Sadly, there are a lot of people in our churches who aren’t interested in living out loving family like this. I’m going to say something that might be hard to hear: What if we let them leave? I know that goes against all the wisdom of modern church-growth strategies, but it’s exactly the kind of thing Jesus would do. While we design strategies to slowly ease people into Christian commitment and grow attendance at our services, Jesus called people to count the cost from the very start (Luke 14:25–35).

