Letter to Former Church

This is an edited version of the letter we sent to the members and former members of our old church three years after we had left. Over the previous two years I had been following Matt. 18 with the pastor by mail, since I believed that a personal meeting would do nothing to solve the matters between us due to his conduct during a meeting my wife and I had with him a year before we left the church. We sent many letters to him, the last with written testimonies given by two who were members in the church during our time there and after we left. They confirmed the issues we had brought up to the pastor.

The only real response we ever got was a complete denial of any responsibility on his part; something that was contradicted by written testimonies I included in my last letter to him. I could have easily obtained and included many others, but Jesus said only two are required. As it was, I had five, and had given far more time and written more letters than Jesus required in the hope of reconciliation based on repentance.
Finally, we sent copies of all the correspondence to every member of the church along with this cover letter. We also sent this cover letter, but not the other documents, to many former members who had left in the months after we did. This was then sent to other former members from years back, and it has been used by our Father to help in the healing process of so many wounded, scattered and devoured sheep.
I include this here to show the resolution for us three years after we left the church. We are still healing, since the roots of abuse and wrong teaching go very deep, and seem to come out when we least expect them. For the most part, we are doing very well. But we are still trying to relearn so much of God’s teaching that was distorted or denied during our years or darkness.

9/5/2000

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

During our last months at church we were very careful to keep our reasons for leaving to ourselves. Except for a very few friends we told no one that we were even thinking of going to another church, since we wanted to leave as quietly and peacefully as possible. Now that we have been gone for three years and our following Matthew 18 with Pastor …… has come to an end after two years, we wanted to tell you why we left. What I am writing here is about what I saw myself becoming, and why I needed to leave so that I could change.


When I first heard of our church, I was attending a Bible college in PA. I was headed toward Africa as a missionary, and had already done a six-week apprenticeship in Ghana in the summer of 1975. But I was very unhappy with the shallow Fundamentalism that I was in, and I was looking for something more substantial. I was introduced to the tape ministry of the church by a roommate, and began to visit the services. As I embraced the theology of the church and became rather evangelistic for the view of sanctification it held, I was asked not to return to school for my final year. The school believed in strict separation from any who disagreed with them in those days, so I had to go.


My wife and I were married in 1977, and we came to NJ in 1979. We became members in 1980. Throughout my years at the church I learned much of its doctrine, and became very involved in church life. But I saw myself becoming something that was wrong. This is why we left. Over the years many changes took place in my life. I went from a happy outgoing man to someone who was so concerned with his own holiness, or rather, need for holiness, that I became self absorbed. Instead of being joyful, I was introverted and Pharisaical. Instead of reaching out to the lost, I was concerned with the salvation of my own soul, as if it all depended on me keeping the faith alive within myself, and not on Jesus and His faithfulness and sacrifice.

Believing as we all did that we must continually make our calling and election sure, I began to lose my assurance of God’s love and care. I began to see God not as a loving Father, but as an exacting judge; not as one who is passionately in love with me, but as one who is aloof, distant and cold. Instead of having faith in Jesus’ work as the complete and finished sacrifice for my sins, I acted as if it all depended on my continued faithfulness. “Persevere or be damned” was preached, and I believed it fully. In essence, I became a kind of Roman Catholic – ever trying to earn God’s love by my obedience, and ever fearing that He would be angry or condemning because of my failure. Instead of believing that God was for me eternally as He said, I believed that I had to earn His favor again and again with each new act of obedience. This was the cause of much depression and loss of joyful hope.
But more than this, I saw God as unable to be pleased. Each sermon enforced my inadequacy before a holy God. I forgot that this is why there is grace – because we are inadequate. But I did not hear God’s grace and love and acceptance in the preaching at our church. Pastor …… admitted that this was a true assessment of his preaching in our meeting we had with him in August of 1996. Because I embraced this preaching I began to treat my wife and children the way I believed God treated me. They could never please me, and I became cold and unfeeling. Discipline was the main point of real contact between my children and me, and I viewed them as sinners to be molded by the rod, not as my dear children whom I am to love with all my heart. My eldest suffered most, growing aloof and distant from me. I wasn’t this way in all things of course, but that was the general tone of our relationship, for this is how I related to God.
I was losing my children, and I did not know why. What God finally showed me is that He is a God of infinite grace, love, kindness and favor, and this is how I was to treat my children. I was to correct them when they really sin, but not become a control freak - watching their every tiny move so I could discipline them. I was to love them, and act in grace toward them. And their response to me has been the same as my response to God has been, to give true and loving obedience from the heart. I have regained my children, thank God, and they are all walking in His ways.
My wife and I are headed toward service to God. I have just graduated from the same Bible college that I was forced to leave 23 years ago. Yes, they took me back, and I am now in the Master’s in Counseling program, aiming toward national certification. We hope to Ghana sometime after completing the program to see if God wants us to teach in a Bible Institute there training pastors and others to minister in counseling.
Throughout my time at the church I had a great desire to serve God in full time ministry. I had a reoccurring thought which deeply frightened me. I saw myself as an old man lying on my deathbed looking at my wrinkled up hands and thinking that I had done nothing to serve my Lord, and now it was too late. This was terrifying, and it was one of the most important reasons I left. I knew I could never serve God as I longed to do, for in allowing Pastor …… to judge whether I was able to be used or not I had allowed a man to rule my conscience for all those years. I could not do that any longer.
I also could not reconcile the largeness of God’s kingdom and heart with the belief that we alone had the real truth. Was it really true that a few thousand who were in agreement with us around the world were the only ones with the truth? Was this the best that the Almighty could do? Were all the other Christian ministries sinful or anemic because they did not agree with us? If that was so, then why were they so blessed by God? Why could, for example, some Christian radio ministries be listened to millions of people around the world each week, while we could hardly fill up one section of our auditorium if we all squeezed together? I do not agree with everything that other ministries were saying, but I have to be humble enough to believe that they might be right in areas, and we might be wrong.
In our daily college chapel I hear of so much that God is doing around the world. For example, one church has a contact in the guards in the Summer Olympics, and will be allowed access to the Olympic Village to witness and give out Christian literature and Bibles. This is unheard of - to have access to the athletes from around the world. Another missionary was in Cambodia where a whole village came to Jesus. The mission board that wants us to go to Ghana has missionaries risking their lives in several countries such as China, Nepal, Mongolia, Cuba and Yemen where missionaries and Christians are martyred or imprisoned. They are able to do this by working clandestinely. My wife and I went with a group of 25 college students to Memphis this May to a gathering of students from around the country and world called One Day. We all came for a full day of worship, prayer and praise to God. There were approximately 50,000 there in God’s presence for the weekend, fasting and praying and worshiping God. One man from Sri Lanka gave up an entire years’ salary to be there. We had contact with Christians in China who could not come, but were with us in prayer. We sang a worship song by phone link to a similar gathering of African brothers in Botswana in their language. I could go on and on for pages on the work of God in all the continents. It is thrilling to hear what God is doing in the very ministries we condemned as unbiblical.
Since I’ve returned to college I’ve either heard of or met former classmates. I have been so ashamed and broken by what they have been doing for God while I painted houses all those years. Several who I wrote off as useless – how arrogant – have been in God’s harvest field all these years winning many to Jesus, and building up the brethren. There is one man who I thought was the most arrogant man I’d ever met. I met him in my first week at college as a freshman at pre-season soccer camp. This experience led me to look for more in the Christian life, and really began the long road that led to the church for me. I probably was not wrong about him, but I was even more arrogant than he was, for I did not love him as an erring brother; I just condemned him. He and I had lunch together a few weeks ago. While I painted houses, God worked on his pride, and he has been a Christian School teacher for all these years, sacrificing for Jesus so many kids could come to Jesus.
Another one was, by our church’s standards, not fit for the ministry. While I painted houses he has been a missionary on the Amazon River the past 25 years, flying a float plane to inaccessible villages, bringing the Gospel and being used by God to bring so many to Himself. Another man I knew was one who would never be accepted for service by our church. Yet he and his family went to Togo and brought hundreds to Jesus. He planted two churches and turned them over to Togolese pastors. He was about to turn over his third church when he was murdered for his truck as he stopped to pick up his wife and children at the American Embassy playground. He was so greatly loved and respected in the country that the President of Togo, many government leaders, the American Ambassador and thousands of Togolese came to his funeral. His death and funeral made the front page of the Philadelphia Enquirer as the lead story. I was painting houses.
Some who graduated with me this past May are already working toward mission fields all over the world. Many of these will live lives of poverty and deprivation just to see some come to Christ. Others already are Youth Pastors where they are helping shape the next generation of Christians and leaders. Still others will be teaching in Christian schools. A few of these are in other countries like Korea teaching not only Christian children, but children of American workers, especially in Embassies. Some will begin working with pastors where they will be mentored for several years before they enter the ministry on their own. Were it not for God’s kindness, I would still be painting houses.
When I used to hear of such missionaries and of people coming to faith in Jesus I would judge that their faith was not real, or too shallow to be genuine. How arrogant! I thought I could infallibly judge the hearts of people whom I had never met, whose names and faces I did not know, and whose testimonies I had never heard. But I knew! What sinful pride, brethren. Who made me their judge? Who gave me insight into the hearts of people all over the world? How could I judge the work of tens of thousands of missionaries, pastors and laymen around the world? Were all the sacrifices that had been made by thousands of men, women and children throughout the great missionary period in the last 150 years all wrong, just because they did not do it our way? Were the lives given in sacrifice and love to Jesus and sinners all worthy of our contempt just because they went out under mission boards? Were all the lives given in service, poverty, sickness and sure loss all fit for our arrogant condescension, just because they did not do it Pastor …… way? Were all the millions and millions who came to Christ not really saved because they did not hear “our message?” I could no longer believe this, especially when I had given nothing, and they had given everything.
I remember how at the Men’s Retreats we men would go to the bookstore at the retreat center and turn up our holy noses while breathing out muttered words of condemnation and judgment, shaking our heads at the books written by brothers and sisters. I remember looking at many of you men with knowing looks of disapproval at the material there. How sinful I was then, how full of pride and arrogance! These were Jesus’ loved ones we condemned – our brothers and sisters in the faith. They had poured years of life and prayers to our God into those books, yet we looked down on their works as evil and foolish, simply because they did not agree with us.
We looked down on anyone who was not part of our church or did not follow Pastor …… why didn’t we ever realize that these brothers and sisters are loved as much by God as He loves us? They are God’s dear children, and He gave the highest Treasure eternity had just to be their Father; just to be in relationship with them. We looked down on God’s heart! We had the very spirit of division and faction that God hates. We were the slanderers and backbiters; we were the whisperers and dividers of the brethren. And all in the name of God and Truth!
I left because I had lost my joy and peace, because I was losing my family, and because I was losing the life of service that belonged to God. I left because as I read and understood what God said about how his children were supposed to be, I could not stand what I had become. Instead the fruit of the Spirit I saw the works of the flesh with its party spirit, factions and pride. I had become just what God said was the essence of carnality in 1 Cor. 3. I was of Pastor ……, our church, our elders and our theology and church polity.
My worship had become man centered. I related to God through Pastor ……, not through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. I tried to please a man, and do things right in his sight. My view of Christianity was shaped by a man and by a group of men. Life and worship revolved around Pastor ……, the elders and our beliefs. In worship I related emotionally to the preaching more than to Jesus. When I returned to college we sang a worship song in chapel that broke me and forced me to my knees when I could get alone. I wept openly whenever we sang this song, and had to find a place to weep privately for my sins. Here are some of the words:

King of Endless worth no one could express
How much You deserve.
Though I’m weak and poor, all I have is Yours,
Every single breath.

I’m coming back to the heart of worship,
And it’s all about You,
It’s all about You, Jesus.
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I made it,
For it’s all about You,
It’s all about You, Jesus.

-The Heart of Worship


by Matt Redman

But there was one more thing that drove me away. In all my devotion to a man and a church, I had lost Jesus. I allowed Pastor …… to replace Jesus and God in my heart. My obedience and my loyalty were to him and the elders, for this is what was preached over and over. I gave Pastor …… the place in my heart that only God can hold. The line of demarcation between me and other Christians was agreement and loyalty to Pastor ……and the elders, not Jesus. Brethren, I was an idolater. That is why we all got so angry with anyone who left. Where in the Bible is this justified? Everywhere we are commanded to love each other and preserve peace and unity. And even if those who left the church had really sinned we are still to love and restore them, even if they really were our enemies. But we allowed loyalty to Pastor …… to become the dividing line between the “faithful and wicked.” We allowed a mere man to take the place of God. I could no longer do this; it is idolatry.
Many of you remember my deep and varied interests while at the church. All that is put aside now, for that was what I used to fill the void I felt then – the void that only God could fill with His love and acceptance. Ministry to others and to God is my heart and life, not self-absorbed doubts and prideful judging of others, even within our congregation. That was the favorite indoor sport of those of us who were “true followers.” We would condemn and judge so many of you as unfit and failures. Please forgive me for my sins against so many of you, and for the encouragement I gave to others to take part in my sins of pride and judging.
Let me tell you what I have found now that I have left. I have found God’s heart. I have found His love, and kindness, and tenderness, and faithfulness, and mercy and compassion, and grace and forgiveness. It is His Father-heart of immeasurable, intense, passionate affectionate love for His children. It is grace and peace and hope and light and warmth and life. I have found that while God is immortal, almighty and eternal judge, Jesus died so He could be to His children what He cannot be to everyone. To us, He is our Father, our Savior, our Brother and our Friend. I have known His loving warm arms around me. I have felt His heart as He holds me to His chest. I have felt His hand of love as I go through deep rivers of trial and sorrow. I have known His power in making me useful when I felt so useless. I have seen Him use me in the lives of many people. I have felt His smile and seen the light in His eye as He looks on me in love and acceptance because of Jesus.

I no longer fear Him with slave-like fear, or cower before Him as my judge. He has promised to keep me until the end, and I believe His promise. No one, not even me, is able to pluck me from His hand. I am forgiven, and accepted, and alive and well because of Jesus. I know bright hope and light where I once was a slave to fear and darkness. I know the freedom and liberty of the sons of God, and have the hope that God will restore the years that the locust has eaten. I know the assurance that God has a hope and a future for me, and that His thoughts toward me are not of harm but are of spiritual prosperity and useful ministry. I have the assurance that He will be with me, and that I will share eternity with Him.

I have joy and peace, hope and confidence, love and acceptance, even while I am in deep trials. He is my Father, and I am His child, and I sense Him with me in warm, tender affection. I obey Jesus because I love Him, not simply because I have to, and certainly not so that I can prove my salvation. That is Romanism and extreme Lordship Salvation. Both of them are works salvation. I am saved by grace, and walk by grace and live by grace alone.
More than even this, I have an intimate relationship with Jesus. He is my Friend and Brother, and I feel and know Him with me. I cry openly for love for Him, and feel His smile in my heart. I do not relate to God as though He were a theological entity, but as my Friend and Father. The Spirit of God is with me, and I feel His working and power in my soul. I am alive, brothers, for the first time in years I am finally alive in grace alone. And I am free in Jesus. Free from fear of losing what He said I could never lose. Free from the fear that He will be angry with me, for Jesus drank all the Father’s anger for me – there is nothing left for me to drink. Free from the fear of a man or a group of men. “God never gives us the spirit of fear, for He has put His Spirit into our hearts crying Abba, Father.” I follow God out of love and delight, rather than out of fear and self-doubt. God is my heart, my soul, my life.
I know, I said it too about those who left our church. “He has gone off the deep end into shallow easy Christianity.” How wrong I was. I know the presence and love of God, and I follow Him with a heart of love in a far more real and deeper way than I ever could when I thought of Him as I did at our church. When I sin and fail, He is there to forgive and restore and set me on the path of ministry again. When I fall, He is there to pick me up. For though I may falter in my walk with God, I can never fall beyond His reach, for I am His forever. My heart can be expressed in four Praise and Worship songs that I love:

Give me one pure and holy passion,
Give me one magnificent obsession,
Give me one glorious ambition in my heart
To know and follow hard after You.

To know and follow hard after You,
To run as a disciple in Your truth,
This world is empty, pale and poor
Compared to knowing You, My Lord,
Lead me on and I will run after You.

-One Pure and Holy Passion

by Mark Altrogge

Jesus, Lover of my soul,
All-consuming fire is in Your gaze,
Jesus, I want You to know,
That I will follow You all of my days,

For no one else in history is like You,
History, itself, belongs to You,
Alpha and Omega, You have loved me,
And I will share eternity with You!

It’s all about You, Jesus,
And all this is for You,
For Your glory and Your fame,
It’s not about me,
As if You should do things my way,
You alone are God and I surrender
To your ways.

- Jesus, Lover of My Soul


by Paul Oakley

Hungry I come to You, for I know You satisfy,
I am empty, but I know Your love does not run dry,
So I wait for You, So I wait for You.

Broken, I run to You for Your arms are open wide,
I am weary, but I know Your touch restores my life,
So I wait for You, So I wait for You.

I’m falling on my knees,

Offering all of me
Jesus You’re all this heart is living for.

-Hungry

by Kathryn Scott

Single minded, whole hearted
One thing I ask.
Single minded, whole hearted
One thing I ask.

That I may gaze upon Your beauty, O Lord,
That I may seek Your holy face,
That I may know You in an intimate way,
And follow after You all of my days.

All of life, it comes down to just one thing,
That’s to know You, O Jesus
And make You known.

-One Thing

by Charlie Hall

That’s it; that is my whole heart. It is more than I could ever express to you in a letter. It is Jesus and His love in my heart and soul, forever. Forever God is faithful, and strong, and with us – forever. I have left a man, and am following Jesus. I have left a constricted and legalistic life and opened my heart to God’s love, and have that love flowing out to His children and to the lost. If only I had those 23 years back to give to Jesus’ service! If only I had a dozen lives to give to Jesus, I would gladly do it. One life is far too short.

There are so many of you who have gifts for service, and, like I did, are burying them in the sand. What will you say to Jesus when he asks you what you did with the life He gave you? You will not be condemned to hell, but is the one talent you were given what you want to give back to your Father-God who loves you so much? So many of you could be missionaries, or pastors, or youth ministers, or serve in so many ways with the gifts and abilities you have. Just a quick web search of mission boards will show what they need in personnel, and all of you could easily fit into one of the categories, if only you were not bound to a man and a church. Be bound to Christ alone! Serve Him with the years you have left! He is the God of second chances. If you will follow Him you will be amazed at the life He will give to you!
One last thing. When I returned to college in the fall of 1999 I was on campus one evening well after dark. The moon was high, and the beautiful main building – an old and large four-story former Roman Catholic seminary – was stunning in the moonlight. I was still so amazed that I was back after so many years of the shame of having to leave that I was thanking God for His kindness and goodness. I could almost hear God saying back to me, “See, my child, in all those years I did not forget you. I could never forget you, for your name is carved on the palms of My hands. And just you wait, you haven’t seen anything yet!”
This is what I want to say to you, my brothers and sisters in Jesus. Leave off following a man and a church and follow Jesus alone; you haven’t seen anything yet!

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord,
Plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
Plans to give you a hope and a future.

-Jeremiah 29:11

Your Brother in Jesus,


Richard Damiani

If you want to contact me you can do it by regular mail, or by e-mail at newhopecounsel@hotmail.com. All contacts will be kept in the strictest confidence.

To know more of God’s loving heart for you, read this article, The Father Heart of God.