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Hello friends!
I'm still out. If my itinerary proves true, I'm visiting the Route 66 Museum in Barstow, California today. Please pray for Abby, the boys, and me as we finish the journey home by Saturday!
In the meantime, please enjoy this article by my friend Craig Nash, senior editor of Good Faith Media. Craig is a friend of mine, and we went to college together at East Texas Baptist University. His perspective is one I frequently seek out when it comes to broader issues of faith and culture. I hope you enjoy this selection from the online version of their magazine.
Grace + Peace,
Pastor J.T."
Still Choosing Church
by Craig Nash | Apr 21, 2026 | Opinion
In his 2018 comedy special, Kid Gorgeous at Radio City, John Mulaney tells the story of returning to church with his parents after a long absence. He once had to explain to his then-wife about his childhood of going to church every Sunday when she asked him, “Even if you were out of town?”
“Yes, they have [churches] out of town,” he told her.
He then told the audience about how strange it is to have grown up in church but to no longer have any real connection with organized religion as an adult. “I like to make fun of it all day long,” he said. “But then, if someone like Bill Maher [asks], ‘Who would believe in a man up in the sky?’ then I’m like, ‘My mommy [does], so shut the f&%k up! Stop calling my mommy dumb!’”
Mulaney humorously gives voice to something I feel deep in my bones.
I can write passionate, sympathetic tomes about the myriad legitimate reasons why people have left Christian faith communities. From abuse scandals and hatred of “the other” to the unholy alliance between many evangelicals and Donald Trump, people in 2026 cannot be blamed for walking away from church. Even progressive churches, in their failure to name their privilege and renounce their complicity in white supremacy, have given people reason enough to leave.
Furthermore, the reflexive impulse to critique those who leave by blaming them for whatever the church did or by saying, “God didn’t let you down, people did,” is yet another good reason for their exodus. Those responses reveal our need for control and domination, and are desperate attempts to avoid any accountability for the part we have played in their disappointment with church.
At the same time, like Mulaney, I can be the prince of hypocrites when I hear someone else expressing why they have left church by using the same reasons I have articulated above. When others say things about their experiences I know to be true, my shoulders still tighten up, and I feel the need to make the grand pronouncement, “God didn’t let you down, people did!” Or, I want to let them know that they just “haven’t found the right church yet,” as if they are somehow unaware that there is more than one church in their town.
READ MORE HERE...
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