In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
In principle, I’m not keen on leaving churches. It happens too often and too
easily. But sometimes, there just isn’t any choice.
When
Gretta Vosper became the pastor of a West Hill United Church in Toronto, Canada in 1997, she
was not yet out of the closet about her atheism, a little bonus she didn’t disclose
from the pulpit until 2001. Amazingly, quite a few congregants hung on until
2008 when Vosper did away with the Lord’s Prayer, at which point 2/3 of the
flock made for the exits.
Tom: I’m not sure precisely where the line is,
but I’d have difficulty faulting anyone who leaves a church with an atheist
pastor, IC. From your experience, what are the ingredients that go into making
for a “time to go” decision?
A Firm Congregational Commitment
Immanuel Can: Great question:
and with it, how to go. That’s a tough one.
Tom: Perhaps tougher
than when.
IC: Obviously,
leaving the local church is most importantly a doctrinal decision: to
what doctrine is the particular local church in question firmly committed?
That’s often harder to figure out in practice than it would seem.
Tom: True. Online, I keep running into five-point Calvinists who are much better in practice than
their theology would lead you to expect. But in every church that has a
statement of faith, you run into people who don’t fully subscribe to it, or
people who say they do, but don’t have a clue what most of it actually means.
So to find a whole local church “firmly committed” to something seems to me to
be asking a lot.
What evidences of commitment would convince you a church is serious?
IC: You obviously
can’t tell what individual hearts are thinking. And even when someone says
something from the platform, how sure can one be that he meant exactly what you
thought he said? And how fanatical should we be about reacting to that? Anyway,
who’s to say that someone who says such a thing cannot learn to be wiser? We’ve
got to cut each other a lot of slack here, because we’re all flawed creatures.
But I think that when a church is consistently given to teaching a particular
bad doctrine, and that doctrine has been understood by the leadership and they
have decided to persist in it, then the moment of decision comes. Is
that fair?
Terminal Heresy
Tom: Yes, I think
that’s reasonable. What sorts of bad doctrine are you thinking about? (We’ll
assume it’s coming from a non-atheist, because that’s just a bit too obvious.)
IC: Let’s suppose
your group teaches things directly contrary to scripture, such as that God is
responsible for sin, or the gospel is not the exclusive message of salvation,
or that there is no danger of a lost eternity, or something false concerning
the nature of the Lord himself. You point out the error gently and
respectfully, and the elders of the church persistently deny that you have any
point, and keep teaching it ...
Tom: Fair enough. Now,
I’m sure the circumstances are not identical in every case, but when a large
number of congregants feel simultaneously driven out of a church they have
happily attended for years, something drastic — something almost
unimaginable — has obviously taken place.
Weariness and Weakness
Lay
out for me, if you can, the process by which a healthy, orthodox local church
becomes so infected with false doctrine that the elders start to
promote it and won’t hear a word against it.
IC: Is there one
process? I’m not sure. But I don’t think these things usually happen expectedly
or suddenly, and they certainly aren’t announced.
One
way it can happen is this: a congregation has been functioning quite well under
the guidance of a humble and godly man or men; but a gradual weakening and
attrition in leadership, often through age, creates a weariness and weakness;
and a new man comes in. He has the energy that the dwindling eldership does
not. At first he plays by the current rules; but he has another agenda in the
back of his mind — a way in which he wants to change the church to suit
his vision, preferences or beliefs, and when the existing leadership is weak
enough, he starts asserting it. Everybody is so relieved just to have somebody
willing to lead that they back him for a long while, excusing his little
excesses and doctrinal, financial or personal indiscretions because he’s
essentially become the only functioning leadership. But increasingly he’s
unmoderated by the wisdom and counsel of others, and eventually his behavior becomes
vexing to those left in the congregation who have any discernment …
Tom: This week I was
part of an online conversation initiated by a man who was contemplating leaving
his church and looking for advice. As he tells it, his church had two strong
pastor/teachers. One was suddenly and unexpectedly pushed out by younger, more
liberal “elders”, and the second was eventually co-opted by the same faction.
The church is now consumed with social justice activism rather than its
biblical core functions. I don’t know the whole history, obviously, but it
suggests, as you say, that there’s more than one way these things happen.
Spiritual Leadership
The problem is he’s married to a woman who loves the church’s new direction. What
do you do when that happens?
IC: I would say you
negotiate what you can; but at the end of the day, have to decide who the
rightful spiritual leader of the family is. If it’s really a matter of
compromise with intransigence and seriously errant doctrine, then some personal
strength of conviction is the only answer, regardless of how others feel.
Tom: You mentioned the “how to” of leaving.
Coming to agreement within the family is part of it. But say your entire family
is on board, either in agreement with you about the severity of the false
doctrine or at least willing to follow your lead. What then?
IC: I’ve been faced with that, and I’ll tell you what I decided was the answer, at least for my
situation. I felt that it was hugely important to have done things the right
way. The first recourse was going to an elder to express concern. But I knew it
was NOT to share my concerns with friends, or circulate my feelings generally.
I kept it private. After that, I sensed I should resist the impulse to
broadcast dissatisfaction with the elders’ non-responsive stance. Who am I, I thought, to create an insurrection? My conviction was that the church belongs
to no one but Christ, and what would happen was ultimately up to the Head of
the Church himself. His church, his will, his timing, his outcome …
not mine.
Taking Stock
I
took stock: I asked myself if I really believed that, and I decided I did.
Thus, the right thing was to commit the situation in prayer into his hands,
believing that nothing I could do could be more important or effective than
what he would do. I asked the Head of the Church to deal with the situation as
he saw fit. Moreover, I resolved that I would not make myself the issue. To do so would distract
from the real conflict, which was between particular persons and their
true Head.
Tom: So you move on
quietly, having done everything you think you can. What do you do if the phone
starts ringing and people wonder what’s going on?
IC: It doesn’t, at
first. People can be away from a place for various reasons, and it’s only
realized gradually that a pattern of absence is forming. Most people, even
close friends, are relatively slow to ask one, unless one has already been
guilty of agitating discontentment and they suspect the answer already. If you
keep your own counsel, then anyone asking happens only slowly; and you can
always decide how much to say and how much to keep silent. Until you see what
the Lord wants out of the situation, my recommendation would be to keep as
private about it as possible.
What Comes Next?
Tom: So then the question is what comes next?
This is happening to a lot of people. It used to be that you’d hear about
people leaving churches. The story now, more often than not, is “My church
left me.”
IC: That’s a very
good question. Getting “orphaned” by one’s local church is rather painful and
unexpected. So there isn’t always a particular place to go to before one
can leave from the former church. That means a search ensues … and often
a grieving process with it … at least in the cases in which those who are
“orphaned” genuinely loved and wished the best for their fellow believers, and
did not expect to be leaving at all. It’s not a situation that is without
emotional wrenching.
Tom: We’re not living
in the first century. When someone feels compelled to shake the dust off their
feet and leave their local church, there’s a smorgasbord of denominational and even sometimes non-denominational choices out there. Is this a good or a bad thing?
The Elective Church
IC: Sociologist Peter Berger talks about how in postmodern days and in
the large cities especially, “church” has become an elective thing. People shop
for churches in a way similar to how they shop for shoes: does it fit, do I like the look of it, how does it suit my style, what do I think of the quality
of what it offers me, how much can I afford to invest, and so on. At the same
time, he says, churches have had to become “consumer friendly”, catering to
people who can simply vote with their feet and leave anytime they want to.
It’s a cynical view, but there’s some truth
to that. You certainly can’t exercise local-church control like you could in
the days when, perhaps, there was only one church of a particular kind in one
geographical area, or when people knew each other in their communities. But I don’t think it’s become entirely a matter of church-shopping either: after all,
there’s still a very limited selection of congregations that correspond to
particular theological beliefs.
It’s not always easy to move. And that’s good AND bad.
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