Leaving.

Part 3 in a series on the challenges of doing church post-Covid.

I sat down Monday to meet a new friend at our local wine bar, and as we sipped a Portuguese red blend, I got a deeper glimpse into the breakneck page of change that we’re all intuiting. Rob has spent the last decade or so studying cultural innovation—the need for businesses and ministries to stay abreast of how people are thinking and what they are wanting. According to Rob, you can chart the obsolescence of just about every organization based on how it manages the relationship between its offerings and the constantly morphing needs of people. How it adapts, or fails to adapt, to changes now measured in months, not years.

As a veteran missions leader, Rob has particularly keen insight into the dynamics I’ve been exploring these last couple weeks on how people are increasingly disconnecting from the modern version of church. Barna reports that one in three practicing Christians has stopped attending church (at all) during the pandemic and that half of practicing Christian millennials are not viewing services online. Best I can tell, this is not because we’re doing it wrong so much as that we don’t know how to do it right. And by “right,” I just mean that we actually connect the timeless truths of Christ with the time-bound ethos of our generation.

Last week I sent an email to 17 church leaders that I know personally asking them one question: Given that people are always coming and going from local churches (and these days going more than coming), how does one leave church well? What would you want to happen when someone decides to leave your local church?

I got 4 replies out of 17. I think this is a tough conversation for most of us.

“It’s difficult,” replied one, “Never entirely comfortable.” “Grace and humility on both sides,” said another. Open communication was a consistent thread. “The more mature people communicate,” said one, “but the majority do not.” One shared her personal experience in leaving a decade ago, “Anything less than lifelong devotion to that institution was seen as betrayal.” Yikes. But another shared that most of the key families who departed his church spoke to him about it as they left. That’s something.

Perhaps my favorite reflection was this one: “If my primary objective is to keep someone at our church, then any decisions to the contrary will feel like I've (we've) failed and be interpreted as a personal affront. But if my primary objective is to see someone flourishing in life and faith, no matter the context, then I can walk with them in freedom as they explore how God is leading.” Catch the key word there: freedom, not control or offense. But having worn the pastoral hat myself, I know this is sometimes harder than it sounds.

What does it mean when we choose to leave? I don’t think anyone enters a church thinking about what it will be like to leave. Every time I’ve entered a church, it was with all-out enthusiasm, imagining I would be there forever. But things change. Churches change. Leaders change. Visions change. We change. Few if any churches are great at everything, able to equip people at every possible juncture of life and faith. Are those who leave simply “ugly Americans,” whiny consumers who aren’t getting their favorite flavor of ice cream?

I know I can be that person, and I hope that’s not where I am now. I hope that I’m reaching for something fresh, even though I don’t really know what “fresh” is yet. I see people much smarter than me standing in the top of the tree and calling down about faint images ahead, and I think I’ll be around to see it when it emerges: the new wineskin that can hold God’s new wine… before that wineskin gets changed out for a newer yet. I’m not talking about fads, I’m talking about God-breathed containers for God-breathed connections.

So here’s what I’d like to see, church leaders: Talk about how to leave! In fact, incorporate that into your “membership class.” Acknowledge how delighted you are to have newcomers in your community—and then let them know that there will likely come a time to move on. And when that time comes, here’s how to leave well. How to discern, how to communicate, how to bless and release and send. How to stay in relationship and find your identity in the Body of Christ more than in one “arm” of church.

Is it possible to leave too soon? To hit the road at the slightest conflict of idea or personality? You bet. Don’t worry—you’ll get another turn at that lesson. And is it possible to stay too long? To become stunted and to atrophy within too small a container? Yes, this too is possible. So how do we know which it is?

growing the soul

There is no short-cut to the maturity of discernment. We can often talk ourselves into believing whatever is most comfortable, but the spiritual practice of discernment cuts through that kind of noise so that we can hear the still, small Voice of God. If you’re at a crossroads now, try this exercise.

serving the world

Whether you are inside or outside the organized church, if you are a Christ-follower, you are in The Church! And we need to erase the divisions and judgments that separate us, church from church, denomination from denomination, in church from out of church. We’re all in this together.

takeaway

Discern with Freedom.