I'm sure you will all love it and use it as a chance to bash Christianity. I guess this is kind of me sharing awareness of the corruption in the church. Nobody knows the truth except me and the pastor, I'd feel better if it wasn't at least just us. I am a Christian. I have been since I was around 12 years old. I have been going to my current church for 7 years now. I have friends, connections. recently we got a new pastor, and he seemed like a really nice guy. We will get back to him later. 2 years ago, I was in pretty bad shape. this nice rich elderly couple from the church helped me out. I felt horribly guilty that they helped me out of my own mess so when I learned they were going to run the kids program; I jumped at the opportunity to help them with it. I did the majority of everything with the couple just supervising. After a while I realized this was just taking too much time out of my family. Between work and church I didn't really get to do anything with them. Once the school year was over, I resigned. immediately I started receiving complaints from multiple people. I was very popular with the kids and the teachers and they detested my absence. My fatal mistake was to complain about them to my inner circle of friends. Of course the word spread like wildfire and the new pastor heard of it. he approached me one day 2 weeks ago and told me that perhaps I should leave the church for a while; go to some big church in the city where I can just blend into the crowd and no one will expect anything of me. the pastor just told me to leave the church. I was really distraught. I've been here almost all of my adult life. I met my wife here, my kid has known this place his whole life. I didn't want to leave, but if the pastor tells you to leave I mean there's not much you can do. But it gets worse, the pastor must have realized his mistake in telling me to leave and told his inner circle that I had rejected the church instead. That spread like wildfire too and now everyone knows. now everyone treats me like a queer, i can't exactly go around telling everyone the preacher lied and have them believe me so I have no choice but to leave. I tried telling my closest friends the truth and even they were leery. I signed up as a VBS helper (no at-home work involved, just show up) so I have to go through with that, but after I am definitely leaving. I'd be fine if I never laid eyes on that man again. TL;DR new pastor is a sly bastard and told me to the leave then told everyone else I had rejected the church.