Who hasn't been let down by the Church? Who hasn't had expectations of a people that practice 1 Corinthians 13-type love and then been somehow shunned or even worse, abused? It shows up in Barna's statistics. The Church is hemorrhaging young people and is on its way to oblivion in America while leadership's answer is to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The Church as an institution will always disappoint - like all institutions, it is flawed. Worse still, its structures and systems have grown creaky and
antiquated and irrelevant. They desperately need an overhaul. What is inexcusable is that spiritual authorities should wound people and remain oblivious to the fact.

Henri Nouwen said these wise, wonderfully insightful words about the Church: "The Church often wounds us deeply. People with religious authority often wound us by their words, attitudes, and demands.

"Precisely because our religion brings us in touch with the questions of life and death, our religious sensibilities can get hurt most easily. Ministers and priests seldom fully realize how a critical remark, a gesture of rejection, or an act of impatience can be remembered for life by those to whom it is directed.

"There is such an enormous hunger for meaning in life, for comfort and consolation, for forgiveness and reconciliation, for restoration and healing, that anyone who has any authority in the Church should constantly be reminded that the best word to characterize religious authority is compassion. Let's keep looking at Jesus whose authority was expressed in compassion."