Maybe you left a church that stopped feeling like home. Maybe you’re still inside one and you can feel legalism in the church creeping in. Or maybe you helped build one, like I did, and you’re wondering where the grace went. This one is for you. It’s also my confession, and it ends where every confession should: with the greater grace God gives the humble.
A Tale of Two Churches
And They Were the Same Church
Bruce Mitchell · allelon.us
Leather in the front row
Motorcycles parked in neat rows along the street on a Saturday night. When I picture the church at its best, that’s what I see.
The summer our little church doubled in size felt like a miracle.
Two hundred people showed up for the first service. In less than three months we were over four hundred, and week after week new faces were coming to the Lord. We added services, moved to three on Sunday so our pastor wouldn’t have to preach three times in a row, and I was asked to support the new Saturday night service.
For a while it was everything a church should be. Raw. Joyful. Alive.
That Saturday night service began just before a Pacific Northwest summer that seemed made for worship. A local biker group started coming so they could justify two rides each weekend. (Somebody should put that in a church growth manual.)
They sat in the front rows in leather and helmets, singing with the rest of us.
I loved it.
We were outgrowing our building, searching for land, and dreaming as we started to build a new church. The new building was gorgeous. Clean lines. Polished wood. A space that said we had arrived.
Arrived.
This is a tale of two churches. And they were the same church.
The first church at Ephesus
Ephesus had a summer like ours. Maybe a better one.
Paul walked into that harbor city around AD 52. He taught in a lecture hall every day for two years, and Luke says the whole province of Asia heard the word of the Lord (Acts 19:8–10).
Then it got wild. People who had practiced magic came forward and confessed what they’d been doing. They hauled their scrolls into a pile and burned them in public, and somebody added up the value: fifty thousand pieces of silver (Acts 19:18–19). I spent a lot of years as an accountant. I can tell you that’s a number somebody wrote down twice to make sure it was right.
The silversmiths who made little shrines for the goddess Artemis started losing business. So they rioted. They packed the theater and chanted for two hours straight (Acts 19:23–34).
That’s a church whose growth showed up in the idol-makers’ books.
And it was a loving church. Paul later wrote that he’d heard about their love for God’s people everywhere (Ephesians 1:15). When he said goodbye to their elders at Miletus, those grown men wept and held on to him, because he told them they’d never see his face again (Acts 20:36–38).
Former sorcerers in the front row, singing with the rest of them.
Paul warned them, though. Standing with those elders, he told them wolves would come in from outside, and that some men from their own group would rise up and twist the truth to draw a following (Acts 20:29–30).
He saw it coming. I didn’t.
When the leather jackets stopped coming
But the vibe changed.
Slowly at first, then unmistakably, the leather jackets stopped appearing. The bikers no longer felt welcome in their riding suits. People began to care more about how things looked and how people acted than about the ragged, beautiful work of bringing broken people to Jesus.
What started as concern for order hardened into rules about appearance and behavior.
Order has its place. Paul asked Corinth for it so the people in the room would be built up (1 Corinthians 14:26, 40). Once order starts deciding who belongs in the room, it’s a gate.
Drift comes in quietly. It comes one raised eyebrow at a time, and then one new rule that sounds perfectly reasonable when you write it down. By the time anyone says it out loud, the front row is already half empty.
Ephesus drifted too. A generation after that tearful goodbye at Miletus, Jesus sent them a letter. It’s in Revelation 2. Read it slowly and the first half sounds like a glowing annual report.
He knew their hard work and their patience. They didn’t put up with evil people. They tested men who called themselves apostles and caught them lying. They had suffered for His name and hadn’t quit (Revelation 2:2–3).
Their doctrine was sound and nobody was skipping the work.
Then comes a sentence every church board ought to read twice.
The Greek is short and sharp: you have left your first love. The New Living Translation spells out who that love was for: “You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!” (Revelation 2:4).
Me or each other.
Jesus, and the people sitting next to you. When one goes cold, the other goes cold with it.
Same city. Same church. Maybe some of the same people who had wept with Paul at Miletus. Somewhere between the bonfire of scrolls and the letter in Revelation, Ephesus had become the second church. And Jesus told them to remember how far they had fallen and go back to doing what they did at first (Revelation 2:5).
A tale of two churches. And they were the same church.
James watched it happen too.
James, the half-brother of Jesus, ended up leading the church in Jerusalem. In his letter he describes a scene every church has acted out at least once.
Two men walk into your gathering. James uses the word synagogue there, the meeting place. One man has a gold ring on his finger and clothes the Greek calls lampra: bright, gleaming, catching the light. The other comes in wearing rhypara. Filthy clothes. The kind you’d wear after a long day on the road.
The shining man gets a good seat. The other one gets told to stand over there, or “sit on the floor” (James 2:1–3).
James doesn’t soften it. He says that kind of favoritism shows our judgments are guided by evil motives (James 2:4).
Our building wore lampra. The whole place caught the light. And slowly the people in leather and road dust started to feel like they were dressed wrong for the room.
Paul asked the Galatians a question that fits right here: “You were running the race so well. Who has held you back from following the truth?” (Galatians 5:7). They had started with the Spirit and with grace. Then they started adding requirements, as if the finished work of Jesus needed a dress code, and Paul called them foolish for it (Galatians 3:1–3).
Men have been adding requirements for a long time. Jesus fought every one of them. On that, I stand with Him.
The founder’s pride
Now the hard part. Mine.
I was one of the founders, and I fell into pride. I was proud of what we had built and blind to the creeping legalism until it was too obvious to ignore.
I noticed the drift when I noticed the bikers were gone. I asked a couple of questions, and one person said, “You know why they left?”
They had been made to feel out of place.
The more I asked around, the more it started to hit me. I had been very involved in our college and young adult ministry, and for a while my mind was elsewhere. While I was looking the other way, the front rows emptied.
From the inside, pride feels like caring about what God built. It feels like protecting the miracle. You look at the polished wood and remember where you started, and you think, look what we did. We had arrived. That’s what the building said, and I believed it. And somewhere in there the we gets louder and God gets quieter.
James, the same brother who warned about the good seat, put it plainly: “God opposes the proud” (James 4:6).
Opposes. The Greek word is antitassetai. It comes from the language of armies lining up for battle. God sets Himself in formation against pride.
I stayed for reasons I could name and reasons I could not.
And now I live with a quieter fear: that my pride may have kept some dear ones from the grace that leads to glory.
I can’t tie a bow on that.
Paul wrote that everyone has sinned; “we all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Romans 3:23). Every one of us. The biker in the front row. The founder admiring the woodwork. The usher, the board member, the one who stopped coming, and the one who stayed and said nothing.
All of us short of glory.
Grace for the one who built it
Go back to James 4:6 and read the first half of the verse, the part we tend to skip on the way to the warning.
I still have my old Ryrie Study Bible, the NASB with the sword embossed on the cover. I’ve carried it for fifty years. Here’s how it reads: “But He gives a greater grace.”
Greater than my pride. Greater than every year I didn’t see what was happening in front of me.
The same verse that says God opposes the proud says He keeps giving more grace. The NLT says He gives it generously.
Paul told the Romans the same thing from another angle. As sin piled up, grace piled up higher (Romans 5:20). There is no stack of pride tall enough to get above it.
Paul knew this from the inside. He planted churches too, and he had more to brag about than any of us. In 2 Corinthians 12 he describes being caught up into paradise and hearing things he wasn’t allowed to repeat. Then he tells us God gave him a thorn in the flesh “to keep me from becoming proud” (2 Corinthians 12:7).
The great apostle needed help with pride.
So do I.
Paul begged God three times to take the thorn away. And the answer came back: “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
My weakness was a blind spot. Maybe yours is too. I needed grace that would walk into that blind spot with me and turn on the light, even when what I saw hurt.
Romans 3:24 picks up right where verse 23 leaves off: “Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight.”
Freely.
The founder who got proud and the rider who walked away hurt both stand in the same line, and the same grace meets them there. Nobody gets a better seat in that line.
I still carry the fear. Grace carries me while I carry it.
And I’ve had to learn this: my pride may have closed a door at our church. Jesus has other doors, and He knows every one of those riders by name.
For the ones who stopped coming
Maybe you were one of the leather jackets.
Maybe it wasn’t leather for you. Maybe it was tattoos, or a past everyone seemed to know about, or the only clothes you could afford, or a question you asked that nobody wanted to answer.
You walked in once and felt the welcome. Then, slowly, you felt it cool.
If no one has ever said this to you, let me be the one: I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the raised eyebrows. I’m sorry for the rules that protected somebody’s comfort and cost you your seat. You deserved the church at its best.
Now hear this part.
Jesus got in trouble for the same people. Luke tells us tax collectors and notorious sinners kept coming to hear Him teach, and the religious leaders grumbled about it. The NASB puts their complaint in one line: “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2).
They meant it as an accusation. I’d hang it over the front door of every church I know.
And Jesus answered them with three stories. A shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep to go find one. A woman tears her house apart for one lost coin. A father runs down the road toward a son who still smells like the pigpen. Every one of those stories ends with a party (Luke 15:3–32).
He’s still out on the road, looking for the rider who stopped coming.
Church hurt keeps its own calendar. Some of you have been away for years, and the thought of walking into any building with polished wood makes your stomach tighten. I understand. You don’t have to fix that this Sunday.
But don’t let one church’s worst season convince you that Jesus wants you in the back row, or out in the parking lot.
The church is the people gathered around Jesus, wherever they gather. Start small. One table. One believer who can sit with your story without flinching. Jesus promised that where two or three gather as His followers, He is right there with them (Matthew 18:20).
Two or three is a church He shows up for.
Maybe you’re still inside a church that’s drifting. You’ve noticed who stopped coming. You can feel the temperature dropping, and you don’t know what one person can do.
You can be the warm seat. You can be the reason somebody comes back next week.
And if you’re a founder, an elder, a pastor, or a long-timer whose name is on a plaque somewhere, hear me: check your heart before you check anyone’s clothes.
That one’s for me first.
Some of you carry a fear like mine. You can name the faces. People who drifted out while you were busy building something, or busy being right.
If that’s you, here’s a place to start.
Bring the names to the Father. Say them out loud. He knows every one of them, and He loves them more than you ever did.
If you can reach one, reach one. A message. A phone call. An apology that doesn’t come with an explanation attached. Some won’t answer. Some will.
Then leave the rest with Him. The shepherd in Luke 15 doesn’t wait for the sheep to find its own way home. He goes. He’s still going.
That’s the long obedience. You do the next small, faithful thing, and you trust Him with what you can’t fix.
Keeping the front row open
When I was in college, I loved Dr. Charles Ryrie’s chapel talks. He’d stand up and say, “If you have the right Bible, turn to page 1628… everyone else turn to John 13:34.”
That Bible is the one I still have. Page 1628 still says the same thing.
Jesus said it at a Passover table, hours before the cross. Judas had just walked out into the night (John 13:30). Jesus had washed his feet anyway. Then He turned to the ones still in the room:
“Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other” (John 13:34).
And then: “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples” (John 13:35).
The world is watching who gets a seat up front.
I keep coming back to four loves Jesus commanded, and I keep them in this order.
Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37). Jesus called that the greatest commandment.
Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39). He said that one is like the first.
Love your enemies (Matthew 5:44). Sometimes that includes the people who made church hard for you. It sits third, and it is never an afterthought.
And love one another (John 13:34). He said it five times in His final hours with them, ending with John 15:17: “This is my command: Love each other.”
There is no exception clause to the love we are to show.
No exception for leather. No exception for helmets or road dust or tattoos. And no exception for the founder who got proud, either.
Peter understood that. Peter denied Jesus three times beside a charcoal fire (John 18:18), and Jesus restored him beside another charcoal fire on the beach (John 21:9). If anyone knew what it meant to need a multitude of sins covered, it was Peter.
So when Peter wrote to the churches, he told them to keep loving each other deeply, because “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). And he told them to take whatever gift God gave them and “use them well to serve one another” (1 Peter 4:10).
Here’s what that can look like this week.
- Look at your front row. Who used to sit there? If you don’t know their names, find out. If you do, call one.
- Sort your rules. Hold every expectation your church has up against Scripture. Some of them are God’s. Some of them are ours. For the ones that are ours, ask the question I ask whenever people pick fights over non-essentials: and that affects their salvation how?
- Use your gift on purpose. That summer, mine was supporting a Saturday night service with helmets in the front rows. Yours might be a pot of coffee, a ride to church, or a hand on somebody’s shoulder when the room goes quiet.
- Sit next to someone who doesn’t match the room. Then go to lunch with them.
Breathe here for a minute.
Ask the Spirit to bring one face to mind. Someone who used to be there. Someone who never felt like they fit. Don’t rush past that face.
What stirs in you right now?
A prayer for both churches
Father,
Thank You for the seasons when it’s obvious You’re moving. For new faces. For full rows. For motorcycles lined up out front on a summer night.
Forgive us for the drift we didn’t notice. Forgive me for my pride. You oppose the proud, and You give a greater grace.
For every rider who stopped coming, and for everyone who walked out feeling dressed wrong for Your house, go after them the way the shepherd does. Bring them to a table where they are received and fed.
For every church that’s starting to shine on the outside and cool on the inside, give us back our first love. Love for You, and love for each other.
Make us the church at its best again. Raw. Joyful. Alive.
Teach us to keep the front row open.
In the name of Jesus, who receives sinners and eats with them,
Amen.
The church is at its best when it remembers that it came in wearing dirty clothes too.
——— ✝ ———
If you’ve read this far, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I write every word prayerfully—not to impress, but to reflect Christ’s love and grace—in theology, yes, but especially in relationship. I pray something here has whispered to you:
You are not alone. You are deeply loved.
Grace. Always grace.
With love, prayer, and expectancy,
Bruce Mitchell
Agapao Allelon Ministries
A voice of love & grace—always grace
Bruce@allelon.us
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“Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love conceals a multitude of sins.” —1 Peter 4:8
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