Thank you for this article

people love HEARING about being radical and courageous.  It gets our juices flowing and makes us feel all powerful.  Then we leave the service, get in our cars, pick up some chicken for lunch, go home, and watch Basketball Wives until the T.O. Show comes on, and then the Falcons game.  Then there’s work, and depression about our sucky job, and disdain for our sucky marriage, and then Sunday comes, and we get to be happy again-even if for just a few hours.  And then……..you know the routine.

Here’s what we’ve learned this summer: It’s not organizations with boards and secretaries who record the minutes that change the world.  It’s not even dynamic leadership that successfully leads the board with the secretary who records minutes.  It’s PEOPLE WITH HEARTS BROKEN FOR CHIRST and His people. Before we had 1 service we stopped a man from committing suicide and bought 500 toys and uniforms for school kids in the inner-city.  We didn’t need dynamic leadership, by-laws, and committees to do that.  We just needed to care.

Am I frustrated?  CLEARLY!  Am I overstating the irrelevance of the Sunday morning song and dance?  Probably.  Did people come to Christ and renew their relationship with God because of what Courageous Church did for so long on Sunday mornings?  Absolutely!  But, then what?  Glad we baptized you, glad we helped you believe in church again and feel all warm and fuzzy about your creator, but I’m sorry we failed to actually make the vast majority of you into disciples.

The truth of the matter is, Shaun is simply exhausted.  Pastoring people has been 10 times better than my best hopes and 100 times worse than my worst nightmares.  Unless you’ve done it, you will NEVER understand it.  It looks one way from the outside looking in, but trust me, you don’t know the half.  Pastors are the sickest, loneliest, most depressed people in church.  That’s why they have affairs, that’s why they die at the age of 42 from heart attacks and drug over doses.  That’s why every time you turn on the TV there’s a new scandal, and a fresh news story about the latest greatest to fall from grace.  Taking criticism day in and day out from people who swear up and down they know better is exhausting.  Having people leave for stupid, selfish reasons is exhausting.  The divorce rate for pastors is among the highest of any other group in the country.  Shaun and I have decided we’d like that to not be our story. 

Excerpt from Rai King, wife of Shaun King, former Pastor of Courageous Church.  I love her honesty.  Thank you andrewsikora.com for posting on your site. 

You can (and should) read the rest here: 

http://raiking.com/this-is-probably-a-manifesto-leaving-courageous-church/