Sometimes, in this life, you find yourself repenting for the sins of your past.

Other times, you feel the need to repent for the sins of others’ present.

I suppose I have a foot on each of these paths lately.

I’ve spent a good portion of the past three decades pastoring in predominantly white churches along the East Coast of the United States. They ranged from tiny, unassuming wooden chapels to massive, gleaming megachurches; from hymn-and-robe traditionalism to modern rock show bombast.

Although my theology has shifted substantially in the years since I first stepped into a pulpit or onto a platform, and I’ve long ago put local church ministry in my rearview mirror, I still possess a massive trove of treasures from those years. I was part of meaningful, creative work that I did with great care, I had the privilege of walking with people through the celebrations and devastations of life, and I did so while being held within communities filled with people who genuinely loved me—at least up until the point they didn’t or couldn’t.

I’ve often said that organized religion and organized crime are frighteningly similar: when you’re on the inside, you’re warmly embraced and fiercely protected, but the moment you deviate from the party line, it’s concrete shoes and horse heads in the bed (or, maybe a condescending Facebook post lamenting your eventual miserable afterlife of weeping and teeth-gnashing).

One of the things most people don’t tell you about pastoral ministry is how political a job it is; the number of people you end up trying to placate and please, the small compromises you end up making in a noble attempt to keep an always-tenuous peace among a (hopefully) diverse group, and the way you can easily become beholden to those you are entrusted to shepherd.

All but the last of my churches I left voluntarily, and on good terms, and in that final instance, I had knowingly preached myself out of a job because I refused to make the concessions that I’d previously settled with. Still, I imagine at the time, even most of the congregants there would have told you they respected me and valued my voice. At the very least, I believed they and the tens of thousands of people in the communities I’d departed would have found commonality with me in the worth of every human being, the beauty of diversity, and the teachings of Jesus.That was, of course, until 2016, when hundreds of people in those churches slowly began changing, or maybe they simply began revealing who they truly were all along. Their rigid theological stances were now up for debate, their once-sharply defined ethical lines all softened, and the previously fixed moral goalposts began moving. Ever since, as a minister who genuinely hoped he’d helped people in my care expand their circles of their compassion, jettison toxic theology, and emulate the generous heart of Jesus, I’ve felt a creeping sense of failure.

Social media often allows you to stay virtually connected to people long after you’re geographically or relationally tethered to them. You may not even realize you are still attached at all, until the almighty algorithm suddenly thrusts them in front of you, and you find yourself saying two things to yourself: one, I totally forgot about them, and two, what the hell happened to them?

Every day for the last decade on social media, I’ve seen pastors I served alongside, selfless volunteers from my youth ministries, former students I ministered to who are now grown, and thousands of people from those congregations all fall into the mindless, joyless, death cult for a vile, belligerent serial predator. I’ve watched from a distance as they’ve violently crusaded against transgender people, spewed anti-immigrant vitriol, amplified baseless anti-Science propaganda, and inexplicably rejoiced in trauma to their neighbors.

And even though I know that many of these people had been steeped for years in poisonous, rigid doctrine before I ever crossed paths with them, and that they walked through the doors of my churches carrying the crushing hidden burdens of the voices who spoke hatred into their hearts by their parents and pastors before they could even read—still, I’ve felt partly responsible:Was I not clear enough in my messaging?Did I pull too many punches because I was afraid of the turbulence?Was I too blinded by privilege, self-preservation, or hubris to notice the flimsy veneer of religion covering something rotten underneath?As their pastor, could I have done anything to keep them from throwing Jesus in the garbage and falling prostrate before a monstrous parasite and his miserable movement?

These are impossible questions to answer, of course, just as the ones we’re asking as friends, spouses, partners, parents, children, and siblings are, of those we no longer recognize. I guess we’re all trying to figure out where everything went sideways. Maybe the reality of who the people we’ve loved have become, the ugliness they’ve embraced, the darkness of their hearts, and the damage they’ve shown themselves capable of was all so unthinkable that we couldn’t have prepared for or prevented it. Maybe they were always going to end up here, no matter what we said or did.

But now that we’re here, as a former pastor who every single day sees the sprawling, predatory, hateful congregation so many I ministered to have willfully joined, I only feel a deep grief and the need to apologize to a hurting, heartbroken, and fractured world, for the loveless people from the churches I served who apparently missed the entire damn point.

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