Leaving A Church

Over the past six weeks of silence on this blog, I have been battling some of the greatest spiritual entanglements of my 15-year journey with Christ. Among these include coming to the conclusion that leaving our church of two years is the best choice for the health and welfare of my family.

While I abhor the idea of leaving a church over the common and relatively small matters, as the relationships with other believers are paramount to one's own growth and maturity (and that of the whole), I compare this matter to abandoning a sinking vessel or bailing from a burning aircraft.

The source of the damage to our church is the worst kind to befall evangelical ministries, especially those "church plants" or start-up ministries such as ours:

I am talking about spiritual pride.

In five years of growth, our small church had over 250 members and a healthy, growing ministry to reach out to the "unchurched" with the vision of being "real, relaxed, and relevant". Having grown up in Calvary Chapel, it followed a similar model, and was immediately something I could relate to. For awhile it was exactly what we wanted, a place where we could connect, get involved, serve, and make a difference. Our children were happy and we quickly bonded with the families in our life group.

The trouble began when a disagreement occurred between our life group leader and the pastor. Then the life group leader's family left the church. Rather than simply placing a new leader in our life group, the pastor disbanded the group entirely and told us to go find new life groups. The problem is, the church's own organizational structure established life groups as the preeminent feature for the church. Sunday mornings are simplified as "celebration service" for the life groups. Now, with seven families shaken up by the changes and without a life group, not surprisingly, all but one of them (mine) left the church over the next few weeks.

Over the next several months, I engaged with the pastor for closure on the matter and placement in a new life group and he placed us in his life group. That was fine until we began to hear about the people who had left the church spoken of in a negative light, in fact some of it was downright ugly. Shortly thereafter, the children's Sunday school classes were cut back and even stopped for awhile as part of a "forced volunteer drive". During this same time, membership began to rapidly plummet. Many families had already started to leave, mostly due to what they perceived to be a stifling level of control as demonstrated in micromanaging every detail in the church’s activities, such as cutting programs in an "anti-programs” campaign (programs like youth activities). Through this, the leadership remained steadfast against any who questioned the establishment. It was the beginning of the worst church experience I have ever had.

The more families who left, the worse it seemed to get. As numbers dwindled from over 250 down to 40, the pastor became visibly affected, and withdrew himself into greater and greater isolation. Soon the church became a pool of disaffected, joyless indifference, and we went simply out of obligation to duty rather than for a passionate encounter with Christ and other believers.

My own breakthrough came through a massive purge of sin that I had been carrying in my life for several years ... I believe this is commonly referred to as "repentance". I had enough of the failings and needed to get right with God because I was literally dying a slow death in my relationship to Christ and buried under the incalculable volume of work at the office and at home. I was working 70 hours a week with two kids and a graduate research project due that I was six weeks behind on. After having fallen into the trappings of addiction to alcohol, I did not have time, energy, or room in my life to mess around anymore. I sat with God for several weeks through repentance and prayer and discovered the singular source of our church’s problems: PRIDE. I took my own share of the responsibility and made a point to publically repent before the men of the church and ask their forgiveness for my own half-heartedness.

Despite these efforts, I was still running into a headwind of greater velocity than my own momentum -- I was unable to gain any ground to effect change outside of myself.

Our pastor had claimed the title of the church under his own name. He built it from the ground-up, and kept it as his own, ran it as his own, and it showed in how he took everything personally and micromanaged every detail with the kind of obsessive-compulsiveness that could occupy a psychology study group for months. The problem with all of this is that the church is NOT his.

The church belongs to JESUS CHRIST.

I believe that God loves our pastor and is working in and through his life, but I also, from what I see gather that may include pulling his house down brick-by-brick until there is a surrender of ownership from the pastor ... to Christ.

The sad thing is I tried very much to relate to the pastor these very things and was rebuffed with great resistance and bitter counter-attack, which is fine because this is ultimately not my fight and I am willing to be wrong. But, in this case, the facts speak for themselves. The interactions between us that followed further confirmed the decision to leave was the right one. I pray for the pastor and hope that he and his family find what they are looking for, but I will do the same for the sake of my family by finding a place where we can enjoy the freedom in Christ that is readily available to all.

Where there is control, micromanaging, manipulation, and an overage of ownership, there lies the chemistry for religion.

I believe the reason the church of Jesus Christ has so many hundreds of denominations is due to this very thing. The Message of Christ has not changed, but the messengers have quarreled amongst themselves for 2,000 years redefining the Message after their own names, to the loss of its perfect intent--to bring us all together in One Fellowship in His Name.

John 13:35 "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

There is a big difference between following Christ and following a religion. Be careful to which one you anchor your life to!