Counting the Cost
For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?
Luke 14:2
Many of us have been taught to count the cost of discipleship. There is a cost to being a Christian, they say. Your life is no longer your own.
For those of us who still identify as Christians, we understand that our lives are dedicated to Christ. We understand that Christ calls us to seek justice, even when it’s uncomfortable. We understand that our faith often puts us at odds with political parties. Our faith calls us to support the people around us – we help them move with our pick-up trucks and fifteen-passenger vans, we bring meals and take care of their older children when they have a baby, we lend them our generator when their power is out.
But there is a hidden cost that we didn’t count on: the cost of leaving Christian Fellowship Center.
Leaving a tight-knit community comes with a financial cost. It’s the cost of hiring movers because there is no longer anyone to help you move. It’s the cost of therapy and medication for mental well-being and specialists to diagnose the chronic health conditions that flared up in an abusive church. And the cost of lost work because even with therapy you’re not as functional as you used to be.
Some people must even count the cost of losing a job and an income. When you work for CFC or CFC-adjacent businesses, your very livelihood is at stake if you leave. A former CFC member alleges that her husband not only lost his part-time income from CFC but also was denied work by an additional employer who still attends the church. She describes the weary process of job hunting:
And when you begin to look for another job, were any of those people your references? Poof. Those are gone, too. You now have a significant gap in your resume both professionally and personally. There is now a legitimate fear that CFC members have been talking to people and your employment pool has been significantly diminished.
There’s the relational cost. Christian Fellowship Center strongly encourages members to only socialize with other CFC people, so when you leave, you have no one. The leaders tell us that we will be outcasts if we leave and they are right. That mechanic friend is no longer friendly. The receptionist at your dentist is now cold and distant. Does your doctor go to the same church? Does your chiropractor go to the same church? Does your tax preparer go to the same church? Prepare to find new people to fill all of those roles.
Your calendar, once full and active and fun, is now empty. All those days of four or five families together–with parents chatting while children are off playing–are over. Gone. No one calls. Homes that once welcomed you in have closed their doors and pulled their shades.
For some of you, the heartbreaking reality is that when your family was given the choice between you and CFC, they chose CFC.
Their love for you was conditional; compliance to CFC was the unspoken part of the contract. Non-compliance turned their love for you to disappointment and eventually rejection. You are no longer welcome at family weddings, funerals, and baby showers. Holidays that were once joyful are now just anniversaries of loss. You spend years wondering who really loved you and who only loved your devotion to them. What you do know is that you are no longer welcome at their table.
Some of you were forced to leave the area altogether. You find yourself alone in a new town, struggling to find a job with no work experience because you spent years at home raising children. Starting all over again is the cost of peace and safety for your family.
Leaving has a hidden psychological cost. You’re afraid to go anywhere because you don't know who you’re going to run into and how they will treat you. What questions will they ask and how will you answer them? You can't even go to the grocery store for a quart of milk without counting the cost of the fear vs milk on your cereal in the morning.
Your identity, once tied to Christian Fellowship Center, is cast adrift. Who are you? What do you really like now that you are free to choose for yourself? What do you really believe as you look at scripture when it is no longer controlled from the pulpit? Survivors from Christian Fellowship described it this way:
At CFC, there is one role for women. My friends and I call it ‘light pink.’ Homemaking, raising children, arts and crafts, chatting together on weightless subjects. One of the costs of leaving is only then realizing how much of your personhood you gave away for all those years — the parts of you that love working with tools, that loved wood bees for the just plain labor, deep theological discussions that made Jesus bigger and more lovely by the time you were done — all those ways you tamped yourself down to be the perfect and well-approved shade of ‘light pink.’ So when you leave, the grieving begins and you realize that is not your color.
Despite the cost of leaving CFC, the cost of staying is so much higher.
We choose freedom. We choose the absence of fear and shame. We choose the delight of trying things that had always been forbidden just to see if they’re fun. We choose the hard work of recovery and healing for the joy of finding out who we really are. And sometimes, we choose to spend our Sunday mornings with a cup of coffee and a good book instead of rushing off to church. Because sometimes Christ calls us to rest and time alone with Him.
