Still Thinking

A few days back I wrote a brief post on how I was thinking about leaving my church. It was partially in response to other bloggers who were having the same thoughts. My post prompted several very thoughtful responses in the comments section From Jared, Brian, Nancy, hennhouse, Lois, and Dan. It is Dan's comment that I think I want to respond to at length. First, here's what he had to say:

The phenomenon of leaving a church is largely a Western contrivance. It simply doesn't happen in other parts of the Evangelical world. David Wayne at Jollyblogger once asked a Ukranian pastor about this and that pastor said he'd never heard of people leaving one church for another.

One thing I believe the Lord is calling us to in this age is to stay with our churches. Part of our character building as Christians is to work out our differences with other believers. One reason the Church in America is so contentious is that we split rather than work it out. That's not in keeping with the Scriptures.

Good reasons for leaving?

1. Moving to another location out of the area, obviously.

2. Genuine abuse, be it physical, emotional, or spiritual.

3. Rank heresy on a continuing basis. But even then, this should be addressed at both a local and denominational level before one leaves. If one approaches the local leadership and they refuse to budge, then one approaches the denominational leadership. If the denomination refuses to do anything, then one has a good reason to go.

Dan's thoughts cause me to consider a little more deeply why I am thinking of leaving my church. I greatly respect Dan's wisdom (I've been reading his blog for a long time now), but I want to see if I can justify my own thinking on this matter as against Dan's counter-argument. This is not a matter of polemical sword-crossing, as I'm sure Dan understands. I want to emphasize that this is part of a process for me. I'm working out my own thoughts, not insisting on their correctness so much as testing them. In expressing them more clearly (I hope), perhaps I will discover that they simply don't hold up.

Dan, I think it's probably true that a cultural atmosphere in which many Christians seem to accept frequent church-switching as a routine part of the Christian life is not a good thing. The absence of long-term community (as opposed to fleeting and ephemeral instances of pseudo-community) is a real problem in our society. The church should present its own clear counterculture to the fleeting and ephemeral: something stable, long-lasting, and exceedingly patient. [Something like the Roman Catholic Church?!]

The church I presently attend began in the early nineties and over the years it has been almost entirely made up of people who switched to it from other churches. So in a sense we exist, we are what we are, because of church-switchers; some of these switched for the reasons you list above, but most because they were simply hungry and dissatisfied and lonely in their churches, thinking there must be something more to church-life than what they were experiencing.

I came to faith in the middle of life, having had absolutely no church background. The church thing was entirely new to me, and I didn’t know what to expect. I chose a nearby Lutheran church simply because it was nearby, and because it had midweek services (in those days I always worked on Sunday mornings). In other words, for reasons of convenience. I enrolled in an inquirer’s class and eagerly accepted everything I was taught there. My wife and kids saw a change in me and they started coming too. My children were baptized there and all seemed well for a time, but in the end (skipping the many gory details) we chose to leave for Reason #2 above. It was a very dark and nasty scene. We simply needed relief.

But even when our reasons for leaving correspond to one of your 3 requirements, that still leaves us in the position – whether we like to call it this or not – of church-shoppers. Most of the others who left that Lutheran church (there were many) struggled to find another Lutheran congregation. They had been Lutherans all their life, as had been their forebears. They were not about to abandon their historic confession. But me, I had no such loyalty. Anyway, I had come to question some of the things I’d learned at that church, especially regarding the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Having come to faith as a result of an experience that was plainly either madness or a supernatural intervention, I decided to look for a church that did not impose limits and sanctions on the Holy Spirit. But again I can’t say I made a thorough search and prayed the matter through. I attended a Vineyard church, wept like a baby, had hands laid on me, and realized that this was the place I wanted to stay. I was broken and needed healing. This seemed like the place to get it.

That was eight years ago. A lot has changed. The original pastor left. The church transitioned to a new pastor with a new approach. And most importantly, I have changed. [Question: why is it okay for pastors to leave, but not the ordinary members of the church?] It will be no secret to anyone who reads this blog from time to time that I believe that much of the contemporary church, in all its flavors and manifestations, has come unhinged from Christ. The conviction that Christ should be the anchor, the true North, both source and target of all that we do as a church, is something that has gradually become clear to me. Also, I have discovered that there is a counter-movement within the body of Christ to re-identify ourselves as a people of the Gospel. If I’m hungry, that’s what I’m hungry for. It took me a while to figure that out, but I know it now.

And here’s the point, if I knew back when I was first looking for a church eight years ago what I know now, perhaps I would not have chosen the Vineyard. I know also that if I were looking for a church now, I would not choose the Vineyard. I would spend a lot of time looking, I would drop in on a lot of congregations, and certainly more than once for each. In other words, I would make a thorough and patient investigation of the local church options, not leaping to anything without a good deal of thought and prayer.

But here I am. I attend a church in which I’m not entirely in sympathy, but which I have to admit is trying hard and is led by a conscientious pastor whom I respect for many reasons. There is much to honor here, and outright heresy is certainly not being preached. I have no desire to argue anyone into doing things differently, or to convince the pastor that the course which he has forthrightly set ought to be changed. Am I really doing so much harm by asking, might there be a place for me somewhere else where the Gospel message is preached every Sunday, and Christ is exalted above every human agenda? The church I’m in now was a kind of spiritual emergency room for my wife and me eight years ago. We were healed here, and we have been taught much here. But in a world where there is no capital-c Church (for better or worse), but only many churches with many agendas, approaches, emphases, and foci, is it not proper to look for the one in your community that seems (as far as you can tell) to be aligned most truly and forthrightly with what you read in the New Testament?

I resonate to the words of my old friend Lois, one of the commenters mentioned above, who along with her hubby (Hi, Rick!) chose to find a new church. Lois wrote:

We CRAVED the word of God. WE CRAVED the preaching of the gospel. We were starving and wasting away spiritually.... Was it difficult to leave? Yes. Were we sad to leave our brothers and sisters? Yes. Did we have to go? Yes. And the Lord has made up for all that we had to leave behind.

In closing, I need to emphasize once again that I am not so much on the verge of leaving my church as mulling the matter over. I'm giving it a lot of thought. And I value the thoughts of everyone I have so far interacted with on this matter.