I started my surfing journey with a guy I knew from work. We weren’t all that close to start, but we had just met, and we both wanted to learn. He loaned me a board and we walked barefoot from the cars parked in an old hotel in Waikiki to the beach there to hop in and start this thing called surfing. It became something of a ritual to surf together, along with his wife when she wasn’t traveling. Almost every weekend we were out there together, falling, foibling, fumbling, riding, and having fun. We gathered more friends along the way, and we had a good group going. Then the winter came on the North Shore, the waves were bigger, and people started going to different places or not going at all.      There was a good three to four months where every weekend I would send out a blast for a surf at a particular break and time, and I would show and surf alone. Eventually it became clear that if I wanted to progress I would have to go alone, and hope for times to surf with folks together when the chance came.

               My friend who I began with though, I don’t know if he’s been surfing or not really. We haven’t surfed together in more than half a year, and our friendship is hardly present anymore either. As someone who doesn’t make friends easily, nor apparently keep them, it’s been a slow and sad fade for me. I don’t quite know what happened, but it isn’t the first time something like this has happened. It’s easy to get swept up in the thing you love, and sometimes, you end up leaving people behind, or they walk away on their own.

               I wrote last week about eternal friendships and the journeying of the Christian life together, but anyone who has been long on this Christian road knows that sometimes people we knew and loved in the Lord’s house simply walk away. My pastor referenced a new book (that I haven’t yet read) called The Great Dechurching. It is about a full scale retreat of people from churches in America. While some will claim that to walk away from the church is not necessarily to walk away from Christ, it may be prudent to ask, can one love the groom if they hate the bride? Can one continue a firm relationship with the groom if he will not even be in the bride’s presence?

               I don’t know what the book says about the great dechurching, what reasons it may give, good, bad, or otherwise. I don’t know all of the people who have left or their reasons, but there is a sadness in it, a kind of loss that can only be described as a void. While my buddy and I who started surfing together were never crazy close, the distance is like a yawning wound. That wound is far greater for those who have left the church, left the fellowship of our Lord. We hope and pray for their return to the fold, but as John says, those who left us were never amongst us.

               All this to say, that there will be those on this side of eternity who we connect with, believe to be fellows in the faith, and perhaps are, yet they walk away. Their leaving will hurt, the hope of their return should always remain, but we recognize that many are called but few are chosen. Whatever the case of those who walk away, do not yourself walk away. Do not flee the body, not for woundings, not for sadness, not for difficulty. Do not flee the fellowship. There are times to take steps back, to approach things differently, to use discernment, but never to walk away entirely from the faith.

               On the other side of this is the fact that many of the “churches” being left may not be churches at all. To leave a house that is not truly worshiping the Lord is not to leave the Lord but rather to escape a false religion. It is sadly true that many places of worship in America today are not places which worship Our Lord. Rather, they worship wealth, or power, or comfort, or experience, or emotion, or any other number of things. In this sense, the ones who walk away I implore that they would find true churches, places of grounded faith in Our Lord Jesus, people who are really sharing this Christian walk together.

               I have found other friends to surf with, though I miss those who I haven’t been out with in a long while. I am thankful for a good church full of people pursuing the Lord as well, but I have many times seen people walk away, and they are far more sorely missed. I pray for their return, if not to my church, at least to the larger church, the body of Christ. All this to say, that there will be those who walk away. There will be sorrow, but do not let such sorrow stymie future endeavors to build relationships with those fellow believers around you – and do not give up hope that they may return. Certainly Our Lord is able to restore them. He will lose not one of His sheep, no matter how far they wander.