I miss my friend.

I was sorting through my address book making sure I had all my ducks in a row for the birth announcements when I realized how much has changed.  I had trouble wrapping my brain around all of the people in my address book that I have no contact with anymore.  It makes me sad.  When you lose your church, you lose almost everyone you thought you could count on.  Some hurt more than others.  Like my former best friend.  I understand that it is difficult to believe that your pastor is not doing what he should be but three years of a close friendship should have been enough to make her aware that I would never make this stuff up.  I just pulled addresses from our former church directory.  I was using it to get the addresses of everyone who has left.  From that directory alone there are 12 families who were pushed out of the church.  There are more.  20 total to be exact.  The one thing that all of these people had in common was getting on the pastor's bad side.  From there, they either went quietly or stubbornly held on the the belief that things could be made right. (We are in the second category.)  Things went okay for the ones who just left.  The ones who tried to make things right first, well, things didn't go so well for them.  Several of us have been insulted and falsely accused.  We have had our former pastor talk to other pastors, encouraging them to refuse us and make us come back to his church.  Yet...my former best friend still stands by him.  Even with all of her concerns and questions about the leadership that she has had in the past.  People have been kicked out since we left.  I'm not sure what the spin is on that but I don't understand how someone could be so blind.  These people aren't leaving because they are moving, although some moved to get away from our former pastor.  They are leaving because the pastor doesn't like them and he is willing to lie to get them out.  How do you compete with such a smooth-talking "wolf in sheep's clothing?"  So I sit here, mourning the loss of my friend and hoping that she will one day see the true character of the man who is leading that church.  I want that friendship back, but not if it means she believes what my former pastor says about me.  That's not much of a friendship at all.  So I wait and I pray and I hope that someday soon I can share the joy of that friendship again.