Yesterday’s New York Times carried a story by Neela Banerjee titled “Sex Offenders Test Churches’ Core Beliefs: Safety Is Weighed Against Tolerance.” The story is about a Congregational church that is wrestling about whether they can welcome and accept child molesters and other sex offenders who want to attend their church once they get out of prison. Can a church minister to both sex offenders and to families with children?

“They are conflicting ministries,” the Reverend Patricia Tummino said about reaching out to sex offenders, to children, and to adult survivors of abuse. Since the late 1990’s, Ms. Tummino’s congregation, the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Middleboro, Mass., has dealt with two known sex offenders. “You can’t be all things to all people.”

I couldn’t agree more with Trish Tummino, my ministerial colleague from two towns over. Yes, former child molesters should be able to find a church to which they can belong; the problem is that they will probably need to find a large church, or a smaller church that does not have a ministry to children. But if you’re in a church with less than two hundred at worship each week (which includes most churches in the United States), there just isn’t enough room for both child molesters and children. Heck, I see this with divorces — when a couple divorces in a church with an average attendance of less than two hundred a week, typically one member of the couple gets custody of the church and the other member of the couple has to find a new church.

The only exception I can think of is the smaller church with at least two worship services, where one of the worship services has no Sunday school and no real accommodation for children — in such a church, a former child molester might be able to attend the child-free worship service. But really, as Trish says, smaller churches cannot be all things to all people — and thanks, Trish, for telling this somewhat awkward truth.

Parenthetical note: Trish was invited to talk about this topic live on MSNBC this morning at 10:45 EDT. Unfortunately, it looks like MSNBC didn’t put the video of Trish’s interview online.