This was originally posted to my Facebook page.

This is an update I would really rather not write. Until recently, Bruxy Cavey was the lead teaching pastor at The Meeting House (TMH) based in Oakville, Ontario. At the end of November 2021, a woman brought an allegation of sexual misconduct to the Oversight Board of TMH involving Bruxy. The Board immediately placed Bruxy on leave, and initiated an independent third-party investigator to investigate the allegations. A few days ago, the Board released the findings of the investigation and asked Bruxy to resign, which he did. Bruxy has posted a confession on his blog (www.bruxy.com).

I am not even going to make the faintest effort to be unbiased in this post, because I can’t. For the past six and a half years, Bruxy has been my main teaching pastor and a heavy influence in my walk with God. In many ways, God used him to flip many of the concepts about God and Christianity that I had held for decades upside down. For that, I am thankful. Facts, though, are facts, and things happen in life that catch everyone by surprise. Like so many others who attend TMH, I am experiencing emotional turbulence, so I won’t talk about my emotions in a public Facebook post. The appropriate place for that is my Home Church (HC), and my huddle group.,

I will, though, talk about what I do know about God. God is all about community. He created the heavens and the earth in community. John 1:1 tells us that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were with God in community at creation. He created people, not scattered all over the place, but in families, towns, villages, and countries — in community. In the Old Testament, the children of Israel fought together, celebrated together, suffered defeat and were enslaved together — in community. In the New Testament, God created the church, a community of faith, of people who believed alike for the purpose of education, encouragement, and evangelism. Jesus ministered in community with a small group of men called the disciples. After He rose from the dead, and the church was established, they worked in community to spread the gospel. Even the promises in the beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-11) are in third person plural.

If you are a part of TMH and are thinking of leaving, now is not the time to break from your community of faith. The people who are part of your community of faith need you to be a part of their community of healing over the next few months. God needs to use your pain, your sorrow, your anger, and your love for Him to encourage, build up, and strengthen His church. Someone recently said that he is not a “Bruxian”, but a Christian. While he loved Bruxy’s teaching, he is a Jesus-follower and as such, his place is to stay with his faith community, particularly during this time of crisis and change.

At least one person has chosen to break from TMH in an effort to bring “justice” for the survivor in this case. I am wondering what kind of justice this person is seeking. It sounds like retributive justice — an eye for an eye, which is the justice of the Old Testament and the Law. In the New Testament God nailed His justice to a cross, which paid the price for the sin of everyone. In John 8:1-11 we read an account of an adulterous woman who was brought to Jesus by a group of men. When Jesus bent down and began writing in the dirt, the men “dropped their rocks” and left. They were going to stone her, but Jesus got in the way — literally. I am no comment about those who broke from TMH at this time to carry out their own crusade for “social justice” as they see it. I do have some questions about their motivations and reasons why they felt it was necessary to divorce themselves from the church, from the community of faith, to be a lone wolf, a lone voice. It is certainly not my place to judge their motives or reasons for doing so, but I also wonder how this helps TMH community heal. When one person breaks from the church community, how does that facilitate the strengthening of the body as a whole, support the leadership that is struggling themselves to move past their own pain, anger, and grief, and offer support to the congregation? I don’t have an answer for that.

If you have persevered and read this rather long post, thank you. My emotions are still raw and in a state of flux. I loved Bruxy’s teaching and I count him as a dear friend and brother in Christ. What he did was wrong, as he himself has noted, but it it is not beyond the realm of human experience. I believe in God’s power to forgive, redeem, reconcile, and restore the fallen.