Introduction
How should you go about leaving one church and choosing another, and what should you actually be looking for? Pastor Cam Porter and Pastor Jim Butler unpack the marks of a true church, and the patience it takes to evaluate a new one.
Got a question on Christianity, Gospel, Scripture, Theology? Submit your own questions here.
Transcript
Keywords: church selection, leaving church, marks of the church, doctrinal faithfulness, gospel preaching, church discipline, sacraments, confessional integrity, church evaluation, Christian doctrine
Speakers: Wim Kerkhoff (host), Pastor Jim Butler, Pastor Cameron Porter
The Question
Wim Kerkhoff: How to choose a new church? It’s a short question, but there are parts to it. Generally this is for someone in a church who isn’t 100% happy or doesn’t think it’s the place they should be. How do you leave with respect, and how do you find, and land in, the right place?
The Marks of a True Church
Pastor Cam Porter: I think one of the first things to treat is how to not leave your existing church. There are a lot of bad reasons to leave, so those may need to be addressed first. But if a person has come to the right decision that the church they’re at isn’t a gospel-preaching church, that it’s departed from the truth and isn’t adhering to the doctrine once for all delivered to the saints, then choosing a new church starts with choosing one that is a Christian church, faithful to the main things that are the sum and substance of Christianity: the triune God, the mediator Jesus Christ, the gospel of his death, burial, and resurrection for the salvation of sinners, and salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Does the church get those cardinal doctrines right, not just loosely on a hidden statement-of-faith page on their website? Visiting churches as I travel, I’ll often check a church’s website for their statement of faith, and more than a handful of times I’ve found a reasonable statement, affirming the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, salvation exclusively in Christ, even things that touch on Reformed theology. But then you get into the actual context of worship, and it’s just a hat tip to that statement. Faithfulness to the cardinal doctrines has to show up practically: are they preaching the gospel, administering the sacraments as they ought to be, and engaging in church discipline and the making of disciples? Are they faithful to the Great Commission in Matthew 28, under the authority of the ascended mediator, doing what he commanded his church to be about?
Know What a Church Is Before You Leave
Pastor Jim Butler: Before you leave a church, or find another one, know what a church is. Church should be different from a date with my wife, different from watching my grandsons play tee-ball. What’s different about it? As Cam alluded to, the marks of the church: the preaching of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, and the discipline of the church. If your church is practicing those things, you may not want to leave, even if they don’t do it exactly the way you’d like.
Sometimes people leave churches for very poor reasons. If your church is preaching the truth, disciplining through ongoing formative and corrective discipline, and administering the sacraments, then bless God, you’re in a church. It’s not everything you’d possibly desire, but if we got exactly what we wanted this side of heaven, we wouldn’t long for heaven. Everybody has preferences, myself included. But it’s not my church, it’s not my project, it’s Christ’s. Sometimes people stay at churches for less than stellar reasons too. If your church subordinates Jesus in theology, or teaches justification by faith plus works, it might be time to leave. So know functionally what a church is, what its marks are, and let that shape whether you should stay or pursue something else.
Preferences vs. What Matters Most
Wim Kerkhoff: These can be subjective things. I’ve seen people cut up over family and friends: my family’s been there a hundred years, and so on.
Pastor Jim Butler: People are different, and I have to be patient with that as a pastor. If I had a doctor who was great at his job but had no bedside manner, I’d be fine with that. I don’t need bedside manner from my doctor, I have a wife and friends for that. I want the steadiest hand and the brightest mind navigating my malady. It’s the same if I’m a member at a church: my pastor preaches the Word, that’s what I’m there for. If he wants to have coffee and say nice things, I’ll take it, but I’m there for the preaching of the Word. Others are there for the preaching and the coffee with the pastor too, and that’s fine. Everyone has to see, in their own value system, what’s imperative. For me, it’s does the guy preach, and do they administer the sacraments and discipline properly? If they do those things, bless God, I’m in a church. Somebody can affirm they’re confessional, but if you never hear anything uniquely confessional, that’s a problem, since confessional just means biblical. You can’t say you hold the Second London and be preaching dispensationalism or progressive covenantalism. You can’t say you hold Chalcedon and Nicaea and still have some subordinate Jesus in your theology.
Give It a Few Months
Pastor Jim Butler: If you’re going to look for a new church, give it a couple of months. Pastors can have bad days on a Sunday too. If you pop in once and the sermon’s rough, or nobody greets you, that might be a one-off. You really can’t know a church on a single visit. Where we go to church is one of the biggest decisions of our lives, right up there with who we marry and how we raise our children. It takes reflection, getting to know the pastor, the ministry, the brethren. Is the worship reverent and biblical? Is the preaching sound, with a gospel emphasis? As a father raising children, one of the best things I can do is bring my kids to a good church on the Lord’s Day where the gospel is preached regularly and consistently, and the pastor calls sinners to believe and repent. That, to me, is far more valuable than anything else a church might offer.
Want more theological Q&A?
Explore the full Ask FGBC archive: https://www.freegrace.ca/ask
Got a question on Christianity, Gospel, Scripture, Theology? Submit your own questions here.
