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by Charlie Wolcott

We take this break from your regularly scheduled program to bring you the following…

For those you who follow me, especially on Facebook, you may have noticed that that I have been hinting at some changes going on in my life. Until this week, I’ve only shared what I am going to share here with a few individuals, but on Sunday, I officially made it public. The timing is very interesting too, because on Tuesday last week, Chad Koons wrote a post about the problems people have with a church worship service and have used that as an excuse to leave that church. I had shared with the Worldview Warriors blog writers that I had been seriously contemplating leaving my church that I had called home for 18 years. That time has now officially come.

What I want to share here is part my journey, but also part instructions on when or how you should leave your church. When you’ve been at the same church for 18 years, leaving is not an easy decision. I am a man that appeals to loyalty; I don’t like being fickle. I have been part of three churches total in my life, and I know nothing of church hunting and despise the idea of church hopping. But leading back to last year, I had been chewing on the idea of, “If I were to go to a different church, where would I go?” There were several other churches I had visited and knew people at. I believed they would be good places to go, but I had no reason to go there other than to go there. That would be pointless. But then a window opened.

One of my co-workers at my school and I have grown pretty close. We are two doors apart from each other and we are pretty well on the same page as believers and seekers of truth. We help with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter on campus, and we have hit it off. He knew I went to a church but wasn’t sure where, and he invited me to a church he had recently discovered. Again, having been an active member of the same church for 18 years, regularly involved in different ministries, running the computer every week, etc., this initially blew past me. I had a church. But for some reason, I sensed I needed to take him up on his offer. Again, I was not thinking of changing churches. I was just thinking of visiting. But when I got there and after the service, I knew I had to return. Suddenly my desire to return to the church I had been at for 18 years began to diminish. I returned to my home church for two weeks, and in the middle of that, I had a two-hour talk with my pastor about what I was doing and where I believed I was being led. My pastor has a Kingdom perspective. He knows to let people go when God is moving them, and he gave no indication that I should stay nor questioned why I was looking at moving on.

So, I began going to the new church for three weeks, and I have really been enjoying it. But I needed to properly close the door to my old church of 18 years. This past Sunday, I got to share about my moving on and was “sent off” to where God is leading me. As of this post, I will be attending this new church and taking the members’ class when the next round starts up. By that time, I will know if this church is to be my new “home” or is just a steppingstone to someplace else.

A legitimate question that has to be asked: what does this new church have that the old church doesn’t have? Why would I jump to a new church while living in the same city? As mentioned in Chad’s post last week, there are two legitimate reasons a person should leave a church. 1) The church is heretical, via the worship, the sermons, or the body, and being in that church will only bring death. These are the churches where the Gospel is not preached, and people aren’t being converted nor growing in their faith. 2) God is moving you. I have had some disagreements with my pastor over some doctrines. Sometimes he was wrong. Sometimes I was wrong. But if I really thought that my home church was heretical, a place I needed to run from, I would have simply told my pastor that I couldn’t be there any longer and I most certainly would not have asked if I could share about leaving. As a teacher by spiritual gifting, I’m always going to find error and even at this new church, it won’t take me long to find something I don’t agree with. While I understand the risk of getting critical, I find that my home church is not a danger.

At my home church, I was able to develop my spiritual skills. I had seen church discipline in action. I had heard truth be preached. I had seen people’s faith restored. And we also were known as a place where you wanted to be if you needed physical healing. There were flaws at this church too, and I won’t air the dirty laundry here. It is a good church, but it is not longer “home” for me. Even before my “send off,” I really had no desire to return there. This was the same feeling I had when I moved from Lafayette, Colorado to El Paso, Texas, despite extremely deep family roots (5 generations in Boulder County, Colorado). When we crossed the state line, we weren’t leaving home, we were going home. That’s what I feel now.

It is interesting. When I talked to one of the elders at the new church about the members’ class, he gave me the packet of information about the church and included was an article about how to leave a church. When I read it, I had pretty much done most of the list. I’ll quickly list them without going into detail:

1. Study the marks of a healthy church
2. Were you committed before?
3. Are you submitted to the church leadership?
4. Have you sought to keep the unity of the faith (that is, not causing division)?
5. Do you need to stay to be a voice of change?
6. Have you sought out forgiveness and reconciliation where necessary?
7. Have you spoken to the church leadership?
8. Have you sought the church’s blessing in leaving?
9. Have you considered the grass may not be greener on the other side?
10. Have you prayed?

    I may take some time to break these down later on, but these are good questions to ask yourself if you are looking at leaving a church. I didn’t know about this article, but I mostly did what it asks (a couple really didn’t apply to my situation). A key thing in this article is to promote loyalty and commitment and only make changes when they are necessary.

    God is preparing me for something; I don’t know what it is. I know of four options for me at this new church: 1) I am there to get fed with meat that I need in my walk, that I wasn’t going to get at my old place (that is a personal thing with where I am, not a judgment on their teachings), 2) I need to feed someone there, 3) both of those, or 4) it’s a steppingstone to get me out of the old church for something else. I do not know where this will take me, but I do believe this is a start to God taking the ministry He has given me to do to another level. I do not recommend that anyone just get up and leave their church unless there is a need to. I would not do this unless I knew I needed to. It will be a fun journey to see where God takes me.

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