Love changes everything

No, this post has nothing to do with Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, it's about church.
My wife and I attend a couple of churches at the moment, and have attended a couple of others previously, even in the short time we have been married.
One of these is local to us, not far from where we live. We enjoy being a part of the wider community than just a Sunday morning celebration, seeing people at the local supermarket, or at the post office, or the train station, or wherever.
The other is based in the city, and is a slightly different group, being 40-50% attended by people who have served time in the prison system, as well as a few volunteers and other interested people.
The other churches we used to attend, we left for our own reasons, which it is not necessary to go into here, primarily because I don't want to hurt anyone who still goes to those churches by upsetting the notion that everything is fine.
But I will say that most of the people we came to feel close to in our time there, once we made a decision to move on, or once the decision was made for us on whatever way, very few people if any noticed we had gone. This was disturbing for many reasons, but the main one being we had been attending for some time: 3.5 years at one church and 12 months at the other.
We have been at our current Sunday local church now for about 18 months, and find it interesting that we are missed even in short times away. For instance, there was one weekend I attended a writing conference, and so was away on the Sunday morning. The following week, one of the older ladies made a point to tell me how much she had missed me, and wanted to make sure everything was okay. And this lady can't even see! She is almost totally blind...but she still missed me.
The other service we attend in the middle of the week. We have been at that church much less time so far, but have already felt in awe of the closeness of the relationships there, and the way in which people there are honest and open about their shortcomings and need for grace, in a way I have never seen in a church.
In contrast, one of our close friends from a previous church said, nearly 18 months after we had left, they hadn't even noticed we were gone.
I think as a church, a worldwide church, we need to start loving each other the way Jesus loves us.
Because, as I have found, love changes everything.