The Most Welcoming Church Will Let You Leave

Churches are obsessed with doors. Churches bless these doors, paint them red, hold them open, photograph them, and put welcome signs on them. We tell the frightened person, the estranged child, the gay man, the addict, the doubter, the refugee, the person who has been made to feel impossible: Come in; there is a place for you here.

I believe in that sentence. But to the end of that greeting we should add: “and you can leave whenever you want.”