Book excerpt: Most people would agree that the church is an amazing concept—the idea that people who share faith in Christ can worship and serve together and enjoy sweet fellowship that has love, forgiveness, and mutual support as its hallmarks. But the reality is often quite different. When people who are part of the church behave in ways that are thoughtless, selfish, and even vicious, then that shining ideal dims drastically and people get wounded, sometimes never to recover. Suddenly, the one place in the community that should symbolize hope and light becomes a house of horror. Why does this happen? The easy answer is to point an accusing finger at Satan, but what about our own culpability? Troublemakers in the Church: Dealing with the Difficult, the Dangerous, and the Deadly identifies twenty-five types of troublesome church members and offers insights on how to deal with them, while also offering a specific plan for how to build a church culture that manages and minimizes trouble.