Spirit. My trust is in God, in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, moving towards wherever He is to lead me to in prayer, service, and place, and looking forward as He directs and enables me to pursue fulfilling the two great commandments of loving God with my whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving my neighbor as myself.

I ask now that you please arrange to remove my name and details from all listings and databases and please discontinue the offering envelope #xxxxxx. Thank you for your compliance to this request. I will also make this request of the Church Administrator. I will also submit a paper copy of this letter to your office.

Respectfully, Chris Orozco

Cc: Church Administrator

Cc: Email copy: Various Pastors and Elders

***

To Return to Home Page; Please use Link Below:

Home – Writing In The Shade Of Trees

***

To View all Letters & Correspondence to My Former Church & All Posts Concerning My Former Church, Please Use Link Below:

Letters, Correspondence, & Dialogue with Church & Friends on Christ, Faith, & Christian Living – Writing In The Shade Of Trees

***

To View Specific Letters Written to My Church By Year Leading Up to My Letter Withdrawing My Church Membership, Please Use Links Below:

Edit Post “Letters Written to My Church – 2012-2014” ‹ Writing In The Shade Of Trees — WordPress