What is happening to us?
You found out the same way everyone else did, and since then the place that was supposed to be steady has not felt steady. Whatever you are feeling, whether anger, grief, embarrassment, numbness, or all of them in one afternoon, it makes sense.
You have no title here, no meeting to sit in, and no more information than anyone else in the room. That can feel like having no standing to be this affected by it, which is wrong: you gave this church years, money, Sundays and friendships, and losing that is not a lesser loss for happening without a job description attached.
You are reading this page as a member of this church, and also as someone who works here, which means you are carrying it twice. What is written below is true for you too, and the staff-specific weight you carry is addressed on the leadership page as well.
You sit in the pews and in the board room, which means you are grieving this as a member while being responsible for it as a leader. This page speaks to the first of those. The leadership page speaks to the second, and you are allowed to need both.
You brought people here. You told them this was a good place, and some of them came because you said so. Now you are grieving your own loss while feeling responsible for theirs. That was not naive; that was trust, and it was reasonable.
You are grieving a friendship, a family, and a church all at once, and you cannot say most of it out loud, because whichever room you are in, half of what you feel is unwelcome. What is written here is for you too, at whatever distance you need to read it from.
What happened to you is not the same as what happened to the church, even though people may talk about it that way. Your experience is yours. Nothing on this page asks you for your story, and nothing here sets a timeline for you.
You keep replaying old sermons and wondering what was true.
You are not sure whether you can trust the leaders who remain, and you feel guilty for wondering.
Your kids are asking questions you do not know how to answer.
You brought people to this church, and now you feel responsible for their disappointment.
Some Sundays you sit in the parking lot for a while before you can walk in. Some Sundays you do not walk in.
You are angry at people who did nothing wrong, and you know it, and knowing it does not help.
The place you would normally take a loss like this to is the place the loss happened.
Space to say what is true, and to have it heard. Groups with people carrying the same weight, in the same season. Honest teaching about grief, trust, and forgiveness, offered when you are ready for it, not before. And a process that expects this to take months, because it does.
Most of it happens in small rooms rather than from a stage. The teaching matters, but the part people tend to remember is sitting with a handful of others who did not need the situation explained to them first.
It does not mean pretending nothing happened. It does not mean being rushed to forgive on someone else’s timeline. It does not mean your questions are a problem to be managed. And it does not require you to share anything you are not ready to share.
It also does not mean you have to stay. Some people find their way back into this church and some find their way into another one, and we are not keeping score. What matters is that you get to make that decision from a settled place, rather than from the worst month of it.