A ministerium pastor recently told me about a situation in his congregation ten years prior. He was not the pastor at the time. Here’s what happened. At a church business meeting, someone proposed they fire the youth director due to lack of funds. The congregation voted for that, effectively firing the fellow on the spot. Church members with kids were bitterly disappointed in this decision. They walked out, left the church and in a single day all the young couples in the church were gone.
Leaving a church has become a very American evangelical behavior. Perhaps you’ve heard it labeled “church-hopping.” We American evangelicals can view our relationship to a church like we view so much of the rest of our lives, as consumers. A consumer is one who consumes things. We eat things. We use things. A consumer sees themselves as the one who has the will, power, control, and means to choose what they want.
In a grocery store, we have so many options for food choices. At the mall we can find the precise kind of clothing we enjoy. And in our internet society, we have even more choices, right from the comfort of home. Just find precisely what you want and order it. Voila, it appears at your home, sometimes the same day. As 3-D printing becomes more and more advanced, perhaps we’ll just print anything our minds can dream up, right at home, very much like the Jetsons or Star Trek.
Because we are so consumption-oriented, we have been discipled by our culture to think consumeristically about everything, including church. If things at church aren’t to our liking, we search for a different church, often including testing them out online first. Or maybe we just only ever engage with a church online. Because what is most important is that we’re “getting fed” from worship service, right? (Notice the consumption metaphor there?) And online we can just experience the best preachers in the world who are preaching exactly what we believe is the truth.
And if we’re not getting “fed” at our church we can and should, we think, move on to a church that has their act together. This consumption mindset is especially prevalent in so-called “Bible Belt” regions such as where I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with our 700 some churches.
My conclusion is that it is rare that a person leaves a church for a good reason. Of course those people who leave believe they have a good reason for leaving their church. They usually don’t.
What this leads me to is reality that being part of a church family, especially a smaller one where you are known, is not always easy. It might sometimes be difficult. When the going gets tough, like disagreeing with a congregational meeting decision, it is very tempting to leave.
This coming week on the blog, we’re going to talk about Paul’s important teaching in 1 Thessalonians 5 about peace and unity in church families.
Photo by Junseong Lee on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 