A thought-provoking story about a church and a criminal

The prosecution of an ex-policeman convicted of coercing sex from women has brought attention to an unlikely place: a large, liberal and feminist church congregation that offered to oversee his punishment so he could avoid going to prison.

First Congregational Church had never before gone to such lengths for a parishioner – in this case, former Eugene officer Juan Lara, who stalked several women while in uniform and harassed others who rebuffed his advances.

The pastor and other church members wrote letters to the judge, asking that Lara be placed under their supervision. They rallied around his pregnant wife, a church board member. They attended Lara’s court sessions last month.

They said they’d require Lara to do community service, attend spiritual growth meetings and face his victims under an amends-making program known as restorative justice.

“Did this man make very bad and harmful choices? Yes, he did,” Senior Pastor Greg Flint said. “The question is, do we cut him off? Our tradition is, we don’t – at least not based on our reading of Scripture and understanding of what it means to be brothers and sisters in Christ.”