“No one has ever been hurt by THE church. Many people have been hurt by A church. And the difference matters.
The difficulty, of course, is that we see particular churches (“the church particular”) with all their faults, rather than the underlying spiritual reality which is, as C.S. Lewis said “spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners.” Worse, we are drawn to the negative examples. We see the abusive pastor and miss the thousand authentic ones standing behind him or her. We mentally mark the hurtful churches and forget about all the healing ones.”
