Truth Unites - When Should You Leave Your Church?

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

What kinds of issues are serious enough to leave a church over? What kinds of issues are serious enough to leave a church over? Gavin Ortlund works through diagnostic questions and hypothetical scenarios in considering such a question. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

If you listen to this advice from C.S. Lewis, this will absolutely revolutionize your church experience if you apply this. Don't we want to be the kind of people who are easily edified? Now, here's a question. Should you attempt to help your church in this scenario have less cheesy worship and less boring sermons? And I would say, probably not. When should you leave your local church to go to a different local church? This is a tough question, and I think a really common one right now. There's a lot of turmoil in the church. lots of people are wrestling with this because they may be discontent for some reason at their church, but maybe they feel guilty about that. They say, oh, should I just get over it? But then maybe sometimes the issues are serious enough, you're asking, at what point would this be a reason to leave?

So I'm going to try to give some pastoral advice on this. This is not an exhaustive treatment of it, but I hope it's helpful. What I'll do is first just explain why this is such a tough question, and then we'll work through three things. Seven diagnostic questions to ask, five imaginary scenarios, and then four suggestions on if you are going to leave how to go about that. Why is this such a tough question? I think because we can go to one of two extremes. On the one hand, a huge danger in our culture is consumerism and church hopping. I think most of us feel this and are aware of this.

It's really easy to leave too soon. There's lots of situations where the answer is just hunker down and stay and serve and don't be a perfectionist and don't have a grasses greener on the other side and so mentality and so forth. doubt if there's not a clear reason, just stay put. And that's, we'll try to emphasize that point and try to, from C.S. Lewis, especially, try to challenge anything that is kind of a consumeristic mentality in our hearts. But I have to say, we've got to be careful with that, because you can go so far to that direction. That can be used to beat people up into staying in an unhealthy situation. And by the way, I'm talking about local churches here right now. I'm not necessarily really

thinking of like leaving a denomination or something like that, more a particular local parish. but it is possible to stay too long. There are times to leave. So this is tricky here. We've got to try to figure this out. And sometimes even I'll say this, sometimes leaving isn't even a big deal. There are some unique circumstances where, oh, you've been going to a church for 10 years. It's 30 minutes away. The church is totally doing fine. There's a newer church, church plant, five minutes from your house. You can go and help them and serve them. You talk to your pastor. He says, oh, totally, you should go and help them. No big deal. It doesn't need to be some big, you know, emotional draw. out thing, but usually it is pretty tricky. And so there's no hard and fast rules here,

but let's work through this a little bit. First, let's talk about some diagnostic questions. These are just, I'll kind of fly through these, but these are just starting to get us thinking, and not even answering these questions, but just the kinds of questions we want to put out on the table, some of these we might overlook. The first one is the main one. That's the most obvious thing, and this is what we'll work through with some scenarios in a second, and that is if there are concerns about sin or theological error in the church, how much sin and error is it? Is it heresy and is it a clear and unrepentant sin? And because if you're trying to find a church that has no error and no sin, that church won't exist.

All churches are going to have sinful people and all churches are going to have imperfect theology. Not every sermon is going to be a slam dunk and so forth. So we're trying to gauge here, and this is the whole idea of triage that I talk about so much. But there can be scenarios where it's like really clear. Like the church just puts heresy in its statement of faith or something like that. Or, you know, I've seen scenarios where there's just really abysmal practice of discipline and repentance to where you can have leaders in the church caught having an affair, and yet it's swept under the rug in the name of grace.

Something like this can go on. So it can be real clear moral issues. or doctrinal issues. When I say heresy, by the way, I put out a whole video on this, which my friend Clow, who's the creative director for Truth Unites, made a hilarious thumbnail for. By the way, if thumbnails ever seem odd, me and my wife actually just find them funny. So we'd just like to laugh about them. So if they annoy people, sorry, but it's, I don't know, to me, it's kind of, I just find them funny. But essentially, heresy is something that destroys the gospel itself. It's not just any kind of error. It's a more sense.

serious error. And of course, you want to be asking about errors that are held and reflected by the leadership of the church, not just by random some guy who happens to come to the church, right? So this is the most important question. This is the big one. We're going to come back to this work through some scenarios in a second. But let's start some others that we might forget about. Question number two, am I able to live fruitfully at this church? Sometimes we put all the discernment on what I'm receiving, and we forget to ask about, am I able to contribute here? You know, every Christian has spiritual gifts, or at least one spiritual gift that we are called to use. Are you able to do that at your church? Are you able to build other people up? You want to ask not just what's my experience

on the receiving end, but what's my experience on the giving end? That'd be like that scenario where the guy might go to the new church plant, not because there's something wrong, but just because he has more of an opportunity. That can happen. A third question we can ask is about our family. If you're married and or if you have children, how is your spouse doing? How are your children doing there? Are there times to stay at a church because other members of your family are flourishing there? Probably so. More on that in a second. Question number four, if I were to leave, would the church suffer? This is a big question because, again, this can go so differently, you know? It depends on how connected we are. It depends on the size of the church and the needs of the church. A lot of

departing will be hurtful, and your pastor will probably take it more personally than you realize. But there's other times where leaving, again, it's like if there's a new church plant and your church is doing fine, it could be a no big deal kind of scenario. Not all departures are bad. And so that's something you have to work through. When we left Ohio, we loved that church. It was such a wonderful group of people, and we were kind of happy there. But I felt like God was calling me to something new, and I didn't feel like my departure would damage the church. I didn't feel like there's a three-legged stool, and if I go, then the stool falls over kind of a thing. Great church, great elders, great staff, healthy, you know, I thought they're going to be fine. And so that was a

factor in my thinking about that. But that's always a question to consider is, if I go, is it the three-legged stool kind of a thing, where your things are going to fall over because I'm gone? Another question. Do the leaders of the church fit? 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Simple question. Of course, we're not going to be against asking that question, but sometimes we can forget to ask this. This is the very purpose of these passages to give us the information we need about the qualifications for leaders in the church, specifically for elders or overseers in the church, and they're right there in the New Testament. And so you could have a scenario where the leaders of the church have great theology, but there's abusive leadership, and that's a

different category than heresy. You can have great theology, but terrible leadership. And again, we always got to try to rank issues here. I'm not talking about if the pastors or pastor of the church is just a little bit cold and prickly or something like that. Not every pastor needs to be super warm-hearted. That's not in 1st Timothy 3, right? But they do need to be pastoral. They do need to have good character, and they can't be a jerk and a bully, right? So that's one of the things we we want to think through. By the way, parenthetical comment here, if you are at a church where the leaders of the church do fit with 1st Timothy 3 and Titus 1, they do exemplify those characteristics, tell them so, and thank them for that, and encourage them. The under-encouragement of leaders

right now, and just under-encouragement across the board is epidemic. People, I'm recording this November 24. People need encouragement all the time, a lot. But right now, in the world even more, I think, than usual. It's a brutal, brutal time. If you're wondering if you're leaders at your church or just other people at your church need encouragement, the answer is yes. There's such a deficit of encouragement right now. Ah, I'm going to do a whole video on that sometime. Here's another question. Have I attempted to pray about this and work at my discontentment for some period of time at my church? In other words, this shouldn't be a knee-jerk thing. This should be something. This is not a quick and light and easy decision. On the other hand, I've

seen people stay on and on and on. And, you know, you can get to a point where you just despair of anything ever changing and yet you're still there. And so that is possible. But I think probably the more common temptation is too knee-jerk or quick a response. Last diagnostic question, these are not the only things to ask. These are just, I was praying about it, talking with my wife over lunch just now, just coming up with things to start percolating in our minds as we think about this topic together is, is there any fear in me about a check? change. Why do I say that? I've had times in my life where I think God was calling me to do something. This happened to me when I was trying to decide between two colleges. A secular university,

Christian university, I felt God calling me to secular University of Georgia for a whole variety of reasons. I have no doubt about that now. And I felt like God gave me a verse. I won't go into all the details, but essentially the verse was saying, don't be afraid, and then it gave me a promise. and I did not realize that fear was a part of my decision-making until I got that, don't be afraid, encouragement from the Lord. I think fear can be a part of our decision-making in ways that are subconscious that we're not totally aware of, and sometimes we have to have attention drawn to it. This is just one of these things to be discerning about.

This whole part of the video here, we're trying to put out categories for triage and discernment is kind of what we're trying to do, and fear, you know, saying, is there anything, Am I afraid of anything? Maybe I know what I need to do, and it's just uncomfortable, and I'm hesitant to follow through. And if that's the case, then we just have to lay that fear down and ask the Lord to give us courage to move forward and do the right thing. Let's flesh this out with some scenarios. I have five. I hope these would be interesting and relevant.

They're not based on anything real directly. Pieces of them might be things I've seen, but they're just totally fictional. scenario one is the college student at a different denomination scenario. Okay. You're 18, freshman in college, brand new to a new city, and guys in your dorm are checking out a church, so you go with them, and you really like it. And it fits in naturally. It just, you know, it's close to the school. You have lots of connections there through other people going there. It's a natural fit. But you, this is a different denomination than you. You know, it's a different denomination than you grew up in, and the issues are real issues, like maybe baptism. Maybe it's like you're a

Baptist and this is a Presbyterian Church, and you went to a low church Baptist context, and this is a more formal and liturgical Presbyterian Church or vice versa, or something like that. But they love the gospel, and you're able to grow as a Christian there, and you're able to use your gifts to serve there, and there's not a real clear reason why you wouldn't go. I would say just dive in and take that as an opportunity to learn about another tradition in the body of Christ. Unless there's a clear problem or a reason to consider another church that comes up, I think that can be a good thing. And a factor there is that you're only going to be there potentially for four years at the most, that you're a college student in kind of a unique season of life. You don't have a family that you're

having to think about as well. And the principle there is being willing to triage doctrinal issues in light of the overarching significance of the gospel. I'm sensitive to the fact that some people will disagree with me on this. They'll say, baptism is so important, you need to be at a place where they do it the right way, you know? And I would just say, I think that there are such godly churches on both sides of that issue that that's kind of an overriding consideration in my mind. But I recognize some people will see it differently. Here's the scenario two that is probably an extremely common one for many of us. So scenario four is going to be the one that most of my viewers will relate to. I'm sliding in because I don't know if I'm getting blurry here.

Scenario 2 is the boring sermons and cheesy worship scenario. Okay, you're a dad. You're in your 30s. By the way, none of these are about me. I absolutely love our church. Now I've just cursed to me to say that because I'm a dad with young kids. But our church is amazing. We're so grateful to be there. But a lot of times you find yourself in this scenario where you're at a church. And let's say it's like this. You're a father and you have young kids. at the church, maybe high school kids in the youth group, and you just don't like going on Sundays. You find the sermons boring. You don't get a lot out of them, and you find the worship style to be cheesy. Maybe it's a smaller church that doesn't have the funding to hire a worship director, so someone is just up there doing their best, and it's kind of a struggle to get through, and you

don't feel like you get much out of it. But you are able to serve there. Maybe you're a deacon at the church, and your kids are flourishing in the youth group. They're having a good experience. and the leadership of the church is good-hearted and orthodox. It's just issues in the degree of giftedness. Okay. And ultimately, your Christian walk is basically going okay there. It's just you don't like going on Sundays. And it's just hard to be there. And you just find yourself, it grates on you, and you're complaining about it on the drive home and this kind of thing. And I would say, 99 times out of 100 in that scenario, stay. And just don't, that's not probably a good reason to leave. all factors being considered. I mean, again, someone might look at this a little different, and let me qualify this a little bit. I'm not saying that the boring sermons and cheesy worship

is unimportant. Those issues are, that can actually affect you a lot, and we should value excellence. So I'm not trying to minimize that, but because of the various factors at play, I would say stay at least until it becomes an absolute more of a crisis type issue. and the reason is, a couple of things that you can do in the meantime is, number one, you can work really hard on being easily edified. I'll come back to that in a second. And the second thing is you can complement, in this scenario, it's like the main downside is just the actual Sunday morning experience, which can be complemented with other forms of learning and other forms of edification. You can listen to great sermons on your Monday morning bike ride as well, not as a replacement,

but as a compliment to the Sunday morning sermons at church. So the downside to this scenario aren't like, oh, you're going to be held back and become a not a godly Christian if you stay at this church? I don't think so. More it's like you're just kind of struggling when you're there. So what do I mean by being easily edified? This may be the main thing in this video I'm passionate to say. C.S. Lewis has a letter in the screw tape letters that is about church attendance and it is just pure gold. I want to read from it. So screw tape letters is one demon coaching another on how to tempt his patient. He starts off the letter saying you mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to attend one church and one only since he was

converted and that he is not wholly pleased with it, may I ask what you are about? Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realize that unless it is due to indifference, it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of church going, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for a church that suits him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. What is implicit in this passage, hopefully you see already where he's going with this, and what I'm trying to hit on here, I think the church of Jesus Christ today would be so much healthier if we took this to heart.

So let me press this point a little bit. All other factors being equal, fidelity to one church is very harmful to Satan and I think pleasing to God. And so this is why I say, don't leave unless it's like a clear reason. to. And the reason that C.S. Lewis gives you, he's giving advice. Let me read this from him. Okay. If you listen to this advice from C.S. Lewis, this will absolutely revolutionize your church experience if you apply this. Here's what he says. The search for a suitable church makes the man a critic where the enemy wants him to be a pupil. Boom, that is it right there. If we can take

this to heart, I think this will really help us. Now, does that mean that you shouldn't be critically discerning if heresy is coming from the pulpit? Absolutely not. He says, what he wants, what God wants of the layman in church, is an attitude which may indeed be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise, does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open to uncomment, humble, receptivity to any nourishment. Now you might say, so in other words, there might come a comment from a sermon, you say, I don't actually agree with that part of the sermon. But I'm not dwelling on it. I'm not angry about it. And I'm not complaining to my wife on the way home.

Instead, I'm repenting over the parts of the sermon that did strike my conscience. Right? That's what I think the kind of thing C.S. Lewis is talking about. And here's the passage that is like a bazooka shooting our pride here. He says, this attitude, especially during sermons, creates the condition most hostile to our whole policy in which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul. There is hardly any sermon or any book which may not be dangerous to us if it is received in this temper. Do you know what a, I can't even begin to express how much I love these two sentences. Plattitudes becoming audible to the human soul because of humility. A platitude, of course, is something obvious or trite, maybe something that's been said so much that it's not meaningful

anymore, like at a funeral, if someone says, well, he's in a better place. You might kind of roll your eyes because people just always say that, you know. And Lewis is saying, God wants us to be able to be edified by true platitudes. So imagine sitting in a church. Imagine a church where everybody is characterized by this. This could not be more beautiful and more wonderful. The preacher gets up and he says, the sermon today is from John 316. And the theme of the sermon is, God loves you. And let me just say that again right out of the gate to emphasize that upon your heart this morning. God loves you. Now, instead of people leaning back, you know, leaning back in their pew, folding their arms and thinking, well, let's see how he's going to do this week.

The Holy Spirit is speaking to hearts and ministering to hearts. And people are saying, wow, God loves me. Another person is saying, God loves me. Another person who feels particularly destitute over sins in their life is saying, God loves me. Do you see the beauty of it? this, don't we want to be the kind of people who are easily edified? Now, I want to be careful with this because a sermon can get so boring that doesn't even have any platitudes, right? And I'm not trying to minimize the importance of excellence, edifying sermons, excellent worship, and so forth.

Again, this is talking about orthodox, good-hearted, but just less skillful preaching and worship leading and so forth. Now, here's a question. Should you attempt to help your church in this scenario, have less cheesy worship and less boring sermons. And I would say, probably not. And the reason is, not that that isn't important, and it would be good if that could be addressed, but because it's unlikely to succeed. Usually, when the sermons are boring and the worship is cheesy, it's not the kind of thing that can be fixed by someone just saying so. And it might be received poorly. Now, there can be exceptions to this, like if you have a leadership role in the church, or if you're asked for your opinion, or if you have a really close relationship with the pastor

or the worship leader, or if they're exceptionally humble and receptive, or if you're exceptionally tactful, or if the problem is a really specific issue that can be addressed relatively easily, like the drums are way too loud, and so you just don't have drums anymore and the problem to solve, like something like that maybe. But almost always, it's more likely to lead to conflict or discouragement than actually fixing the problem if you just give a generic criticism like that, at the very least, be very careful about that. All right, here's a third scenario. Let's call this the Pastors Fired Without Explanation scenario.

You've been at a church for 30 years. You got saved there and baptized as a college student. You're now a single mom there. You've never even considered going to any other church. It's a neighborhood church. You live on the same street as the church. It's all the church you've ever known. This is why these situations can be so painful.

This church has changed a lot over the years. Over the last few years, the elder council has had a lot of conflict. It's been confusing. There's not transparency. The net effect of everything is confusion. Five years ago, they fired the senior pastor and another pastor, and it was kind of unclear what the reason was. It was kind of like ambiguous after the fact.

You're kind of like, why did they do that again? now they fired another pastor as well, except they didn't say they fired him. They framed it as if it was mutual. You're kind of suspicious. Like what's going on? A lot of other people have left the church, but you feel like, well, I don't want to be that person who leaves just when things get tough, right? I don't want to leave too soon, so I'm praying, I'm thinking I'm trying to work through this. There's no bad doctrine. There's no heresy. It's still a totally orthodox church. on the surface, things are fine in terms of like the doctrine being preached and so forth, but there's just this conflict and leadership issues. And so you meet with the elders and you try

to understand and you're just trying to get information. And not only is there not clarity about why pastors are getting fired, but now they are portraying you as being unruly for simply asking the questions. And as time goes by, what ultimately becomes clear is that there is a pretty deep dysfunction in the leadership of the church. And you don't have any hope that it can get better. Now, I would say this is the scenario that is starting to get into the territory where you're saying, okay, I could definitely see leaving this church with a clean conscience and so forth. Now, even here, I think there can be nuance. It's not like this is a math problem, right? I mean, you want to be prayerful. You want to consider lots of different factors. Maybe there's a

new pastor who's going to come in and maybe there's, maybe there is hope it could change and so forth, but this is definitely the kind of scenario where you're in fair territory to say, I could leave this church with a clear conscience because the issues of leadership are important. And, you know, in this scenario, you're having to ask the question, can I support what is happening in this church? And I have seen people in situations like this stay way too long and be way too naive, and that's a real danger to be alert to. Here's a fourth scenario. This one that's most relevant to viewers of my channel. And that is the low church aching for liturgy scenario. So over the last few years, maybe you're a 25-year-old single engineer. You don't have a family,

and you've discovered the church fathers, you've gone through this massive theological revolution. You're literally reading like Lutheran scholastics on the weekend. You're like me, a theology nerd, and you're wanting to learn more, and you're just yearning and aching for more substance and liturgy and depth, and you are not getting it at your current church, and you're wondering, is this a sinful discontentment, should I stay? And there's a new church plant that does have that rich liturgy that your heart is aching for. And let's say in this scenario, your absence from your current church wouldn't necessarily harm that church. you're 25 years old, let's say, unfortunately, you haven't gotten super plugged in there. Maybe it's a huge megachurch.

I would say, check out the new church. And the reason for that is the theological positions that you have that have changed so much and the hunger that is in you that is so deep is something to really pay attention to. If your departure is not going to damage your current church, but the way God has constituted your convictions and your spiritual thirst is going to be met in this context, then you're going to struggle with discontentment deeply at this current church. And I think that's a totally valid scenario to consider and pray. Again, all these things need to be bathed in prayer, of course.

Here's a last scenario, and this is the, my church is not political enough scenario, or you could also change this one to, my church is too political. So a scenario like this is you're concerned. Your church is broadly in the same place as you politically, you know? probably most people think similarly on the main issues, but they're not as vocal about it. And you're thinking they need to be more vocal about it, or they're getting too vocal about certain issues and it's making you feel uncomfortable. Now, this is the scenario. I see this happening a lot today as well. I would say questions to ask in this scenario, because I think basically we are often too quick to divide over politics. There are some political issues that are worth dividing over because political issues blend into

moral and even doctrinal issues at times, but some political issues we fight over way too much. So I'd be asking questions like this. Is the agitation I'm feeling being formed mostly by voices on the internet? Okay. The internet does escalate and polarize us, and we are naive if we think I'm the sole exception to that. I'm not affected by the algorithms. It's just other people.

It's like, no, we're probably all affected by it way. more than we realize. Am I, in this kind of scenario, am I reading historic Christian voices on the topics that I'm wanting to be addressed, and am I listening to Christians on both sides of it? Let's say it's an issue where you can find godly Christians on each side of the issue, like health care or something like this. A lot of people in the United States don't realize how much Christians in like the UK and other places like this, really conservative Christians tend to have different instincts about how health care should be handled and so forth. are you listening to Christians on both sides of it? And then the ultimate question is the gospel of

Jesus Christ itself needs to be the primary center of gravity in how I'm relating at my church. That has implications for politics, for social issues, for other doctrinal issues, but the gospel is the main thing. And I think what I'm concerned about right now is I think there's always the dangers in either extreme of political withdrawal, but over investment politically. And I think a lot of, that right now I see, you know, we've seen a lot of political kind of quietism and withdrawal. And I think there's always the danger of the pendulum swing in the other direction where now it's like you have to think just like me about politics. This is my issue with the Shepherds for Sale book, not to go back into that whole thing, but, you know, this book is calling for civil war. That's the

whole upshot of the book against leaders in the church. But the presenting issues are very political, very American, and they all get bundled together. So like abortion, which I see is a really important issue and how COVID is handled are kind of all part of the same narrative. It's like those are different issues. And I'm concerned about this because we need more global awareness and historical awareness to see, to get the profile of what are those issues that we actually leave a church over versus where do we need to flex toward each other and recognize godly Christians can see some things differently. Health care is a good example. And just more of an emphasis upon the gospel itself. This, so this, the ultimate question here is, is the gospel defining how I relate to my church?

What is the gospel? I like to summarize the gospel of four steps. God, sin, Jesus, response. I know there's a lot of context for each of these points that we'll need, but in a pinch, if I've got 30 seconds before I get off the subway, and I can share the gospel, I'm going to say this. There is a God he made you, he loves you, he wants to be in a relationship with you. You have sinned against that God that's created a separation from him. You are in need of salvation. Jesus came to be that Savior. He lived the life. You should have lived. He died the death. You deserve to die. He rose from the dead. Now he calls you to respond to the gospel with faith and repentance. When we put our trust in Christ, repent of sin, we are adopted as God's children. We're forgiven of sins. We have heaven after this

life is over. Okay, a lot more to say than just that, but that's brief, try to summarize it, you know. And that's what should fundamentally in our hearts make us feel like I'm either on the same team as this other person or I'm not. And that should inform the way we think about our church involvement. Even if you need to leave a church over like a secondary doctrine or or a political difference becomes so deep that you have to leave, we still want to be able to speak well of those people and pray for them and so forth. So that leads to the final section here of just how to leave if you feel called to leave a church. And I would say four things. Number one, talk in person with the leadership of the church, ideally the pastor, if you have like a senior

pastor, and be humble in that conversation. That is a tough one. You don't want to, I don't think you want to do it through email, especially if you've been real involved or even a phone call. I think you want to meet and maybe even though give them a heads up about it by email. So it's not a shock in the moment. Say, I would love to meet with you. Here's why. And then be really humble and be really kind. I think it is, just to be honest with you, I think pastors take it more personally than we sometimes realize. And it hurts and it's hard. And right now, again, pastors, it's the hardest time I've ever seen in my life to be a pastor. I think it's gotten harder since COVID. A lot of pastors feel like a lightning rod, no matter what you do, people are going to be upset with you, this kind of feeling.

So just a little bit of love and grace in those conversations can go a long way. Second thing is, if you do feel called to leave a church, I would say have a consistent script. Come up with like a brief statement for why you're leaving and then stick to that. And that's just a strategic thing that I don't think is, I realize that could sound almost manipulative or overly formal, but I actually think it helps because what happens is it leads to a lot of confusion when if you just leave it to any old conversation, you'll be more open in some conversations than others. And there can be a temptation because you don't want to hurt someone's feelings. You might not really go into something and then, but to someone else you might share more openly.

And this leads to confusion because now people are hearing different reasons for where you left. And a simple thing is just come up with a way that's honest, but it doesn't have to be super detailed and explain it and stick to the script. A third thing, and this is hopefully goes without saying, but it's good to emphasize anyway, is pray for the church and try to bless them on your way out. Maybe do whatever you can do so that it's very clear, hey, if this is still an Orthodox church, meaning they preach the gospel, make it very clear that like we are still on the same team here and do everything you can to reduce any hurt so that it's not awkward when you bump into people at soccer practice or whatever.

Don't underestimate how painful this is. It is tough. Maybe you write an encouraging note to the elders on your way out, something like this. Maybe you go back and visit for a Christmas service or something like this. You know, whatever you can do to try to maintain good relationship, if that's appropriate, if it's still an Orthodox church. Lastly, I would say is quickly dive into membership and service at your new church. Don't let it be an excuse to take a six-month pause or to just be a consumer for a while. Dive in to serve. Because I think, honestly, the heart in all of this is that God wants us to be engaged at a local church serving, and that's where we're going to grow. Think of that C.S. Lewis letter, you know, it is harmful to the enemy's work in our lives if you're at church every Sunday. By the way, that's another thing to say is go every week. The average church attendance now is like every other week. If people say I go to a church, that what they typically mean now is I go twice a month. It wasn't like that 30 years ago, but again, never been harder for churches to function. This is a non-exhaust. issue. There is so much more to say, but hopefully this gives a few helpful thoughts along the way.

What would you add? Let me know what you would add to this in the comments. I'll make sure to read through the comments on this video. Thanks for watching everybody.