How you leave a church says a lot about whether or not you think you are a sheep who needs a shepherd. This might make more sense after looking at some guidelines offered by Mark Dever for leaving a church. These are very good and I would add, very needed. After being in church ministry for 15 years I can honestly say that most people do not follow these steps and it leaves me to wonder if they have ever been taught how to not only leave a church but what it means to be a member.
From Mark Dever:
“Before You decide to leave...
Pray.
Let your current pastor know about your thinking before you move to another church or make your decision to relocate to another city. Ask for his counsel.
Weigh your motives. Is your desire to leave because of sinful, personal conflict or disappointment? It it’s because of doctrinal reasons, are these doctrinal issues significant?
Do everything within your power to reconcile any broken relationships.
Be sure to consider all the “evidences of grace” you’ve seen in the church’s life-places where God’s work is evident. If you cannot see any evidences of God’s grace, you might want to examine your own heart once more (Matthew 7:3-5).
Be humble. Recognize you don’t have all the facts and assess people and circumstances charitably (give them the benefit of the doubt).
If you go
Don’t divide the body.
Take the utmost care not to sow discontent even among your closest friends. Remember, you don’t want anything to hinder their growth in grace in this church. Deny any desire to gossip (sometimes referred to as “venting” or “saying how you feel”).
Pray for and bless the congregation and its leadership. Look for ways of doing this practically.
If there has been hurt, then forgive-even as you have been forgiven.”
If I can speak from personal experience again I can tell you that something I am thankful for is that the vast majority of people who have left the church have done so peacefully, not causing strife with others on their way out. On the other hand, an almost equal majority fails in the first number 2. When pastors are notified it is after they have made up their minds and the typically an email is sent to notify the pastor(s) of their decision. The reason this is problematic is two fold.
First, it fails to submit to and obey the leadership of the church (Hebrews 13:17).
Second, it robs the pastors an opportunity to pray with and shepherd the member through their decision.
It suggests that the individual didn’t think of themselves of a sheep in need of shepherding and they perhaps were never truly submitted to leadership for shepherding. Perhaps their departure reveals that what they were really at the church for was programming or good preaching or something else that met their needs...but not the shepherding.
Leaving a church in a biblical way says more about what it means to be a member of a church than how one leaves a church. This is why this blog may serve the church well and shed some light on what it means to be a sheep in need of a shepherd.
In Christ,
Pastor Kevin
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