Leaving a Church

(6 min read)

Sometimes, things go wrong. Terribly, irreparably wrong. It’s painful when that’s a friendship. Heartbreaking when it’s a romantic relationship. Devastating when it’s a marriage. But what about when something goes terribly, irreparably wrong with your church? What do you do? 

This was an experience my wife and I went through in 2020 - dealing with a church that no longer felt like home. 

What Happened?!

Growing up, my family attended church fairly frequently, but as so many kids experience, by the time I was ten and playing hockey, church became less and less of a priority. By 14 I was working at a local grocery store - Market Basket, and working on Sundays paid time and a half. By the time I was in high school, I hadn’t been to church in years and was well on my way to becoming an outspoken atheist.

How did I end up working for a church all these years later? Well, that may be a story for another time. After college, I started dating my wife, whose faith had always been an integral part of her life. Her family had been going to their church her entire life - her grandfather had been going there for over 40 years at that point. 

While we were dating, I started attending church with them. I came back to Christ in that church. In 2015 I was baptized in that church and we got married in that church. We started serving in student ministry, eventually becoming the middle school ministry leaders.

Over the years though, things changed. Some gradually, some more rapidly. The Elders Board shrank. Differences of opinion caused some families to leave, including key ministry volunteers. Those still there and volunteering started to burn out without new volunteers joining the mix. 

It felt to us that outreach wasn’t getting properly resourced, and the church struggled to grow or bring in new faces. Without new people coming to the church, groups became more clique-ish, and we experienced that ourselves firsthand.

With a small leadership team, there seemed to be a lack of diversity of opinion in church leadership. Much like on social media, there appeared to be an echo chamber effect, where a singular prevailing opinion is affirmed and repeated, with little discourse or challenge. There didn’t seem to be any checks and balances in place.

While all that was happening, the politics of the late 2010’s started seeping into the congregation. Petty arguments and resentment spread throughout the congregation. Folks started identifying more with the things they opposed and hated, and less with the things they shared in common with their fellow church goers.

Congregants and even pastors started sharing unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and increasingly polarizing and inappropriate content on their personal social media accounts. Students were seeing their Youth Group leaders bickering and fighting online.

As issues continued to pile up, my wife and I began to have the difficult conversation of whether we could help be part of the solution, or if it was time for us to move on. 

We spent many solemn nights searching for answers, but eventually it all became too much. While we didn’t have children yet, one night my wife said, “I wouldn’t want to raise kids in this church.” That was the night I knew we had to leave.

The process was excruciating. We met with a member of the Elder Board. Met with the Associate Pastor. Composed a letter to the Elders and Senior Pastor explaining our decision. 

The most painful experience however was saying goodbye to the students we had spent so much time with over the years. Telling them we were leaving, but not wanting to share too many details of what had driven us to that decision. 

We used all the usual platitudes: “We feel it’s time to move on…” and “this is just something we feel we need to do for our family…”

We didn’t want to harm the ministry of the church. We didn’t want to say that some of their parents were attacking us on social media. We couldn’t tell them that one of their parents tried to have us removed from Student Ministry because we had different political beliefs than them.

And so we left. Once we were gone, no one from the church spoke to us anymore. We lost almost our entire social circle. Friends who had felt like family for so long pretended we no longer existed.

Over the years since we departed, some of our former students have invited us to graduation parties, and whenever we showed up there would be shocked looks that we were there and comments of “I can’t believe you came.” 

My wife and I both have had to process through a significant amount of sadness and anger over how things fell apart and eventually ended at a church that meant so much to our lives.

Why we didn’t leave – at first.

We stayed at that church for many years because the church was a vital part of our lives. There were many conflicts, disagreements, and frustrations over the years that did not contribute to our decision to leave.

As so many churches go through, our church went through the “worship wars” as the question of hymns vs. modern worship songs was squabbled over. Sometimes the worship included some of our favorites and sometimes it included some songs that, well, we’d prefer never to have to hear again. The relationships and community we had there were more important than our preferences in music.

Communication and organization could be frustrating at times, especially among all the leaders and volunteers in youth ministry. We didn’t give up though, we kept working with the team to try to make the experience better and smoother for everyone.

We didn’t leave over any single incident or mistake. Where possible we brought attention to issues and sought resolution or improvement. 

We were hardly perfect through the process and over the years, but we made every effort to make the church better and help be a part of the solution rather than giving up on it. Only when we felt that the situation was truly irreparable did we consider leaving.

Lessons We Learned

The first lesson we had to learn and come to terms with was that the church is an imperfect, flawed establishment. Churches are run by people. People who are imperfect and flawed. People who make mistakes. People who can be guilty of sin. We had to remind ourselves that many of Paul’s letters to the early church were spent calling out churches that had gone astray and calling them back to a focus on Christ and his commands for us.

The second lesson we had to learn, and perhaps the most important, was that churches can go wrong. Churches can do harm and hurt people. Frankly, a church can be bad. But God is still good. The “Capital-C” Church is still a force for Christ and good in the world. We were leaving a church, but we never left God. We never lost faith in Jesus. We were leaving that church, not the Church. As soon as we left, we immediately began looking for a new church to become a part of.

The third lesson we learned from this experience was that your church really is your family. They become your closest friends and support system. You should feel at home at your church. You should feel comfortable and safe at your church. You should feel like you belong. We lost all of those things when we left, and many even before that. When we left we knew immediately we could not live with that hole in our lives. As soon as we found a new church (we now happily call Grace Chapel our home/church/family) we immediately set about making new friends, getting involved, and becoming a part of the church community.

Moving Forward

Leaving a church is never easy, whether leaving for pragmatic reasons like a move to a different state, or for more painful reasons. Remember that through any transition, God is still good. Don’t give up on God, because he never gives up on you. Find that next church family to invest your life in. And when you see that new family in church on Sunday? Make sure they feel welcome, because they’re your family now. 

This post is part of a two-part series. Click here for the other post, "Finding a New Church"

ChurchCulture& Christianity