Wonderful! I'm doing a write through Roman bible study right now with a small group of folks who have all been hurt by the church. We just started this past week and are still in the first chapter. I wrote a prayer today in response to what I read that was essentially asking God to just prune away all the deadwood in the church - cut it away, all of it. Prune, prune, prune, so that we can have what the church is supposed to be. See, I don't see the decline of the institutional church as a bad thing, something to be sad about. It's a good thing. There's a lot of the church that needs to be pruned - the sexism, the white supremacy, the cruelty, the greed, the addiction to being right, the idolatry. It all needs to be pruned. So that the church can be the church. Living plants and vines need to be pruned from time to time. They need to be cut back pretty significantly - sometimes it looks like the plant is dead. But with the pruning comes new and better life. More vibrant. Healthier. I am grateful to God for the pruning that is taking place and pray for more of it.