When is it okay to leave a church?

Out of my experience with church conflict, I developed the philosophy that I would not get into a church fight over getting my way. If I disagreed with a direction the pastor wanted to go, I would not create division in the church over that disagreement. If change is possible, I would seek that change. If not, I would leave.

However, if the pastor was preaching heresy, or condoning its teaching, I'm ready to tear the church apart over it. I don't care if I'm the only one, I'm in with both feet. They may kick me out, but not before having to deal with the question of heresy.

 

A church, or the leaders of a church, ought to offer to stand corrected to anyone, even a child, who can come to them and demonstrate from a plain reading of Scripture in context that they are going astray from the Word.

Most leaders are not that humble, however, and will rationalize their behavior in such a manner as to make the individual that comes to them wish that they had not. At least, that has been what I have experienced.

When I was in the pulpit, I made that charge before my people in every place I served. Some took me up on the offer and did come to me with Scripture. When they were correct, I repented and told the church. When they had misplaced some element (often from proof-texting and/or introducing something from the basis of tradition) we talked it out (reasoned together) until the issue was settled. In some cases it could not be settled and one or the other of us needed to leave the church. Depending on the issue, it was often me that ended up leaving, for why should one fight against an entire congregation that has it wrong and is unwilling to act on the plain premises of Scripture?

Examples? "We can only sing songs from the published hymnal." "The only instruments we will allow in the church are a piano and organ." "A deacon cannot baptize or even lead someone to Christ in the absence of the pastor" (For real! This one cost me a pastorate! I was on mission and a deacon had to do "my work."). "I do not have the gift of evangelism, so therefore I will not go out and share faith with the lost." And, many more...

Places were I've been corrected often had to do with my dealing with people -- I'm a bit tough on folks sometimes, and I don't have the best bedside manner... :smilewinkgrin: When a saint comes to remind me that I am to love God's people, care and pray for them, and to forgive as Christ forgave us, I repent of my old habits and get back at it.

 

Of course, there is no stipulation in the Scriptures concening a membership board either. :smilewinkgrin:

 

I've seen them, and a quasi version of them where the numbers are printed in the bulletin. I've even used them myself in smaller churches. Most every church tracks attendance, that is a given, and displaying how many people have attended each Sunday is no big deal, I just don't think that we can make a scriptural mandate out of the practice.

In this regard, we just had the annual meeting of our church. Attendance figures were interesting and I wonder what some of you might think about our numbers... We added 96 (so far) in baptism this year. Our membership is at 967. Average attendance for 2010 (so far) was 2215, and high attendance was 2548. Last year (2009) we had two weeks where we hit 2000 in total attendance. This year (2010) we only had two weeks where we did not go over 2000. Our membership was 742 in 2009. Also, out budget rose 25% in 2010 and will rise 18% in 2011 ($2.75 mil).

How many of you meet or exceed total number of members with visitors?

 

Tom....I like the cut of cloth your from. A truly Christian man! God love you.

 

I didn't arrive at my position because of any goodness in me. I arrived at it following a severely painful conflict in our church. I was not an innocent bystander, either. I was right in the middle of it.

I saw personal friendships split asunder. I saw the most un-Christian behavior from people who were pillars of our church. I saw business meetings turn into shouting matches.

We're still suffering from it 30 years later. We went from a vibrant church with average attendance in the 400s, to where we run about 50-75 now.

There is an upside. Our little church is wonderfully unified. We've learned to disagree agreeably, to let our pastor be the pastor and support him against anybody who thinks they ought to run the church. Our deacons haven't had a conflict in 25 years. Neither has our church.

Now you can see that I vowed never to be part of another church fight unless it was over heresy. Getting my way is not important. Church harmony is a very high priority.

 

By no means am I saying that. I'm relating to a specific situation in which God brought some good out of a bad time. Our church learned some valuable lessons as a result of that experience. The specific conflict was over relocating our church. Those who opposed it relocated to other churches when we moved. That left behind a smaller group, but we were all on the same page.

It would have been much better had we applied those lessons before things fell apart. Maintaining unity and harmony in a church of any size requires constant attention.