Stay and Let Your Light Shine: On Witnessing from Within Rather Than Leaving
Fellowship Discussion Essay | 25 June 2026
Occasion. Charlie and I had a long phone call on Thursday evening. Charlie left Mormonism for a version of Christianity that offered the liberty of Christ he felt was missing in the Mormon culture. Most of his family and many of the people he loves are still inside it. So the question he set before me was this: now that he confesses Jesus as Lord and Savior and the Bible as God’s revelation, and does not elevate the Book of Mormon above the Bible, what does he owe to the people who remain? That is, should he go back among them to witness and draw them to the same freedom he has found? I want to set down the answer we worked toward because I think it is the answer for more people than just Charlie, and because it runs counter to the message most new believers hear.
I. The question Charlie carried
Charlie was repulsed by how badly a religious system can fail when men are put in charge of conscience. The particulars are not what this essay is about, and I will not repeat them; what matters is the lesson he drew. When people place another scriptural authority above the Bible with its promise of liberty, men who profess direct revelation from God will use that currency to justify the usurpation of others’ will and act as the director and final authority in human affairs. Such men take the historical respect accorded to prophets, direct revelators, apostles, and holy men. They replace the free working of God’s Spirit with their voice, declaring themselves the directors of men’s lives, morals, possessions, and affairs. They sit in the seat that belongs to Scripture and conscience. There is no limit to the demands that such self-styled “messiahs” and “messengers from God” can justify. That realization renewed in Charlie an old grief. He loves people who are still inside the system. The question is what he owes them, whether it is worth trying, and the pain of going back into the system and enduring resistance.
He floated the option most ex-members consider, going back as a cultural visitor — the way a secular Jew might show up for Passover, present but no longer a believer, melded in without conviction. And underneath there were more questions. What is the danger? Is the grip so strong on those in the system that resistance is futile? Is there a danger to his soul being in that environment? Is the grip so strong that the loving thing is simply to leave them to find their own way out, and simply stay far away to protect himself and his family from the control and influence?
II. Stay — and put the Bible on top
My counsel to Charlie may not be what most pastors would say. I do not think that people who have come to Christ, who are living inside of a religious community, where their entire social system lies, should leave.
Here is the principle as I have come to hold it, and I have said it in the fellowship before, but I have never heard anyone else say it. When a person comes to genuine faith in Christ within a tradition that teaches a doctrine you believe is unBiblical, my counsel is usually not to leave. Stay and be a missionary, an evangelist, a witness to the light you have found. If you are in a non-Christian religion, put the Bible on top. Keep the relationships you have. Stay in the fellowship and the family that has filled your life. But set the Bible above every other authority and every other book. Establish it as the standard by which all the rest is now judged. Change your own heart first. And then be a light from within, sanctifying the house one person at a time. Your mission is to be a witness to the light until, little by little, the people around you have had their own hearts changed, and the group, religion, cult, family, or ashram is reformed from the inside out.
Three reasons stand behind that counsel. The first is that having a relationship is the precondition of influence. If you are not in a relationship with a person, you cannot influence them. If you are breaking bread with them, spending time, sharing life, then you are able to exert a constant influence. You cannot witness to people you have abandoned. The second is that the people inside the group are, in some sense, literally or functionally, your family. I lived in a yogic ashram for six years. I became close to them. They were like family. This is the norm. After so many years together, I was connected to them like family. To tear yourself out and announce, “I have found the truth; I am going to go find a different family,” the investment in the relationship is lost. The third is what often happens when people leave: they try to establish relationships in a new church where they have no relationships, which may or may not be successful or satisfying in finding others that they connect with. It is possible to end up adrift. The outcome may be trading a flawed family for no family. Paul’s word fits here: “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called” (1 Corinthians 7:20). To bloom where you are planted may require a great deal of effort, and it may or may not yield fruit, but witnessing to the unsaved in your own household is to bloom where you are planted. Every instinct may be to flee. Every person must make that decision. If it is dangerous, then leaving to protect the temple is wise and warranted.
III. The pattern of Jesus in the synagogue
Charlie noted that Jesus went to the synagogue His whole life. “As his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day” (Luke 4:16). He read in it, taught in it, worshiped in it. An honest assessment of the synagogue of His day was that it was practicing and teaching a tradition that was badly off course. It was run by men who would eventually conspire to kill Him. He did not separate Himself from it to be in a more pure fellowship. He stayed inside it and bore witness within it, right up until they tried to throw Him off a cliff.
As Charlie put it, when they pursue you to kill you, that is the time to join another church. Until then, you stay. The faithful witness works from inside the house until the house itself makes staying impossible. And note what Jesus prayed for His own: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil” (John 17:15). The model is occupying, not extraction. I think this passage gives us a clue about the rapture.
IV. Why “the Bible on top” of all others
From what I have learned about it, I don’t believe Mormonism is an evil religion. I’ve learned a lot about Mormonism in the last few months, much of it from Leonard. So far, I have not heard anything that conflicts with Biblical scripture. It sounds like a religion that includes the Bible among its sacred texts, but it places the revelation of the Book of Mormon above the Bible. The Book of Mormon is presented as an undistorted revelation from God, received by a man who presented it as the undistorted revelation of the record preserved in the Bible. It sounds like it teaches moral/Godly behavior, family values, loving God, and following Christ. Because it is presented as being the revelation of a man who was asking what was the, who has added an extra book and come to esteem it above the Bible, with certain consequences that follow from that one move. So the problem is not a list of strange doctrines. The problem is structural, and it is the same structure that defines every closed system: a living human authority, or a continuing word, placed above the settled revelation of Scripture.
That single inversion is what does the damage, and it is worth naming exactly. Once you accept that a man’s new word can supersede the Bible, you have been trained to follow the next man who stands up and claims the word. You no longer get to weigh anything for yourself; you are always waiting on the latest authority to tell you what is true. You forfeit your freedom in Christ and live a man-directed life. This is the common signature of the cult, whatever its name: we alone have the truth, a single source of authority that decides everything, obedience prized above conscience, the hive mind, and the careful habit of keeping contradictory things on separate shelves in the mind so the cognitive dissonance never gets loud enough to force a choice.
Putting the Bible on top is precisely what dissolves that trap, because it restores the floor and restores your freedom. Every claim — including a leader’s, including a revelation’s — is now testable against a fixed standard you did not invent and no man controls. This is the Berean spirit Scripture commends: they “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). It is Paul’s plain instruction: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). It is the liberty Christ died to give: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free” (Galatians 5:1). You do not have to leave the room to be free. You have to put the right book on top.
V. The cost of being the truth-teller inside
I will not pretend this is comfortable. It is not. Charlie has lived the cost of it. He is, by his own description, a contrarian — the boy who says the emperor has no clothes — and he stopped fitting in around sixteen or seventeen and stayed not-fitting for decades. Living inside a closed system while quietly refusing to toe the line is a hard way to exist; people sense you are not with them, and there is friction at every corner. He compared his earlier years inside to living in a brawl.
But discomfort is not a reason to leave. We are not called to an easy life; we are called to be like Him. Without trials, we will not grow. “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth…” Hebrews 12:6 If sanctification were comfortable, it would not be meaningful. He wants us to grow “…unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Ephesians 4:13. If God wanted children, we would need only to say the sinner’s prayer once, and there would be no need for further lessons. be done. But the entire scripture is about growing up into full sonship. “…we are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.” Romans 8:29. But there is no growth of character in that. It’s a start, and a necessary beginning, but you only grow against resistance. The resistance of a roomful of people trying to pull you back is exactly the kind of resistance that grows a person.
I went through something somewhat like that challenge that required me to grow. When I first started counseling people in my Naturopathic practice, I just listened to them, heard them deeply, and they got better. But as I continued in practice, people with increasingly complex personality and relational issues came to see me. It was necessary for me to give stronger counsel to people to help those who were deeply entrenched in their disorders and habits. As a person, I grew up being agreeable to make friends. I just listened, never confronting anyone, because I had no strong opinions, and I just wanted to make them feel good. That didn’t help people grow. I eventually realized that it only makes people feel good, as they are going toward destruction – that is not love. But we should confront people. “…speaking the truth in love…” Ephesians 4:15. Listen before speaking. “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.” Proverbs 18:13. We earn the right to speak by hearing their full story. The spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down easily.
When Charlie was inside Mormonism, the system had a grip on him. Every exchange became a fight because he was still half-hooked. That hook is gone now. He has changed; the grip is broken; he has none of it left in him. Which means that if he went back now, it would not be the brawl it once was. He could say the true thing — even quote Christ in a room that does not want to hear it — calmly, kindly, and free, in a way he simply could not when he was still tangled in it. The witness who has been set free witnesses very differently from the one still struggling to get loose.
VI. Work the edges; build a new nucleus
Strategy matters, and the strategy is not a frontal assault. The center of a closed system is too well defended and too well supported from within; you will not break it head-on, and you will exhaust yourself trying. You go for the edges instead — the outliers, the questioners, the ones already quietly uneasy, the people whose shelves are starting to slide together. You find one like-minded soul, you nurture that friendship, you invite that person into fellowship, and you let a new center form — a small, strong nucleus that can grow and, in time, leaven the whole.
This is not conquest; it is infiltration by love and relationship. And Scripture knows the arithmetic of it: “Two are better than one… and a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12). You are not trying to win a building. You are trying to find the one other person God has already been working on, and to bind your strength to theirs.
VII. Multiply by ones
The great commission spreads person to person, not by broadcast. I have a mailing list that goes out every week, and in all that time, exactly one person — Mike Sherman — ever actually came because of it. The open invitation, just dial in, does not work. What works is a friend who actually talks with you, who then brings another friend who wants in. That is the whole history of our own fellowship: Charlie invited Leonard, and Leonard came. I invited Mike, and Mike came. It moves by hand, one warm relationship at a time.
So the counsel is the same for anyone, anywhere — even a person with no church at all, even someone whose only fellowship right now is a bad crowd. Do not wait to find the perfect congregation. Find one other person, open the Word together on a Sunday, wrestle with the real questions, and invite a friend. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). That is how the culture actually changes — not by everyone funneling into one big church, but by countless small faithful cells, each going and teaching as the Lord commanded (Matthew 28:19-20), until it spreads everywhere. And the most effective form of it is often the least strategic: simply being yourself and sharing honestly. More than one person has come to Christ from something I said when I was not even trying to witness — just being who I am and telling the truth I had found.
VIII. The deeper aim: reconciliation, not one more schism
Leonard has asked me to take up Ezekiel 37 next — the valley of dry bones, and the two sticks that the prophet is told to join: “join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand” (Ezekiel 37:17). The deep work of God in that chapter is the healing of fracture — breath returning to scattered bones, divided houses re-joined into one. It is reunion, not separation.
And that is finally why I counsel staying rather than leaving. To leave the house you were raised in is to add one more fracture to a world already full of them. It creates one more fragment, one more lonely splinter group convinced it alone is right. To stay, with the Bible on top and a changed heart, is to take up the prophet’s posture: to work for the joining rather than the splitting, to be an agent of the re-knitting God does with dry bones. We are not trying to win an argument or to extract ourselves cleanly. We are trying to be present where God is breathing life back into what was broken.
Closing
When you have found Christ and put the Bible above every human authority, the call may be, not to flee the house but to stay in it as salt and light. “Ye are the salt of the earth… Ye are the light of the world… Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:13-16). Set the standard above every man’s word, so that you and everyone around you are free again to test all things. Bear the discomfort as the price of growth. Work the edges and multiply by ones. Stay until staying is made impossible.
We do not abandon the people we love in order to save ourselves. We stay, and we shine, and we trust the God who joins dry bones to do through our quiet, costly presence what no departure ever could.
— Thomas
Renaissance Ministries | Hyperphysics Institute
Of one heart to make Christ King. 1 Chronicles 12:38