Episode 7: How to Leave Your Church Well

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03.28.2017

How should pastors respond when members are thinking about leaving a church? In this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman discuss how to think about leaving a church wisely. Throughout their conversation, Dever and Leeman explore the nuances of discerning when it’s appropriate to encourage a member to leave a church and when pastors should ask members to stay. They consider the various factors, including doctrinal changes, distance from the church, and which church they’ll move to, that might impact how pastors respond and care for church members.

  • How to Think About Leaving Wisely
  • Acceptable Reasons for Leaving
  • Unacceptable Reasons for Leaving
  • When to Talk to Your Pastors About Leaving
  • Identify Another Church Before You Leave

Show Notes

  • There are wise ways and unwise ways to leave a church. What should we look for in a church? (1:30)
  • What about those who leave for unwise or immature reasons? (2:20)
  • Do you ever forbid people from leaving? (2:50)
  • What about those who leave for a church that denies the gospel? Roman Catholic? Prosperity gospel? Same-sex affirming? (5:25)
  • What advice do you give to a person who’s thinking about leaving their church? (10:50)
  • Should you talk to the pastor? (13:30)
  • How do you leave well, once you decide? (14:20)
  • What are things people do to divide the body as they leave? (15:30)
  • How do you deal with strained or broken relationships as you leave? (17:20)

Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Jonathan Leeman

This is Jonathan Leeman.

Mark Dever

And this is Mark Dever.

Jonathan Leeman

And this is The Pastors Talk.

Mark Dever

Have we ever gotten so much encouragement for so little work?

Jonathan Leeman

I know. It has been encouraging. I guess guys are desperate for stuff to listen to.

Mark Dever

I’m thinking should we be doing like ten of these rather than me working on the sermon?

Jonathan Leeman

No, that’s ridiculous. We’re not exegeting Scripture. We’re just talking about things that hopefully will help pastors do their jobs better, be more thoughtful, mistakes we’ve made, and so forth. 9Marks, if you don’t know, exists to equip church leaders with a biblical vision and practical resources for building healthy churches. Learn more at 9marks.org. Mark, I have two different things we could talk about today. Do you want to go through door number one or door number two? I got two sets of notes.

Mark Dever

Take door number two.

How to Think About Leaving Your Church Wisely

Jonathan Leeman

Door number two. How to leave your church.

Mark Dever

All right, man.

Jonathan Leeman

We talk a lot about church membership.

Mark Dever

Maybe more relevant for you than for me.

Jonathan Leeman

We, why do you say that?

Mark Dever

Stuff your friend about.

Jonathan Leeman

You just throw things out like that and we’re supposed to unpack it.

Mark Dever

Keep going, keep going.

What Should You Look For In a Church?

Jonathan Leeman

We talk a lot about membership. We try to discourage church hopping. Nonetheless, we utterly affirm that you don’t have to belong to any one church. You might pray about going on a plant. You might go to another church. Yet there’s wise ways and unwise ways to leave a church, right? And we’re often pastoring people who often leave well and sometimes leave poorly. What should a Christian look for? Just first things first, Mark. What should a Christian look for in a church?

Mark Dever

The gospel.

Jonathan Leeman

What else?

Mark Dever

That’s the main thing.

Jonathan Leeman

Yep. Anything else?

Mark Dever

Well, I’d like them to have a good understanding of baptism, a good understanding of polity. I’d like them to have healthy, obviously healthy relationships. I’d like to personally find the sermons edifying.

Can You Leave Your Church?

Jonathan Leeman

Do you let people leave your church and join another church?

Mark Dever

Sure, all the time. We just did Sunday night.

Jonathan Leeman

Do you let people leave your church and join another church for immature reasons?

Mark Dever

Sure. Again, I’m sure we probably did Sunday night. I assume that’s generally part of what goes on. And of course, when you say, did you let them leave, it’s the church that votes. My church, Christ’s church.

Jonathan Leeman

Yeah. Does our church let people leave? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For immature, foolish reasons?

Mark Dever

I think you effectively have to. And the Lord knows the truth in that. We can have our guesses.

Jonathan Leeman

Do you ever forbid people from leaving? Does our church ever forbid people from leaving the church?

When Is Leaving a Church Discouraged?

Mark Dever

Not exactly, but kind of, yes. What we do, we’ll tell somebody, if they’re going to leave us to go to a church that preaches a different gospel, then we will, instead of encouraging them, like we would do if somebody says we’ve moved, we want to join a church closer to where we live, or we find our kids are really growing in this youth group, we want to go and just center our lives there. Or we’ve changed our theological opinion of baptism, we want to join the church that teaches this.

In any of those occasions, we would encourage someone that the responsible thing is to leave. If someone is just carelessly and casually joining a church that is at best unclear on the gospel or at worst denies the gospel, we would do anything from discouraging to out and out excommunicating them if they do that.

Jonathan Leeman

Yeah.

Mark Dever

So are we stopping them from leaving? No, we’re not stopping them from leaving. We’re not barring the door. But part of what they’ve covenanted with us to do is to, when they leave this church, to join a church that has the same understanding of the gospel.

So if now they’re going to ally their name, their reputation, which they have partly had for some months or years through us with our reputation, if they’re now going to take that and use that as we understand it, it’s actually against Jesus. Against the gospel at a church that teaches he’s not God. Or a church that teaches he’s really just about giving us everything we want in terms of our physical desires in this life. Well then we take that as a serious affront to the gospel itself and we will in the name of Christ excommunicate such a person who basically is beginning to use their life now to represent that there’s some other way to be saved. That faith alone in Christ.

Jonathan Leeman

If the church is affirming basically God, man, Christ, response, we teach it here. then we’re gonna…

Mark Dever

Oh, we’re gonna accept the resignation.

Jonathan Leeman

Of course, but if…

Mark Dever

We’ll try to help them do it well. It may or may not be wise they decide to leave. That gets very complicated. That depends on each case. I would guess most of the folks who decide to leave our church, when they move to another part of the country, they’re making a very wise decision.

If they leave our church, go to another local church. Again, usually I think they’re making a wise decision. They’re going to one of our smaller church plants or revitalizations, probably closer to where they live. They feel they might connect better there. All good reasons to do that.

Jonathan Leeman

And that’s like the vast majority of the times people are leaving.

Mark Dever

If we have 30 people whose resignations we dealt with this last Sunday night, that would be 28 of them right there.

Reasons to Deny Resignation

Jonathan Leeman

Right. Now, so clearly we would deny a resignation if it was to go to a church that didn’t preach, say, we’re saved by faith alone through grace alone.

Mark Dever

A Roman Catholic church.

Jonathan Leeman

Right. That we would say, ah, hold on, we need to talk about that.

Mark Dever

We would say that you’re going to a church that opposes the gospel, and the elders would recommend to the congregation that the congregation excommunicate the person.

Jonathan Leeman

Now, what’s been difficult lately is some of these churches that are maybe formally affirming sola fide.

Mark Dever

Did you say formerly or formally?

Jonathan Leeman

Formally.

Mark Dever

So they do it in their statement of faith.

Jonathan Leeman

Look at their website statement of faith. They do it on their website.

Jonathan Leeman

There it is, right. But they’re pushing kind of a prosperity gospel.

Mark Dever

Word of faith.

Jonathan Leeman

Word of faith in some form. Name it, claim it.

Mark Dever

In a way they probably weren’t 20 years ago.

Jonathan Leeman

Right.

Mark Dever

But they haven’t changed their statement of faith.

Jonathan Leeman

What do we do with those churches?

Mark Dever

Oh, that’s hard, man. We’re working on that right now. I mean, we’ve got two churches in our area that are quite large that we almost never, but have historically occasionally, lost a person to. And we are trying to figure out what to do. So right now, I think the current thinking is we will get a subcommittee of three elders per church to work on each of these two churches. To try to understand, probably will entail going to a service there.

I don’t know what, talking to the pastor or pastors, members there, trying to get a realistic read on what that church really is about. So, we’ll have to see what happens. But they will come back and we will give one of our issues meetings for our elders meetings over to this issue of relating to these sort of churches in the gray and how we can go forward. Because we don’t want to carelessly mention negatively in a members meeting and characterize negatively another church that has not officially taken a stand against the gospel, that still officially affirms the same gospel as we do. We would be, we loathe to do that, but it may be the right thing to do.

Acceptable Reasons for Leaving

Jonathan Leeman

That’s a hard case. Let me go to more run-of-the-mill stuff. A person comes up to you says, Pastor, I like your preaching. I just really struggle with the music here. I think I’m gonna go and join Church X because they have a style of music that I like better. How do you respond?

Mark Dever

Do I know Church X or not?

Jonathan Leeman

Yeah, you know it’s a fine church.

Mark Dever

Absolutely fine then.

Jonathan Leeman

You encourage them to go.

Mark Dever

I’ll encourage them. It may or may not be the right word, but it just, I’m going to be very sympathetic. Anything to be helpful. Thanks so much for your time here. Always welcome back. That’s probably not the point at which to try to help them to think more materially about how much they’re waiting their preferences for the style of music.

Jonathan Leeman

Somebody comes to you and says, Mark, your sermons are too long. I think I’m going to go to, again, a fine church, this church. You’re going to say?

Mark Dever

Have you been talking to my wife? Have you been talking to the children in the ministry, people? Why do you say this?

Jonathan Leeman

I just can’t concentrate for 55 minutes.

Mark Dever

Yeah, then I say, it’s absolutely fine. The Bible nowhere says you need to do that. Okay. You find a church that, you know, has a sermon size that’s going to be helpful to you.

Jonathan Leeman

If somebody says Mark I think I’m gonna leave this church because you’re a Calvinist. I’m going to go to church where I’m just not continually… I just don’t… I don’t think the way you’re preaching doctrine is right.

Mark Dever

And how long have they been here?

Jonathan Leeman

Let’s say a couple years.

Mark Dever

What took you so long to figure this out? Have I been unclear?

Jonathan Leeman

You don’t preach it every Sunday.

Mark Dever

Oh please.

Jonathan Leeman

But you’ve been preaching through Ephesians lately.

Mark Dever

Yeah, again, fine. If they’re going to go to an evangelical church, I can well understand them preferring to be in a place that they feel more in line that the Bible’s taught.

Jonathan Leeman

I don’t think this youth program is good for my kids. I want to go to this church which has a more built-up, developed youth program, or a more built-up, developed youth program.

Mark Dever

I’m thinking of a conversation like this I have with some good friends who’ve been here really pretty much since I came, and I ask them, so are your sons doing well spiritually? They are growing like weeds. Then I encourage them, brother and sister, go. When they’re out of the home, you can always come back if you want, but by all means, go. Encourage them in the Lord.

Jonathan Leeman

Yeah. What do you say to the person who says, hey, everything in this church, now let’s go to that fine church. Somebody comes to you and says, it’s a friend of yours, you know them well. They say, the church is fine. I mean, they preach the gospel.

Mark Dever

They’re describing our church or another one.

Jonathan Leeman

No, no, no. But I just find the preaching is kind of topical and shallow. Yes, they affirm the gospel once in a while. Is that something worth leaving the church over?

Mark Dever

They’re a good friend of mine?

Jonathan Leeman

Yes.

Mark Dever

They’re asking this to me?

Jonathan Leeman

Yes, they are.

Mark Dever

Well, of course, they’d understand we wouldn’t do anything to manipulate them not to go. We wouldn’t try to coerce them to stay. But I guess I would say, Jonathan, why would you give your life to encourage the guy you’re witnessing to at Starbucks when he comes to Christ to go to that kind of church? What are you thinking you’re doing with your family, your kids, your influence, your relationships? Why would you invest it there? So you may have some good reasons, but you haven’t given them to me. You need to tell me what they are.

Jonathan Leeman

Church leaders become affirming on homosexuality. Do you tell a person to leave that church or stay?

Mark Dever

Leave.

When to Talk to Your Pastors About Leaving

Jonathan Leeman

Let’s think about leaving itself. What advice do you give to the person who’s thinking about leaving a church? They’re still in the decision-making process. What’s the first thing they need to do?

Mark Dever

They need to pray about it. They need to think, do I just not like my current pastor? Is that why I’m thinking about going someplace else? Is there something in his preaching that’s erroneous, that I need better preaching? Are the relationships just not working in the current church? Is my wife not growing in the current church? Do I feel a particular way I want to serve I can’t do here? Have we moved? Do we live now nearer this other church? There could be a host of good reasons.

Jonathan Leeman

So consider the reasons, what do they do then? Talk to the pastor, talk to people?

Mark Dever

Talk to the pastors, talk to any of the elders they’re close to who know the best, would understand them most.

Jonathan Leeman

What if you have misgivings about the teaching ministry? Do you tell the pastor all of those things? Pastor, I just don’t find your preaching compelling.

Mark Dever

I’m sorry, I thought you were asking, do I tell?

Jonathan Leeman

No, no, no. Right now you’re advising the average member. By the way, probably one third of the kind of mailbag questions we get at 9Marks are like, should I leave my church for reason A, reason B, reason C? How do I leave? So we get a lot of these questions. That’s what I’m trying to tap into here.

So now somebody’s asking you, do I tell the pastor all of my misgivings about him? Like I don’t like his preaching. Are you staying or leaving? I’m leaving. I’m planning on leaving. I’ve weighed my motives. I’ve decided, yeah, I think I’m going to go. Maybe I’m still in the decision-making process. How forthright am I with the pastor?

Mark Dever

The better you know him, the more forthright you are. The more he’s confident in his relationship with you, I think you can be quite straightforward. The less you know him, you only see him on Sundays at church, the less you’re probably going to contribute anything to him. Unless what you’re telling him you think is very fixable. Like, pastor, the doors are never open at the church until about 45 minutes after the service starts. We’ve got six little kids, so that’s driving us crazy. So finally we just can’t take anymore, we’re going someplace else. That’s very fixable. But if you’re just saying, like, pastor, you’re just unutterably short. I have a hard time listening to a man who’s four foot eight inches tall. So we just, I’m sorry, we tried, it’s distracting to me.

Jonathan Leeman

Do you hear this one a lot?

Mark Dever

There’s no reason you need to share that with him. Just depends on the kind of thing it is.

Jonathan Leeman

So if the way he preaches or the way he is, just is kind of him.

Mark Dever

Well, if you want to say that…

Jonathan Leeman

Why discourage the man?

Mark Dever

Yeah, if there are hundreds of people or even scores of people that are evidently finding his teaching and preaching edifying and there’s no serious error he’s indulging in, and you don’t find him abusive in his interpersonal relationships in a way that needs to be addressed, then yeah, I would just leave the brother alone and believe the Lord means to feed other sheep through him.

Jonathan Leeman

What do you think of the people who often have the sense of, no, I’m from the Lord, I need to address this before I leave. I’m going to be faithless to God if I don’t confront the pastor over these things before I leave.

Mark Dever

I’d want to be pretty careful.

Jonathan Leeman

I need to be a truth-teller.

Mark Dever

Yeah. I would want to know what those kind of things are and what their sort of credibility in the congregation is. Are they somebody who’s known as pretty flighty? I said some pretty irate things or sudden things that were without context and unhelpful. Or is this like a measured judicious leader for decades in the congregation, known to know the word well, and be godly, gentle, kind, accurate, theologically, biblically, depending on who it is. Yeah.

How to Leave A Church Well

Jonathan Leeman

Okay, now the time comes to leave. How do I leave well? I’ve made the decision, walk me through it.

Mark Dever

I would make sure you just work it with one of the elders or pastors, and try to make sure that you and he are on the same page about how it could best be done. I would certainly, from the time you…

Jonathan Leeman

Especially if there’s responsibilities. I’m teaching a Sunday School, a small group, whatever.

Lay Aside Public Responsibilities

Mark Dever

From the time you decide you are going to go, even if you don’t know where you’re going to go, you need to lay aside all your public responsibilities. Any small group leading, any Sunday School teaching, any activity with the music, any kind of public service. Because those are people that are identified with the church. And if they’re just going to suddenly be gone to go to another church, that’s not encouraging. It’s jarring. So you want to more fade than just vanish publicly suddenly.

Discuss Your Departure With Others

Jonathan Leeman

And I find it’s helpful when people want to talk it through and process the departure with somebody rather than kind of doing all of this anonymously, all of this by themselves, and then as you said, suddenly they’re gone. Like, let the people who you’re detaching yourself from walk with you in that process. Just strikes me as so much more loving. What are things that people do that divide the body when they leave

Mark Dever

Well, again, there’s just an infinite variety of things they can do like that. If they are making accusations about another member of the church or one of the elders in the church, and they’re not addressing those, they’re not saying to work through them, they’re just making these charges as it were, tossing them over their shoulder on the way out the door. Well, that’s not helpful.

They can go and speak to the person directly about it personally, individually, but just to make it so seventeen people at their community group hear them say yeah I just really can’t believe the way Bob treated you know everybody in his class you ever talked to and so we finally just got tired of him being condescending and just decided to go well let’s talk to Bob about that.

Now if you’re in a Methodist church and you just end up disagreeing on infant baptism, if you’re going to go join a Baptist church, well that’s fine. You know, don’t suddenly teach a class on baptism. I mean the Methodist church is not hiding what they think on baptism. Just speak honestly to the minister there about why you feel you need to change churches. And then let him guide you in how best to do that in a way that will not in any way wrongly discourage those saints there.

Jonathan Leeman

Now when people come to join our church, we often ask them in light of Matthew 5, Yeah, are there any broken relationships? Any word to people about how responsible or not responsible they are to do what they can to reconcile those relationships?

Leave When Your Relationships Are Positive

Mark Dever

The best time to leave another church, if you’re going to leave your church, is when your relationships are in good order, not when they’re in disarray and bad order. You know, it’s when the only reason you have to leave is a positive. This is closer to our home. You know, this is Bob’s cousin. We love the preaching. We’re growing so much from the fellowship that we’ve already had with the members who live in our neighborhood. So when there are some positive reasons like that, it’s like, you know, not that we have anything against the ministry of Westside Baptist. We love you, brothers. We just, we’ve got to, we need to go over here near where we live. We can help them.

Jonathan Leeman

Do you ever, as a pastor, do you ever discourage people who come to your church? You discover, oh, there’s some dissension there in the background. Do you ever discourage them to not join your church, but to stay where they’re at and work things through?

Mark Dever

Oh, goodness, yes. Yeah, I mean, the famous story, or the story I’ve told repeatedly, but that is years ago the guy comes up to me after and starts flattering me about my preaching, which doesn’t normally happen right after church on Sundays. And I say, where are you coming from? I mean, you mentioned this other church in the area of another denomination. I said, oh. He said, yeah, I just really want to join your church. And I thought, well, that seems a little odd. I said, OK, well, let’s go talk. So we went to the office, sat down, talked.

And he started complaining about how his pastor at his current church in the area didn’t really show any care or concern for him. And I said, can you give me an example? And he said, well, I didn’t get a call from him this last Christmas, or something like that. And it was literally on Christmas day. And there was no pastoral crisis going on and I can just tell, okay this guy no wonder he likes my preaching, this guy is unhinged you know, and I just said well listen actually I happen to know the pastor at this church and I happen to know he’s a very good pastor and in fact I don’t think I’m as good a pastor as he is so I think you need a better pastor than I am, it’s clear you need a good pastor so you would need to be able to, please by all means, go back to that pastor and try to reconcile with him and work things out with him. And then, if you need a better pastor, you probably don’t want to come here because I don’t think I’m as good a pastor as he is.

Jonathan Leeman

Yeah, I gotcha. So you have those kinds of conversations from time to time.

Mark Dever

I do, I do.

Identify Another Church Before You Leave

Jonathan Leeman

Last area I want to explore here is, how do you instruct as a pastor, how do you instruct your congregation to leave well?

Mark Dever

The things we’ve been talking about. Don’t make the decision suddenly. Don’t make it by yourself. If you’re moving to another part of the country, try to identify a good church before you decide to move. And certainly before you decide where you’re going to live in specific, buying a house, renting an apartment. Make sure that you’ve got a good situation there for church before you go. And then anything that’s unclear or questions, just be talking with your elders, your pastors at your current church.

Jonathan Leeman

What occasions do you take to teach this? Like when do you teach these things? It’s kind of a random.

Mark Dever

Yeah, personal conversations in the CHBC mailbag. We have somebody sending in a question every other week about this. Yeah, I heard that. I did some comments on this exact thing at the members’ meeting on Sunday night.

Jonathan Leeman

I think you do it a lot during members’ meetings.

Mark Dever

Yeah, comments were the pastor at the end of the members’ meeting probably.

Jonathan Leeman

Again, you have 30 people leaving.

Mark Dever

Yeah, resignation. Many for good reasons.

Jonathan Leeman

It’s kind of a good opportunity to say.

Mark Dever

When you get someone who’s leaving not for particularly good reason, you don’t want to shame them, but it brings to mind a category like, oh, we might want to address people who do this. Yeah.

Jonathan Leeman

Your sermons, it seems like you make this application in your sermons.

Mark Dever

Occasionally. I can’t think of it off the top of my head. Occasionally probably, yeah.

Jonathan Leeman

Anything else on the topic, Mark, that I’m not thinking of to ask?

Mark Dever

No, people love the brevity of these conversations. Let’s encourage them.

Jonathan Leeman

Amen.


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