Dr. Tom Shchreiner On Leaving Your Church

I wrote an article on how to help someone think through when to leave your church at Desiring God. I want to do more thinking on this and help our church think about it. To that end, here’s one answer by Tom Schreiner I share with you.

When is it ok to leave your church? Tom Schreiner answers (transcript below video):

I mean the first thing I'd say is, always be slow to change churches. In our culture we're so consumer driven, we so quickly are disloyal to things we join. I think we ought to be reminded, be slow. If there's a conflict, try to work it out. So we are so quick in our culture to depart from what we promised, to depart from relationships when they get hard. So commitment is important.

However, are there times to change churches? I think so. I think the most important reason is significant doctrinal deviation. When the church begins to teach things that are clearly contrary to the major doctrines of Scripture—when that begins to happen, I think it's a good idea actually to leave.

Now some situations are more difficult. Maybe the church believes what you believe, but they don't actually preach it, they avoid those things. I think that's a more gray area. But I can understand why somebody might leave in that situation.

Then the last thing I'd say is there's really no rule. There's not a formula. We ought to be slow to change churches. Sometimes though, there's no doctrinal deviation, but sometimes you begin to lose trust in the leadership. And maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, but if you start losing significant trust in the leadership, it's probably best for you—it's actually probably best for the leaders as well—if you go somewhere else and you go and join a church where you can plug in and support the doctrine and the leaders and minister to others in the church.

I think when you are considering changing churches, you ought to bring it to the Lord in prayer, you ought to check your motives. Are you trying to run from something? Are you trying to run from something difficult? So ask the Lord to really speak to you through his Word and in prayer, and I'd add to that: ask other people whom you trust. And don't ask people whom you know will just agree with you. Ask people who might disagree with you.

And I think the other thing that's good to do is go to the leaders. If you're gonna leave the church, go to the leaders and have a talk with them, and be open to being corrected and changing. Perhaps you might still decide to leave, but you should go to the leaders as well and talk to them about that.