Heath Lambert: This year, ACBC is hosting our Annual Conference on the topic of theology and counseling. At ACBC, we believe that it is the truths of Christian Scripture that inform the solutions to the problems that we face in a fallen world. We also believe that the location for that kind of care is in the local church, and that’s why we’ve partnered with 9Marks on a pre-conference for that annual conference, and we want to invite you to register for this at biblicalcounseling.com. It’s happening on October 3rd, 4th, and 5th. We’re going to have speakers from the 9Marks ministry and speakers from the biblical counseling world to address this issue of caring for people in the context of the church using the truth of God’s word. I hope you’ll join us for that. We want to pick up on this idea of using truth in the context of the local church to talk about involvement in the local church today on the podcast.
[Speaker]: Heath, today’s question comes in light of the fact that many people are wanting to leave their church or are leaving their church. What I would like to know is, should people be doing this? Should this be happening?
Heath Lambert: I think the best short answer to that question is probably not. Here’s the reason I want to emphasize, no, probably not, emphasizing no. I want to emphasize it that way because of the way the Bible talks about the church. There are different metaphors that are used. There’s the metaphor of the body, for example. There is the metaphor of a building, and there is the metaphor of marriage. These are metaphors for things that are to be together permanently. We don’t talk about willingly cutting off our arm when we talk about the human body, we don’t talk about taking bricks out of a building, and we should not talk about tearing a married couple apart. God uses these permanent images to emphasize the togetherness of the church. So I think we exist in a culture that sees the church like it’s a car, like it’s a house, or like its paint color. When you get tired of it, you can just change it. It’s no big deal to go get a new car if you want another one. It’s no big deal to paint your living room blue if you’re sick of white. It’s no big deal to move to another neighborhood if you’ve lived where you are for a long time. We need to realize that the Bible does not talk about the church in that kind of way. The Bible talks about the church and permanent togetherness, and we should be very, very suspicious before we start to think about exercising ourselves from the church. That doesn’t mean there’s never any reason to do it, but we should be really careful.
[Speaker]: So what are some of the biblical reasons that someone might decide to leave a church?
Heath Lambert: Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think there are at least four reasons that are biblical for why someone might rightly leave a church. One really obvious reason is to move away—you’re moving from one town to another. If you think about a text like Acts 18:1-2 it’s talking about Paul, and it says, “after these things he left Athens and went to Corinth, and he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome, he came to them.” So here you’ve got this man who has moved from another city and is now looking to attend a church. Aquila was under an order to leave his town, but we’re aware of all kinds of situations in our world today where your company moves you, or your job situation is not working out, and you’ve got to relocate. I think we can just be really thankful that the Bible thinks for us in very practical terms here—even in light of the emphasis on the permanency of the church. We wouldn’t say that it’s impossible to leave a church if you’re being relocated from your job or from other circumstances.
Another biblical reason that we see people leaving their church has to do with ministry. This is something that was really emphasized in the early church as Christians were traveling all over the place to plant new churches and to be involved in works the Lord was doing in various and sundry cities. In a place like 2 Corinthians 2, starting in verse 12, it says, “Now when I came to Troas for the gospel of Christ and when a door was opened for me in the Lord I had no rest for my spirit not finding Titus my brother, but taking my leave of them I went on to Macedonia.” This is just one little snapshot out of many that we could look at in the life and ministry of Paul and in the Acts of the Apostles, where there is movement around so that the work of the Kingdom can expand, new churches can be planted, new works can be accomplished within those churches and existing cities. So ministry is a reason to leave. If you have an opportunity to go do another ministry, to go be more faithful to the Lord with another ministry someplace else, then we see that as a biblical reason.
A third biblical reason to leave a local church has to do with the faithfulness of the teaching. If you think about a passage like Galatians 1:6-9, it says, “I’m amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel which is really not another only, there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we’ve preached to you, he is to be accursed. As we’ve said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed. So we’ve got a standard there that Christians are not allowed to tolerate teaching that compromises the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Another passage that talks about this issue of the faithfulness of the teaching is in 2 Timothy 4:1-5. It says, “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” So this is a text that teaches that we have to be at churches and under preaching that is faithful to the Word of God. So if you are listening to teaching from the leadership that regularly compromises the Gospel and is stepping away from a faithful proclamation of the Word of God, then I would say that Christians not only could but should leave.
A fourth reason we see in the Bible for leaving a local church has to do with leadership. If the integrity of a church’s leadership is compromised, then this is not good. You think about a passage, 1 Timothy 3:1-7. It says, “it’s a trustworthy statement; if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it’s a fine work he desires to do. An overseer then must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity. But if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for the church of God? He must not be a new convert so that he’ll not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church so that he will not fall into reproach in a snare of the devil.” This is a text that says the qualifications for leadership in the church are character qualifications. We need to see evidence that this man has a growing walk with the Lord, that these men have a growing walk with the Lord. If, over time, you’re seeing systemic compromises of Christian character in the leadership, then you would be duty-bound to go. So these are four biblical reasons.
We need to be honest. If you ever see these happening in your church, the process of leaving a church can be one of the most painful experiences we can go through. It can be one of the most complicated experiences we can go through. I’ve had people say to me that it feels like a divorce when you’re leaving lives, relationships, and ministries that you’ve gotten so close with over the years. I would encourage anybody that’s evaluating along these four lines to get help, to ask wise people to help think these things through, and to only leave as a last resort. If there are concerns about the teaching or the leadership of your church, as painful as those conversations can be, as nerve-racking as they could be, I’d really want to encourage you to try to be part of the solution before you decide that you’re going to bail. But after you’ve worked and endeavored to communicate graciously and winsomely about the problems, then many times you will find that you are in a situation where you just have no other course but to leave to go to a more faithful congregation.
