The Right Way to Leave a Church

Words of wisdom from Kevin DeYoung:

Try to leave graciously. When someone voluntarily leaves a church (not because of a move or a graduation or a deployment) it is usually a painful experience. You’ve probably been hurt or disappointed. Maybe you dislike the new pastor or the new direction of the church. The temptation in these situations will be toward bitterness. You may want to leave with all your guns ablazin’ but the approach that feels good isn’t always the one that is good. Better to err on the side of gentleness and let the Lord repay your enemies. This also makes it easier for you to admit wrong if you should find some down the road.

Tell the pastor you are leaving. This may be the most important point. Please let someone know you are going. You may want people to notice you are gone, and a good elder board will notice, but if you’ve already decided to leave now is not the time for sour grapes. If you tell the leaders you are leaving, they can pray for you. Maybe they can clear up a misunderstanding. Or maybe they need to learn from your experience. Just don’t go silently into that good night.

Leave off a ledge. I got this imagery from a dear member who recently left our church and did so with great grace and magnanimity. He told me that as he thought about leaving he decided he didn’t want to drift away, slowly pulling away and dropping his commitments. He said he’d rather take a leap off the ledge and be fully engaged until the moment when he decided it was time to go. Be in while you are in, and then when you are out, jump right out.

Learn how to kindly and honestly answer the question “Why did you leave?” People will ask you, so figure out your answer. Don’t kill someone’s character or disembowel the whole church with your reply. Don’t lie either. A simple, straightforward answer will suffice. We didn’t agree with the direction of the church. We disagreed with some of the doctrines being taught. We didn’t feel like we could submit ourselves to the authority of the church any longer. Tell the truth, but speak it in the manner you would want the church to speak about you.

Develop a plan right away for how you will look for a new church. It may take you some time to settle in a new place, but start working on your plan right away. Will you visit these ten churches? Or two churches? Will you visit them once or three times? What is important to you (and your family, and God!) in finding a church? Don’t allow yourself to float aimlessly for months and years. Too many church floaters just float away.

Don’t burn bridges. If you were a faithful member of your previous church, you will keep running into those who are still there. You’ll see them at weddings, funerals, open houses, and school functions. Maybe even family reunions! It’s bound to be a little awkward but do what you can to keep the relationships intact. Many of them are worth saving. And you may need them later.

Keep praying and ask others to pray for you. The ties that bind are not broken easily. In some ways they don’t have to. Obviously, the relationship changes when you leave a church, but you should still want what is best for all those you left behind. And hopefully they still care for you. It never hurts to have more prayer.

Why Church Membership Matters

From Jonathan Leeman:

In the last post, I answered the question, What Is the Local Church? That brings us to the next question: what is church membership?
Answer: It’s a declaration of citizenship in Christ’s kingdom. It’s a passport. It’s an announcement made in the pressroom of Christ’s kingdom. It’s the declaration that a professing individual is an official, licensed, card-carrying, bona fide Jesus representative.

More concretely, church membership is a formal relationship between a local church and a Christian characterized by the church’s affirmation and oversight of a Christian’s discipleship and the Christian’s submission to living out his or her discipleship in the care of the church.

Notice that several elements are present:

• a church body formally affirms an individual’s profession of faith and baptism as credible;
• it promises to give oversight to that individual’s discipleship;
• the individual formally submits his or her discipleship to the service and authority of this body and its leaders.

The church body says to the individual, “We recognize your profession of faith, baptism, and discipleship to Christ as valid. Therefore, we publicly affirm and acknowledge you before the nations as belonging to Christ, and we extend the oversight of our fellowship.” Principally, the individual says to the church body, “Insofar as I recognize you as a faithful, gospel-declaring church, I submit my presence and my discipleship to your love and oversight.”

The standards for church membership should be no higher or lower than the standards for being a Christian, with one exception. A Christian is someone who has repented and believed, and that’s who churches should affirm as members. The only additional requirement is baptism. Church members must be baptized, a pattern that is uniform in the New Testament. Peter said to the crowds in Jerusalem, “Repent and be baptized” (Acts 2:38). And Paul, writing the church in Rome, simply assumes that everyone who belongs to the Roman church has been baptized (Rom. 6:1–3). (I'll consider this requirement of baptism further in the next post.)

Church membership, in other words, is not about “additional requirements.” It’s about a church taking specific responsibility for a Christian, and a Christian for a church. It’s about “putting on,” “embodying,” “living out,” and “making concrete” our membership in Christ’s universal body. In some ways, the union which constitutes a local church and its members is like the “I do” of a marriage ceremony, which is why some refer to church membership as a “covenant.”

It’s true that a Christian must choose to join a church, but that does not make it a voluntary organization. Having chosen Christ, a Christian has no choice but to choose to join a church.

Should you join a church?

The short answer is "Yes!"

Take time to check out the latest 9Marks ejournal. The theme this month is church membership. Is it biblical? What does membership mean? What are the costs of meaningless membership?

Is Church Membership Biblical by Matt Chandler

Joining a Church the Ancient Way by Michael Haykin

Church Membership and Contextualization by Ed Roberts

Meaningless Membership by Al Jackson

Twelve Reasons Why Membership Matters by Jonathan Leeman

Check out the entire issue HERE.

Answers for Church Members

There is a new feature on the IX Marks webpage called "Answsers for Church Members."

Here's a sample:

According to Scripture, why should every Christian join a church? Read Answer »

What are some other reasons to join a church? Read Answer »

What should I look for in a church? Read Answer »

I don’t feel like there are opportunities for me to get involved in my
church. What should I do? Read Answer »

What should I do if I disagree with something my pastor said? Read
Answer »

How can I make the most of the preaching I hear every week? Read
Answer »

At such a time...

"At such a time, what should be done by those who love Christ? I think, my friends, that they should at least face the facts; I do not believe that they should bury their heads like ostriches in the sand; I do not think that they should soothe themselves with the minutes of the General Assembly or the reprts of the Boards or the imposing rows of figures which the Church papers contain. Last week it was reported that the churches of America increased their membership by 690,000. Are you encouraged by these figures? I for my part am not encouraged a bit. I have indeed my own grounds for encouragement, especially those which are found in the great and precious promises of God. But these figures have no place among them. How many of these 690,000 names do you think are really written in the Lamb’s book of life? A small proportion, I fear. Church membership today often means nothing more, as has well been said, than a vague admiration for the moral character of Jesus; the Church in countless communities is little more than a Rotary Club. One day, as I was walking through a neighboring city, I saw, not an altar with an inscription to an unknown god, but something that filled me with far more sorrow than that could have done. I saw a church with a large sign on it, which read somewhat like this: “Not a member? Come in and help us make this a better community.” Truly we have wandered far from the day when entrance into the Church involved confession of faith in Christ as the Savior from sin."

J. Gresham Machen

HT: Geneva Redux

Do Evangelicals believe in the church? or What ever happened to ecclesiology?

Periodically I am reminded of the fact that those of us who were raised in evangelical churches often have a woefully undeveloped ecclesiology (theology of the church). The vast majority of what I know about the church has been learned outside of the ecclesiastical milieu in which I was raised. Along with the triumph of consumerism, this lack of understanding about the nature and roll of the church as defined in Scripture is a major factor in the flightiness of evangelicals. We are a generation of church shoppers and hoppers. I have not been in the Philadelphia area long enough to make an informed judgment about the northeast. But I can tell you that in Texas and the lower Midwest it seems to be the new normal for church members to move their membership around as their felt needs change or their expectations go unsatisfied.

Scott Clark from Westminster Seminary California has written two articles addressing what he calls "Churchless Evangelicals." Specifically he deals with the growing phenomena of church attendees who profess faith in Christ but refuse to join a church. His comments are worth considering.

The doctrine of the church (and sacraments) is where most evangelicals, even predestinarian evangelicals, “hit the wall.” They come so far toward the Reformation but no farther. Why? The biblical and confessional doctrine of the church challenges two cultural assumptions of North American evangelicals and two of the most sacred idols of the culture: autonomy, i.e. the notion that one is a law unto oneself, and the evangelical (and liberal) love for a disembodied Jesus.

The doctrine of predestination is inherently antimodernist but one can become a predestinarian evangelical without really confronting the issue because autonomy gets shifted from soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) to ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church). Hunting down human autonomy is like trying grab hold of mercury. It keeps squirting away. So, the autonomy of the churchless evangelical, even after having surrendered to the sovereignty of God in salvation, squirts away to re-assert itself when it comes to the church.

Were these churchless evangelicals to unite themselves to a local church they should have to relinquish their autonomy. They should have to submit themselves not only to a particular expression of the historic church (which is distasteful enough) but they should also have submit themselves to a “church order” (a way of doing things) and to elders and to discipline. Even more fundamentally, they should have to agree and submit to “means” or media of grace, to a human ministry(administration) of the Gospel and the sacraments. No longer can Christianity be a purely private affair. It would now be public and it would entail being accountable to humans and being served by Christ through human ministry.

Read the entire article HERE.

SBC Bravado

Thanks to Timmy Brister for this important post:

"Nobody can tell a Southern Baptist what to do."

"That’s the comment by Darrell Orman, chairman of the Resolutions Committee, speaking to Christianity Today after the passing of the resolution on regenerate church membership.

Tom Ascol’s response:
“That’s a sad reality. Even Jesus can’t tell some Southern Baptists what to do.”

"Am I the only who finds it odd that the chairman of a resolutions committee is on record asserting, ‘You can’t tell us what to do!”? Why, pray tell, does the SBC have such a thing as a Resolutions Committee?

"[Observation 2]
Incoming President Johnny Hunt, when discussing about purging membership roles, said that “few church members are in worship every single Sunday.” But is that rationale not an indication of the very reason why we need to practice church discipline that we may uphold meaningful church membership? So we have few people attending church every Sunday; ergo, don’t purge the rolls. How would that work if we said, “Few church members believe in tithing, so we don’t need to receive tithes and offerings anymore.” Instead of being predisposed to the biblical standard, have we not placated to the current standard and sought justification for our negligence? I have stated elsewhere and will state again that I am hopeful that Hunt will lead the way and inspire pastors in pursuing integrity in church membership. Let’s pray for him and the churches of the SBC, that our reporting will be a reflection of honesty and our repenting will be a reflection of humility.

"[Observation 3]
In their report on messengers at the Annual Meeting of the SBC in Indy, Baptist Press reveals that those under the age of 40 accounted for only 16.22% of those in attendance. That means that more than 4 out of 5 were over the age of 40; nearly 1 in 3 over the age of 60. The 7,277 messengers represented 3,142 churches in the SBC–a denomination with over 44,000 churches. Seven percent of SBC churches were represented in Indy at the annual meeting. Seven percent.

"So going back to the first observation about no one telling Southern Baptists what to do. When the SBC bureaucracy wants to legislate a total abstinence position on alcohol regarding church planters, missionary appointments, or denominational servants, remember that no one can tell Southern Baptists what to do. When you hear denominational leaders policing Calvinism in search committees with arbitrary requirements, remember that no one can tell Southern Baptists what to do. And when the increasing number of empty chairs at the annual meeting lead to redoubling efforts for denominational loyalty, remember that no one can tell Southern Baptists what to do."

Southern Baptists and Church Membership

I am thankful that a resolution on church membership was adopted at the SBC's annual meeting this week. Perhaps it could signal a change in our sloppy accounting. What will be needed however is for pastors like myself to cease worshipping at the feet of our idol: the crowd. Check out these helpful posts (here and here) by Tom Ascol who has been courageously pushing for such a resolution (along with corporate repentance) for at least three years.

Regeneration and Church Membership

Southern Baptists cannot find between 50 and 60 per cent of our members. Southern Baptist Church attendance is less than half of the membership we claim. What is more, many SBC churches are populated with baptized individuals who demonstrate scant biblical knowlege and little, if any desire for holiness. Timmy Brister has posted an excellent and timely excerpt from an article by Dr. James Leo Garret published in 1961. I encourage you to read it.

This is an issue that ought to concern us all. For the sake of numbers too many churches have looked the other way while unregenerate children, youth, and adults were accepted into membership. They may have "prayed the prayer," "walked the aisle," or simply signed a card but were never involved in any process by which the genuiness of their conversion might be tested. I cannot remember how many adults I have counseled with over the years who were converted as adults years after being assured of their salvation because they "prayed the prayer." Even after a life of no spiritual fruit and even ungodliness they were assured repeatedly by well meaning pastors and family members that they were okay because of the prayer they prayed as a child. I continue to encounter men and women raised in the church that hold a profoundly unbiblical worldview and demonstrate almost complete biblical illiteracy. Friends, it is time for a radical change.


"Failure to heed these warnings will result in irreparable harm to our churches. The loss of the conviction of a regenerate church membership would be the abandonment of one of our crucial theological distinctives. We would in essence forsake one of our core tenets that has classically and theologically defined us as Baptists in the free church tradition. We would erase the line of demarcation between the church and the world.

"Our churches would become more worldly and carnal and less holy and Christlike. We would witness and increase in the number of inactive, indifferent, uncommitted, and undedicated members in our churches. In our effort to have larger churches with greater numbers of members, we would contribute to the demise of effective evangelism and witness a decrease in the number of new converts. We would also lose our prophetic voice to speak with biblical convictions on the great moral and social issues of our day."

An Unregenerate Denomination?

In May, John Hammett, professor of theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina made a special plea to the students gathered for chapel to take the issue of regenerate church membership seriously. Each semester a faculty member at Southeastern is asked to speak in a chapel service on a topic of particular interest to them. Dr. Hammett chose well.

The long Southern Baptist tradition of a “pray the prayer” or “walk the aisle” understanding of conversion has left our church rolls full of unregenerate church members. Professor Hammett told the students that the greatest problem facing Southern Baptists is not the surrounding secular culture but a Southern Baptist culture that seems to have lost sight of the necessity of regeneration in church membership. He decried the common practice of allowing people to join Southern Baptist churches without any interview process or means of accountability.

If you doubt the problem is pervasive then consider that Southern Baptists report some 16.5 million members. We often boast in the fact that we are the largest protestant denomination in the world. However, by our churches own reporting, the actual weekly attendance in Southern Baptist Churches is between 35 and 40% of the 16.5 million. This begs the question, “Where have all the Baptists gone?” In our fervency to up the attendance of our churches and inflate the number of baptisms that we report each year, we have too often looked the other way as our churches have received into membership people who show no evidence of genuine conversion. Why is it that some of our largest churches increase in attendance by only a fraction of the total number of the multiple hundreds they report to have baptized each year?

This summer, Southern Baptist churches will baptize God knows how many youth after camp and children after VBS without any genuine attempt to confirm the genuineness of their profession. It would be hard for me to quantify the number of adults I have spoken to who have reported their own spurious childhood conversions. They raised a hand at VBS or walked an aisle at camp and were quickly assured by a well-meaning pastor that they need never question the assurance of their salvation. Only in adulthood have they realized that there never was evidence of a truly changed heart.

Dr. Hammett suggested four reasons why a regenerate church membership is a “battle worth fighting”: It maintains a corporate witness; it insures a corporate health; it produces a love for unregenerate church members; and it honors and glorifies Christ. Further, Hammett proposed that churches compose covenants outlining the responsibilities of church membership that incoming members must sign. He also urged that churches reform their requirements for baptism and restore the practice of biblical church discipline. Wise counsel indeed.

I am astounded that the denomination that often refers to itself as “people of the Book” can get it so wrong in the most fundamental issue of all – regeneration. Contradicting Scripture, some of our most prominent pastors have preached and written that spiritual fruitfulness has no bearing on one’s salvation (Matt 24:13; II Cor 13:5; II Peter 1:10). Rather, they rely on unbiblical slogans like “once saved always saved” and assert that so long as someone prays the prayer they are “in” regardless of the contradictory evidence of an unchanged heart. If you don’t believe me then read Charles Stanley’s irresponsible book Eternal Security.

I am frightened by the notion of ever giving false assurance of salvation to someone who is not truly regenerate. Don’t misunderstand. Christians should not go through life doubting their salvation. Full assurance of salvation is a wonderful, Spirit wrought blessing. I fully affirm perseverance of the saints or the eternal security of genuine converts. But I wholly reject the eternal presumption of spurious converts.


I owe the details of Dr. Hammett’s speech to a May 8, 2007 Baptist Press article by Joy Rancatore.