Names and identifying details have been changed in this true account to protect the people involved.

Something was wrong with Faith Baptist Church. When I planted the church fresh out of seminary, I was short on practical experience but long on enthusiasm. The congregation grew slowly but steadily from a handful of people to a morning attendance of 140.

But now, four years later, there was a deadly malaise of negative, critical attitudes seeping through the church. And it seemed centered in the Bilo family

Claude Bilo, his wife, Vivian, and their two boys, Brad and Toby, had moved to town from out of state two years before. They joined the church and quickly became key leaders in our youth program. In a young church with many new believers, the Bilos were just the sort of Christians I needed. They had been believers for many years and were graduates of a Bible college. Even better, they'd been involved in a new church in their previous community, so they were no strangers to church planting. ...