Let’s be honest. Too many people move from church to church too often, and often for the wrong reasons.
What are some of those wrong reasons? Here are ten I can think of:
1. There is a person in that church that I don’t like. We just don’t get along.
2. The pastor is not my idea of a good pastor. Too long sermons. He never visits me.
3. Music is not my style. Why can’t we sing the old songs?
4. They really didn’t need to buy that new rug. So many needs in the world and we are investing in “things”.
5. Young people are taking over. We old men have to sit and watch.
6. My Sunday school teacher gets sidetracked from time to time with some fake things.
7. They invite speakers who are not quite in line with our vision.
8. Always talking about money!
9. My best friends went to another church.
10. Too many people who don’t look like me, dress like me, eat like me.
Oh, there’s more, but you know what I’m talking about. Tea tasters, who want the church to be perfect in every way, to meet all their needs and desires. These people need to take a good look at Revelation 2 and 3, and see the kinds of things that were going on in the first century churches. And not once were people told to get out of those churches. Just to hold on Be faithful. Repent if necessary.
Leaving the body of a church is painful for the church and destructive for the one leaving. Take it from someone who knows. Sadly, I have been among those who jump from one place to another. I write these words to warn my brothers that it is not a good practice.
Unless.
Yes, I think there are valid reasons to leave.
Now the above items, and more like them, are in many cases, but not all, things that need to be discussed by a board of elders. Is there a troublemaker in the church? Let’s treat it. Are the young men or women not in their proper places? Let’s talk about it. Is money too big an issue? It’s time to meet someone. But it’s not time to go.
What about valid reasons? When is it appropriate and even necessary to flee, and run fast, from a congregation?
1. When the church is not really a church. I mean, if it’s a congregation of people who can’t trace their ancestry back to Jesus and the apostles, get the hell out of here. Obviously, the cults and Rome are examples here.
2. When the church has become so identified with the current world and culture that it qualifies for separation under the Corinthian command, “Come out from among them and be separate.” We are not to have any fellowship with the world. There are worldly Christians in many churches, true. And there are different stages of worldliness, it is also true. But eventually a church can become so culturally relevant that it is spiritually irrelevant and causes more harm than good. I think it’s time to get out when a discerning Christian sees this.
The church is to be holy, a place of refuge from an evil world. When the church becomes the world, it is technically no longer the church. When church is more entertaining than uplifting, run for your life.
3. When the Bible ceases to be the authority and the doctrine is no longer taught. When experience and feel-good meetings replace clear teaching sessions, it’s probably time to move on. Here again there are stages of progression. Wise believers will see it happen, they will talk to the leaders about it, they will pray. But when this trend continues, the church becomes so wild in its emotional extravagance that it is desperately on its way to the place of evil. You wouldn’t want to invite a visitor here. And any place you can’t invite a visitor to probably isn’t a place you should frequent either.
This list is not exhaustive either. But I think the point is made. Both points, in fact:
1. There are too many people moving. Those who seem to find a problem wherever they move probably is it so the problem itself…
2. Too many Christians have been sucked into fellowships that are apostate, and from this world, not from Christ. They need to take a good look, then take a deep breath, then run a hundred yards out the door to a safer place.