Dear Church,

My husband and I received a letter a few days ago from a church we have not attended in almost 3 years. It was a form letter that basically said that since we were no longer attending that they had no choice but to remove us from their membership. They added that every time they thought of us they prayed for us and hoped that we were doing well on our spiritual journey. It was not hand signed but typed signed "The Elder Board".

Many thoughts have gone through my head since reading it. My first response was laughter. Then I shook my head at the weirdness of it and how they really don't get it at all. No wonder our churches are in such bad shape.

So this is my letter to them. I'm not really sending it to them because there is no point. This letter is to all churches out there who are doing things like this letter.

Dear Elder Board,

First of all we would like to thank you for your very "personal" letter (sarcasm). Since it was from the Elder Board we don't even know who actually sent this. Who is on the Elder Board and do you really know us at all? Do we know you?

Second, if you were so concerned about us and our spiritual journey then why did you wait almost 3 years to contact us? This is the first contact you've attempted with us since we stopped attending. You have no idea why we even stopped attending. You didn't care enough to ask.

We wonder what the real agenda is of the letter. If we haven't attended in almost three years do you think we care that we are being taken off of the membership? Why waste the time to print the letter and the cost of the mailing?

Might it possibly be that you thought we would receive the letter and say Oh No! They are taking us off of membership. Let's start going again this Sunday so they won't take us off.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I see this faceless group of men (no women of course) sitting around a table trying to think up ways to build up the people in the seats and someone saying, "Hey let's send out a letter to people who used to attend but don't anymore and see if we can get them to start coming again".

Whatever the motivation for sending this letter it completely astounds me that it was sent at all. It was definitely a waste of time and money on your part. There was nothing personal in it and was not signed by a person; not even the secretary of the church.

There is no point in getting into why we left because you don't care anyway. (For those of you who would like to know I will write that in another blog posting).

In conclusion, thank you for removing us from your membership files. We do not care to be associated with a leadership such as yours. The Word is very clear that we are judged based on what the leadership that we have put ourselves under does. We have not agreed with your decision making for a long time so we are relieved that we are no longer under it. We actually thought that you removed us long ago so this was good confirmation for us.

Again, we are not actually planning to send the letter because it would make no difference. We would be wasting the stamp just like they did.

Someday these churches will wake up and realize that they are not a business. This is not about getting people in the seats to donate more money to build a bigger building with a bigger infrastructure just to teach those people a simple sinners prayer, which does nothing to get them into the Kingdom. Then after teaching them that once they say that prayer they get their "get out of jail free card", they then act just like the world with their sunrise celebrations at Easter and Christmas, trees and gifts and cards and all of the paganism that YHWH hates.

Someday, some are going to pay a heavy price for all of this. It makes me so sad that they are so caught up in their "man" doctrine that they don't see that they are doing the very thing that caused YHWH to punish Israel.

So church, next time just save your time and your stamp. Your unsigned form letter is not going to get me back into the "fold". You wouldn't want me anyway. I would be a lot more trouble than I'm worth in gold to you.