What do you do when your church isn’t following Christ?
Recently I’ve met several people who have left their churches because their pastor, the leadership team, or the church as a whole, was not really following Jesus or obeying his teachings.
That can be a pretty hard decision to make. I know, because that’s exactly what I did way back in high school. And I’ll share that story in a few minutes.
Compared to some of the people I’ve talked to recently, my experience was not really so bad. I just was looking at ways of following Jesus my church wasn’t willing to wrap their heads around.
I know folks who have been abused emotionally, spiritually, theologically, and sometimes even physically, in their churches. One or more of their church leaders, and sometimes the whole culture and the resulting politics at church, have been so far away from Jesus’s way of thinking and living, that my friends had to leave.
Their motives were misunderstood. They were accused of things they didn’t do or say. Friends betrayed them and often end up refusing to ever talk to them again.
My heart goes out to these folks. And there are thousands upon thousands who have left their churches or are thinking about it.
The valley of decision
It reminds me of the verse from the prophet Joel, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.” Joel 3:14 NIV
Fortunately, more and more people are making the decision to follow Christ instead of cling to an institution which has deviated from the teachings of Jesus.
So, I’ve got a few questions for you:
- What would you do you if your church is not really following Jesus anymore?
- What would you do if you realize the “Jesus” you were following is not the same Jesus that is actually in the Bible, but is a Jesus created by man-made opinions over the centuries?
- Have you ever had a crisis in your faith and wondered if you even believed in God or Jesus anymore?
- And have you ever openly admitted these things to yourself or anyone else?
If you keep up with what’s going on in the Christian Church as a whole, you may have noticed over the last several years a spirit of growing discontent with things going on in various churches. Membership is declining for many denominations, even those who thought they would be immune to such things, because they thought they had the “true” version of Christianity.
Why folks are leaving church
I know folks who have been abused emotionally, spiritually, theologically, and sometimes even physically, in their churches. One or more of their church leaders, and sometimes the whole culture and the resulting politics at church, have been so far away from Jesus’s way of thinking and living, that my friends had to leave.
Their motives were misunderstood. They were accused of things they didn’t do or say. Friends betrayed them and often end up refusing to ever talk to them again.
My heart goes out to these folks. And there are thousands upon thousands who have left their churches or are thinking about it.
Wow! That takes a lot of courage. It’s not always easy to admit you’re wrong.
Pastors are leaving their churches
If you’ve been listening to The Bible Speaks to You Podcast for a while, you may have heard me interview of couple of former pastors who left their churches because what the church believed and what they had been preaching was not in alignment with Jesus.
- Episode 76 Keith Giles and the Atonement of Christ
- Episode 120 Jason Elam: You Are Loved and Accepted by God
I have immense respect for the courage both these men expressed in publicly rejecting the faith they at one point held so dear. Why? Because they are being honest with themselves. They are looking at what is being passed off as Christianity and realizing there is something hopelessly missing from it compared to what Jesus actually said and how he expected his followers to live.
And by the way, leaving their old churches and their old doctrines behind did cause them to abandon Jesus. They love him more now than they ever did before.
I loved talking to these two men and hearing the story of how they became disillusioned with the approach to Jesus and Christianity they had been so much a part of.
If you’ve been disillusioned with a particular version of Christianity, and dealing with some of these issues, I would love to talk to you, and hear your story. I would encourage you to keep up your search for truth and for the real Jesus in the Bible.
Should you leave your church?
We all need to leave behind any version of Christianity that does not perfectly embrace what Jesus said and did. Sometimes you may need to leave your church to do that. Sometimes you don’t.
The problem with many versions of Christianity today is that people just accept what someone else says about Jesus, or take things in the Bible out of context, or only focus on a few Scripture references to support their theories. We let others tell us what we are supposed to believe–because if we don’t accept what they say, they say we’re going to hell.
When was the last time you read through all four Gospels–yes, that’s a lot of reading–just with the idea of figuring out what is said about Jesus, who he is, how he lived, and how he expected us to live?
A couple of years ago I read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in one fell swoop. It was incredibly enlightening.
Looking for the real Jesus
Now you may not have read all four gospels recently, but, at least for the sake of this discussion, let’s say you just read through these four books in the Bible. You noticed everything Jesus says about himself and his relationship with God. And you take note of everything he said we should do and how we should think and pray, individually and collectively. You will quickly discover this is not a short list.
For example, how did Jesus look at the crowds of people who followed him around? Matthew tells us
But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Matthew 9:36 KJV
When he preached to those crowds, he said of everyone present, saints and sinners alike,
You are the salt of the earth.
You are the light of the world. Matthew 5:13, 14 NLT
He saw the worth and value of everyone present. The Pharisees of his day, and ours, would look at that same crowd and decide most of them were miserable sinners.
And speaking of sinners, Jesus was merciful to them, shared a meal with them, and expressed love and forgiveness to them.
Is your church doing this? Not just preaching about it, but actually encouraging and do it?
Reading the Bible for yourself
As you read for yourself all the stories of how Jesus interacted with people, and don’t just listen to the bits and pieces of those stories told by folks at church, you’ll get a better picture of how Jesus acted and how he expected us to act.
Here’s where the light bulbs go on in your mind and your heart. You’re getting to know the Jesus of Scripture. And you may realize your church might not really be following Jesus as well as it thinks it is. You may have not been following Jesus as well as you could. And maybe the Jesus you thought you believe in doesn’t really exist; he’s just a caricature created by popular theological sayings.
You try to share your discovery with someone at church and they think you’re crazy or have renounced your faith. The fact is, perhaps you are closer to true faith than ever before.
Do we believe in Jesus just because someone at church told us we should? Do we just accept what others, including centuries of church tradition, say it means to be a Christian?
Or do we actually go straight to the Bible for guidance?
Getting back to the original Christianity of Christ
Several years ago, I sat next to a man on an airplane who had just read through the New Testament for the first time in his life. He had no religious training and no one to coach him on how to interpret what he had read. It was so refreshing to hear how he took in the message of Jesus without all the centuries of man-made doctrines and dogmas, theological baggage, and traditions that have crept into the church over the last 2,000 years.
I am tired of people defending man-made religion. It’s time to get back to the religion of Jesus, the original Christianity of Christ. That’s what this podcast is all about.
How do we do that? Sometimes, you have to take a step back and get away from the church or theology you have been involved in. It’s hard to be objective when you’re in the middle of something.
Take a step back and try to get a bigger view of what’s going on. Be honest with yourself. Have you ever had those uneasy feelings that something wasn’t quite right but didn’t have the courage to admit it to yourself or anyone else?
Ask questions about the Bible
A lady in one of my Bible studies once told me she grew up in a church where she was not allowed to ask questions because that showed she was doubting the faith. But she did have questions. I’ve mentioned her before on the podcast. There were things that didn’t makes sense to her. But the church authorities would not let her ask her questions. It was very discouraging and it turned her away from that church.
I loved her questions and all of us in that Bible study group were enriched by exploring how to find answers to those questions.
It’s so important to ask questions. Hard questions. Questions you may be embarrassed to ask. Ask them anyway. If not at church, then find a friend. Go to another church and ask them. Or just be quiet and ponder things in your own heart.
I find one of the best ways to get answers to deep spiritual questions is to write them down in a journal, as if I were asking a friend, or even God Himself. It’s amazing how the answers sometimes almost fly out of my pen as I write.
As for myself, there were times when I just couldn’t swallow what my church was teaching. I grew up in a mainline Protestant church. The people were wonderful. I loved the ministers there. They were very sincere Christians. But I had problems with the “traditionalized” Christian doctrine they taught. It just didn’t go along with what I was discovering in the Bible itself. It seemed like they were defending certain theologians’ opinions about Jesus instead of Jesus himself.
Eventually, I ended up leaving that church and joining the Christian Science church. One of the things I like about Christian Science is that I was allowed to ask questions and wasn’t expected to believe anything unless I could put it into practice for myself.
Practice what you preach before you preach it
In other words, you can’t go around quoting Jesus, “love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27 NLT), if you are not actually loving them.
You can’t sincerely pray the line from the Lord’s Prayer, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12 KJV), if you are not forgiving the folks who have sinned against you.
You can’t just parrot the idea that God will heal you or someone else without the spiritual foundation of experience to back it up.
In other words, don’t make some big public declaration you believe a particular teaching, or tell others to, until you have actually put it into practice in your life. When you have learned to love your enemies, then you can tell others to do so. When you have learned to forgive, yourself and others, then you can preach the importance of forgiveness. When you have learned to pray in a way that brings healing to someone’s life, then you can tell them God will heal them.
Otherwise, your words are hollow.
Following Christ
Jesus never preached anything he hadn’t already proved in his own life.
We need to get back to this original Christianity of Jesus and put his teachings into practice in our daily lives. The more we do this, the more we’ll understand our relationship with God. We’ll love Jesus more than ever before, and our faith will be based on obedience to Jesus’s teachings instead of blind belief in what man-made doctrines insist we accept.
You should be a member of the church, if you’re a member of a church at all, that God directs you to. God doesn’t care what church label you paste on your forehead. He cares what’s in your heart. Your theological dogma and doctrines don’t get you into heaven; God’s grace does.
That said, if you’re dissatisfied with your church, your faith, or even have doubts about God and Jesus, I earnestly encourage you to keep up an honest search for truth itself. Don’t throw out the spirit of Jesus’s Christianity just because the version of Christianity you were brought up in has woefully deviated from following Jesus.
This doesn’t mean Christ is wrong. It just means that, over the centuries, the opinions of men have been plastered onto Christ and we can no longer see him clearly, until we get back to the original.
Stay or leave church?
Have you ever wondered: Should I leave my church or stay?
Again, this is can be a hard decision to make. It might depend on what kind of church you belong to.
Some churches are more democratic than others. Some are downright dictatorial. I saw a YouTube video not too long ago of a pastor in a small church who allowed no discussion or anyone to question his authority. He claimed he was the only one in the church who could hear God’s voice.
If you’re in a church like that, run for the hills.
On the other hand, if you’re in a church that is open to discussion and is willing to listen, pray about how to bring your concerns to the table with a vision for how the church can follow Christ more closely.
This is not easy to do. Once, the board of my church asked all church members to share ideas about how we could move forward as a church. I wrote a three page letter sharing heartfelt ideas and a vision for how I thought we could do a better job of following Christ.
In reply, I received a curt letter from the board accusing me of being critical of what they were doing, and had or hadn’t done in the past. I was pretty upset. I had simply responded to their request for ideas.
Listening for God’s direction
But in this case, God told me to stay put and be patient. I didn’t try to explain or justify myself. I realized that I needed to take my case directly to God. A friend suggested I rewrite my letter as if I were sending it to God. What a wonderful freedom followed.
I realized I was looking for human approval for my ideas. As I rewrote the same letter as if I would send it to God, I felt a sense of peace. God’s still small voice “said” to me, “You don’t need to tell Me all this. I know what’s in your heart. I put it there.” I felt heard and understood by God. What a feeling!
Within a few months, at a membership meeting, I was able to share the same ideas with the whole church I had shared with the board in the original letter. But this time, I didn’t feel so desperate to be heard. Apparently, I didn’t come off sounding critical, and the board appointed me to head up a Vision and Goals Committee for the church.
Would I have left that church if things had gone differently? I really don’t know, but I might have. But hopefully it would not just be because I didn’t get what I wanted. I might be the one who needs to follow Christ more closely instead of seeing how others are not.
And by the way, you can’t ignore your own lack of following Jesus, blame it on your church, then run off to another church and expect things to be much different.
Whenever I hear of someone questioning their faith because of the way others demand it be practiced or because of theological issues, it tugs at my heart. I can relate to the struggle.
Have you ever had doubts about your faith?
Have you ever realized you were on a man-made path instead of a God-made one? I would love to hear your story, where you are in the process and any answers you’ve found along the way.
Re-examining your faith can be a scary and uncomfortable process. But you’re not alone in the journey. More people than you can possibly imagine are on the same path and each may feel like they are the only one with doubts and questions.
There’s no formula of what to do when you find yourself in this position or your church isn’t following Christ, but here are a few ideas to get you started in this process:
- Go back to the four Gospels. Take each idea and put it into practice in your daily life. That’s one of the best ways to see if Jesus knew what he was talking about.
- Visit other churches and listen to people with different ideas.
- Ask questions and write them in a journal.
- Talk to a friend.
- And if you need someone to talk to, please contact me. I mean that very sincerely. I would love to talk to you.
Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15 ESV)
The implication here is that we will follow Jesus’s teachings because we love him. If a church is not following Jesus, basically it means they don’t really love him, even if they claim to.
Is that a church you want to be part of?
Now you may not be struggling with any of the issues I’ve been talking about. But someone you know might be and you’re not aware of it. Be alert if someone needs a shoulder to lean on or a listening ear. It might make all the difference in their lives.
If you are struggling with some of the things I mentioned, please feel free to reach out to me. You are not alone. There is always hope.
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If you have questions or comments please contact me. I’d love to hear from you..
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James Early, the Jesus Mindset Coach, is a Bible teacher, speaker, and podcaster. He conducts Bible workshops online and in person. His focus is on getting back to the original Christianity of Jesus by embracing the mindset of Christ in daily life. Contact him here.
Bible References
Joel 3:14 NIV
14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.
Matthew 9:36 KJV
36 But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.
Matthew 5:13, 14 NLT
13 You are the salt of the earth.
14 You are the light of the world.
Luke 6:27 NLT
27 love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you.
Matthew 6:12 KJV
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
John 14:15 ESV
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
