Have you ever wondered why a certain church become the one that everyone in town wants to go to?   I know I have.   And then why does that church lose that status and almost overnight another church takes that status?    This is a strange phenomenon indeed.

I have witnessed this in the community we currently live.   I have witnessed the exodus of people who had been members of some churches most of their lives to the church that is all of a sudden popular.    I have also witnessed those same people leave the cool church for a cooler church.   I am not passing judgment.  This is simply an observation.

It is discouraging for pastors and staff, and even the entire congregation, when someone leaves their church to go to another church in the same community, especially a small community.     They may try not to take it to be personal and simply shrug it off as part of church work, but it hurts-it hurts a lot to be honest.   To see people, you have invested in and nurtured just walk away is a grief.   I have witnessed it from both sides of the aisle so to speak.

Have you changed churches in the last 2 years?  In the last 5 years?  In the past 10 years?  Have you changed more than one time?   Why did you change?    The answers to these questions would give us insight into this phenomenon.

Some of you may be thinking, “Are there people who do this in real life?”   I can assure you they do.   Whatever happened to the day when people joined a church for life and didn’t keep hopping from one church to another?    The answer is the same thing that happened to the day when people would work for the same company their entire working years.   They are gone like the wind.

In a society when things seem to be changing at the speed of light sometimes, the church was the one place we could count on that was rock steady.   In an era when there were certain things that were sacred, now we wonder if there in anything sacred anymore.   In a day when very few would leave a church unless they moved out of town or there was a major split, now people change churches often.

Whatever happened to being loyal and faithful to one church?

Is there ever a time to change churches?

Are there legitimate and even biblical reasons for changing churches?

Are there wrong reasons for changing churches?

Do we really need so many new churches?

What if I go to a dead church?

Are there churches that seem to operate more like businesses?

That’s a lot of questions.   I first wrote this article about five years ago.   I thought this was the kind of article folk need to lay their eyes on every now and then.   The more I read it, the more I realized it needed a bit of revising.   Then as I began making a few changes, I realized that there was more that needed to be said that could be said in one article.

So, in a series of an undetermined number of articles, I will attempt to answer these and more questions.

Are there legitimate and even biblical reasons for leaving a church?

Yes, there are.

One such reason is a failure to teach and preach the “whole counsel of God.”  Paul used this term in Acts 20:27 as he was speaking to the Ephesian elders: “For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.”   (NASB) I like the way the NLT translates this verse: “for I didn’t shrink from declaring all that God wants us to know.”   The KJV uses the word “counsel” of God.

Barnes commentary has this explanation of the word “shrink” or “shun.”   “The proper meaning of the word…is to disguise any important truth; to withdraw it from public view; to decline publishing it from fear, or an apprehension of the consequences.”

Why would any pastor or Bible teacher not teach the whole plan of God?   Some parts of that plan are not pleasant.   Other parts step on toes.    It reminds people of their sin and their need for a Savior, and some just do not want to hear that.   Even in Paul’s day, some would not endure sound doctrine and would find teachers that would “tickle their ears with what they wanted to hear.”   See II Timothy 4:3.

Cult groups are the worse about not declaring the whole counsel of God.   Some believe the Bible “only as it is correctly translated.”   Another group has printed their own version of the Bible and left out parts they did not agree with.

Here is one definition of the whole counsel of God: “The complete body of divine truth that God has revealed through the Scriptures, particularly focusing on his redemptive plan for humanity through the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Preaching and teaching that Jesus is the only way to God and heaven is offensive to some, but that is part of the whole purpose of God.   A watered-down gospel is not the gospel.   Paul had very strong words for those who were preaching another gospel/Jesus: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one, we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned.”  Galatians 1:8

— To be continued —