The Good, The Bad, and The Dumb: Reasons To Leave a Church

Everyone knows the types. The church hoppers, the disengaged, and the ones who wake up every Sunday going to a different church or feeling frustrated with the one they are currently attending. Sometimes it’s justified, but honestly, most of the time it is not.

Heck, most of us have probably been this person before. I know I was. I was disengaged at my church and wanted to find a new body to worship with…well “worship” would have been a strong term. Let me translate: I wanted to find a place that had my style of music, did not require me to be accountable, and wasn’t too long (also the ones that had the prettiest girls…I was at that age).

It is that sort of immaturity that plagues churches all over Christendom. Do not get me wrong, I do not mean to condescend, because like I have mentioned, I have been there before. But my reasons for my discontentment did not come from a lack of being fed where God had me, but from looking to church to suit my superficial preferences.

Thus, we have the Good, the Bad, and the Dumb reasons to leave a church.

The Good:

This may come as a surprise to many Christians, but quite honestly there are not that many good reasons to leave a church body. They exist, but they are few and far between. In this section, I would like to examine some.
The best reason to ever leave a church is bad doctrine. When church leaders preach a fallacy or heresy on a fundamental truth of scripture, it is time to find a new body.

Galatians 1 vv. 7,8 says

“…there are some who trouble 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 the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”

As fallen beings, no one will be perfect in their theology. Not one person. However, there are some issues that are of more importance than others. Sometimes it takes discernment to know which ones are important enough to separate from a body and which ones are not.
Justification, Free Will of Man, and Gifts of the Holy Spirit are a few examples of issues that may or may not be worth separation. Yet at the same time, they can. Use discernment, because sometimes there is a fine line between bad hermeneutics and straight contradiction. Hate to say it, but it is true.

Another issues to consider is one that is often times overlooked. That issue, simply stated, is the church model itself. Church model refers to Government, discipline, leadership, gender roles, baptism, etc.

The New Testament provides us with guidelines on how God sets up His holy church. Many will argue that things such as family integration of worship are not commanded in scripture, and thus not an important issue. I would argue that this could not be farther from the truth. When we look at models of the family, community, church, and government in the Bible, there is an immense amount of insight we can take away.
The Bible is a document that has been preserved for thousands of years. We believe it to be “breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy vv. 3:16,17). So, we can safely say that if it is modeled in the Bible, it was done so because it is the best and most efficient way to live as a godly people. Just because something isn’t explicitly commanded, doesn’t mean it’s not biblical. This is why hermeneutics is so important.

So, bottom line, an unbiblical church model can be a good reason to leave a church. Again, use discernment, because the severity of the fallacy must be weighed.

The last issue I will mention in this section is the issue of unholy living and apostasy. If a church takes no action against habitual unholy living of its members, guess what, time to reconsider. Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:9 commands us to not associate ourselves with people whom continually and habitually live in disobedience with no sign of repentance.

In fact, there is a whole section of Matthew dedicated to church discipline. Chapter 5 vv. 15-20 gives us instructions on how to handle someone who is continually living and sin and is not repentant. Many people believe that since we are under the covenant of grace, the church must be constantly forgiving. This is true as long as there is legitimate repentance and life change. However, action must be taken against someone who is bringing down the body with no desire to change. Matthew 5 v. 17 says “…And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

Does this mean we shun and hate that person? No, not at all. Church discipline serves the same purpose as parental discipline; to bring that person to a repentant heart and a change of their ways. If we do nothing for someone who is living in sin, we do not love them. We must pray that by removing them from worship, they become so miserable in their sin that they come to true repentance. Plus, you are removing a cancer from the body of believers.

These are the main reasons where it is permissible to leave a church body. There is a couple I left out, but they fall neatly under the ones I discussed. The main point is, you must test things against scripture and use discernment.

The Bad:

I will just come out and say it, because it’s something that needs to be said: a conflict with another believer is not a good reason to leave a church.

Human beings quarrel constantly. It doesn’t make it okay, but we do it. It’s I our nature. However, just because someone sat in your favorite pew or Betty stole your casserole recipe, you should not remove yourself from a biblical body of believers.

There have been times I have wanted to leave my church because of this, but it is honestly not a good reason. Could you imagine one of the apostles saying, “Timothy hurt my feelings, so I’m going to go worship with these other guys”? No, you can’t because it didn’t happen. Ephesians 4 vv. 31, 32 instruct us to “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Thus, if you have a superficial issue with someone else, check your heart, not your church.

Photo Attribution: “Foggy November Morning in Siena” By Oleg Sidorenko; CC 2.0

Bible versions are another bad reason to leave a church. This can be a touchy subject among conservative evangelicals, but for the majority of people it shouldn’t be an issue.
People need to understand that not all modern English translations of the Bible were translated for the same purpose. Some were translated for academic study, preaching, teaching, public reading, devotional reading, and many more.

In fact, it is very important to understand what your favorite translation was designed to be used for. You wouldn’t want to use the NLT for academic study and you probably wouldn’t want to use the NASB for public reading. They all serve a purpose, although some of those purposes are different.
And folks, this may be hard to hear, but Jesus wasn’t a King’s English speaking Baptist. So it’s all God’s word, and although we don’t have any autographs of the Bible, we know what we have today is about 98.5% pure with no errors greater than simple grammatical variances. You would be surprised on how dividing this simple issue can be.

One thing I want to mention briefly is preaching. It is not abnormal for me to hear that someone is not getting enough out of the their pastor’s or elder’s sermons. An understandable problem, but I would like to present a challenge. You will only get out of a sermon what you put it. If you do not bring a Bible and a notebook to service, that could be the issue. Try being more intentional with how you learn. Don’t just hear the sermon, listen to the sermon!

The last issue I want to address in this section is the issue of worship. Worship is one of the largest dividing superficial issues in the church today.

I am not talking about the theology of worship, because that would fall under the doctrine umbrella mentioned above. I am talking about the actualll style of the music. If you can’t worship with an electric guitar and a drum kit, check your heart, not the church. Likewise, if young people like myself cannot worship with an old piano and a hymn, or even no instruments for that matter, we need to be checking ourselves.

Worship is not about the music; it is about what we are singing. A careful examination of the theology of worship is something I recommend every Christian go through with a leader or by themselves.

Leaving a church because that darn worship leader is in skinny jeans or the band has an electric guitar are not good reasons. When we start looking at superficial issues like this, we are attempting to feed our preferences and not look for things that bring glory to God.
Personally, I really do not care for most contemporary worship music. As a musician, I get irritated with every song having only four chords, and as a “words guy,” I do not like the repetitiveness and simplicity of modern worship music. I much prefer contemporary covers of hymn. They are so rich with beautiful, theological truth. Not to say that modern songs aren’t, because there are a lot of songs written in the last twenty years with better lyrics than some hymns I know, but since English and music are changing, that just isn’t the norm.

I say all of this because even though I have my own preference, I have no problem worshipping to these songs corporately as long as they are theologically sound. If we looked for churches that fit all of our preferences, there would be the same number of churches as there are Christians.

The Dumb:

Lastly, I would like to address some reasons that people leave churches that are, frankly, just dumb.

Church is not purely your social club. Fellowship is an important aspect, but the church is not set up so you can gossip and talk about sports. If you do not like where you are placed because there are not enough people there with common interests, you need to check your heart. As Christians, we have the greatest thing in common: the Gospel.

It’s easy to show love to people like us, but the greatest challenge is developing intimate relationships with people we are not like. Work on developing meaningful relationships with people in your church, and I promise, you will see you have more in common than you realize.
For example, if you were to put my best friend and I together, you would be astonished that we are best friends. He’s a hillbilly who works for our conservation department, and, in his words, I am “insufferable hipster scum.” We are best friends because we know we have the most important thing in common. We lead together, we pray together, and thus, we play together. We have fun together because we have an intimate bond that is not based on superficial interests that will eventually fade from this world.

Boys and Girls, as a youth leader, I see students leave all of time because they are chasing after someone of the opposite sex. I know it is tempting, but stay plugged in where God has you. Remember, you are not there on accident. If you wait on God’s timing in your romantic life, you will be very glad you did. God has someone special picked out for you, and you won’t find people in the New Testament constantly chasing them from church to church. If you are in a relationship and marriage is in your future, then yes, it is important to worship together, but don’t abandon your church family for a pretty face.

Church pews…? Yeah, I’ve spoken with people who actually left a church they had been going to for years because of this. The comfort of your rear end is not an issue worth leaving the church over. Bring a pillow, or take it as an opportunity to suffer for Christ. If Jesus can willingly be painfully attached to a piece of wood for three hours to His death, you can willingly let a piece of wood be attached to your butt for 45 minutes to your dismissal.

Of course, as with most things, this list is not all encompassing. Church is designed to provide us with three things: Worship, Fellowship, and instruction. Make sure that you realize you are where God wants you for a reason. If you are feeling discontent at your church, it may not be the churches fault. However, if you have legitimate concerns, talk to a trusted mentor or elder, and always, ALWAYS, test what they say against the Bible.