Life In a Fishbowl

In my hometown (population 3500), everyone knows everyone. They know all your business, sometimes even before you do. So there was no hiding the fact that my family was involved in a crazy cultish church. The funny thing is, my hometown is dominated by another crazy cultish church that broke off from the Mennonites about 100 years ago. People who are involved in that church run the show, because their ancestors were the ones who first settled that area and founded the town; thus, they own all the land and pretty much everything on it. People who aren't members of that church but are members of the mainstream denominations and the Catholic church aren't the pillars of the community but at least they're accepted and not treated as outcasts. Not so with my family's church. We were the weirdest of the weird. To make matters even worse, there was a church of Christ in our town, but it wasn't "scripturally sound" enough for my dad, so we had to travel 15 miles 3 times a week (twice on Sunday, once on Wednesday night) to another town to go to church. I even had kids ask me, "Why doesn't your family go to a church here in town?" I never knew what to tell them. How could I even begin explaining all the convulted doctrinal reasons for it? We may as well have had targets painted on our backs.