When Members Leave: Responding to a Meme

Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.

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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

Today is November the 11th, 2020 and if you're following along in our daily Bible reading program, you're going to be reading today from John chapter 17.

This is an important chapter, sometimes referred to as the high priestly prayer of Jesus.

So I would encourage you to read this intently, maybe read it a couple times throughout the day.

This is Jesus Christ praying over his disciples on the night before he goes to the crucifixion.

And if you're hearing a little bit of background noise today, I just want to let you know what's going on.

I'm actually returning from an evening out with some friends.

So I'm recording this in the car and that's kind of the subject that we're going to talk about tonight.

So this will kind of keep us rolling on our subject.

And when I say tonight, I'm recording it at night.

I know some of you are listening to this at six 30 in the morning, so it'd be a little bit different.

But I want to talk tonight about the importance of fellowship and I want to respond to a very popular internet meme that has been making its way around Facebook and Twitter and other things like that in regard to church fellowship and the relationships that people have within the church.

Tonight I went to a meal with a few friends and they were all members of our church.

The only one who wasn't a member of the church was actually the brother of a church member.

And so most of the people that were there tonight were friends and also church members.

And we gathered together to simply have an evening of fellowship.

And as I was driving, as I was coming home thinking and talking to my wife, we were talking about the idea of a recent internet meme that has gained some popularity.

And basically what it says is this.

It says that if someone leaves your ministry and you are no longer friends, then you are not in ministry, you are in business.

I'll say it again.

It says if someone leaves your ministry and you are no longer friends, then you're not in ministry, you are in business.

And anytime I see someone post that, I see they often get a lot of amens, hallelujahs, preach it.

You know, a lot of people tend to agree with the meme.

But I actually want to take issue a little bit with the heart of the meme.

Because while I do believe that if someone leaves the ministry that I'm in or anyone else is in, that that certainly doesn't mean that the friendship ends.

I do think that there is something to be said for a different relationship which occurs when someone is in a church.

And I'm going to say this.

I know there's a difference between ministries and churches.

But for the sake of this conversation, I'm going to, because I have seen it in the other way, I've seen memes that say if a person leaves your church and they are no longer your friend, then you're in business, you're not a church.

And I want to challenge that.

Because here's something to consider.

When you join a church, you are joining a covenant community whose purpose is to gather together for the purpose of worshiping God, for the purpose of sharing your individual gifts with one another within the covenant community, for the purpose of exercising all of the things the Bible calls us to exercise, rebuke, correction, reproof, training one another in righteousness, iron, sharpening iron, all of those things that are supposed to happen within a covenant community, within a church.

And when you are in a church like ours, church is very much like family.

I'll be honest, my children with the women in the church often refer to them as Aunt this or Aunt that because they grew up in the church and these women are very much as close or closer than our blood relatives are to them.

So when someone leaves that fellowship, when someone chooses to go away from the church fellowship, oftentimes there is a disconnect in the relationship.

I'm not saying we're not friends anymore.

I have several people who I'm great friends with who have been members of our church in the past and who have left.

But there is a difference in the relationship when they are in the church and when they leave the church.

Some of you may take issue with that, but let me try to explain why I'm saying what I'm saying.

Because what often happens is, or what the one thing that people don't realize happens is when people leave, is they're joining another faith community, they're joining another family, and so the relationships that were once within the first church are now no longer as strong.

The bonds are no longer as strong because they're now forming those relationships and those friendships within a new body.

And so I understand if a person leaves Sovereign Grace Family Church and they go join another church, whether it be in the community or outside the community, maybe they move or whatever, when they join another church, the bond of relationship is not going to be at all the same as it was when they were in the church and in that relationship.

It's not a matter of you're a business and not a ministry.

See, I think that, again, it's an attack.

It's saying, well, if you can't have the exact same relationship that you had with someone when they were in the church after they leave the church, then you're not looking at this as a ministry.

You're looking at this as a business.

That's not true.

The very heart of the church, the very heart of the ministry, is that it is a relationship-based community.

And so when the relationship is interrupted and a person leaves the community, there will never be the same relationship as it was before, especially on the part of the pastor.

And again, as a pastor, I can't help but look at these things through my own lens.

And when I see this meme pop up on people's page, I often think about that from my perspective as a pastor.

And when someone is in our church, when a person joins our fellowship, they become part of our church, part of our family.

And they are now the responsibility of the elders of this church in regard to their spiritual walk, their training in righteousness, their scriptural understanding.

Those things become the responsibility of the elders who are charged to shepherd the flock of God who is among you.

That's what the scripture tells the elders to do.

Shepherd the flock of God which is among you.

And so how do we shepherd the flock of God which is among us if they're no longer among us? We can't.

We cannot be expected to shepherd someone who leaves the flock and goes under another shepherd at another flock.

That doesn't make any sense.

And so to say that I'm going to have a same relationship with a person who stays at the church and is still a part of the flock as a person who leaves and goes and is underneath at another flock, there's no way that that can be the case.

The flock does matter.

And you see this goes back to the idea of church actually mattering.

The church itself, the community itself, the faith community itself does matter.

And therefore, when someone is saying that, well, if a person leaves your flock and, you know, if you don't have the same relationship with them, then you're in ministry, you're in a business, not a ministry.

That is not true.

You will not have the same relationship, especially pastor to church member, as you do before.

You can't possibly have the same relationship because the relationship before was a relationship of responsibility.

When a person comes out from underneath and goes to another flock and is under another pastor, they are in the relationship, the relationship with the new pastor, and therefore, there is a change in that relationship with the first pastor.

And again, I'm not in any way indicating that a person could not remain friends.

I have several people that have left our church and I love them and, you know, we are still friends.

Our children still know one another, play together.

That is not what I'm saying at all.

I'm not saying that just because somebody leaves the community that you cut off communication or you cut off friendship.

I would say that would be wrong.

And I do know that at the heart of the meme, that's part of what the meme is talking about.

But I am saying this, though, there will be a distinction in the relationship.

Last week, for those of you who listen to the program every day, you heard me talking to John Mercer.

John Mercer is the former worship leader at my church.

And if you listen to that interview, you heard how much John and I still love each other, how much we still are encouraged by being around one another and talking to one another.

We still have a great relationship, but it is not the same as it was when he was an elder with me.

He and he would say that he would he would say that even though we still love one another, even though we still appreciate one another, even though we still encourage one another, we don't talk a lot, partly because we're in two different faith communities.

When he was a fellow elder with me, we talked almost daily, if not every two or three days, for sure.

We were always talking and our relationship was much different then than it is now.

And that is natural.

That is going to happen.

It's not a bad thing.

It just is something that is the natural result of moving from one faith community to another.

And so this kind of leads to a conclusion that I think people should really consider.

Moving churches is not a small thing.

Moving from one church to another is a very big decision.

If you are in a faith community that is preaching the gospel and is a faith community that you are contributing to with your spiritual gifts and the faith community is contributing to you with its spiritual gifts and you are serving within a church, there is no perfect church and you may have some issues with the church that you're at.

But if you are in a church body, you're in a fellowship, you're in a community, you're in a relationship, that should not just be walked away from because things might get a little frustrating or uncomfortable.

There are times where it is necessary to leave a church.

There are times when you must break fellowship.

But in general, most people leave not for the reasons that they should leave, but for unbiblical reasons, for personality quirks and little minor frustrations over secondary and tertiary issues.

Very few people leave for biblical reasons and that's another issue, right? Why do people leave? Most people leave because somehow they become frustrated with either the leadership or they become frustrated with the faith community itself.

They feel like they're not receiving what they need or their needs are not being met or their desires are not being fulfilled and so they go to find a church that better fits what they're looking for in a church.

And so when that happens, there is going to be a natural separation from that community because that community, the thing that holds them together, is that they meet together regularly for participation in worship.

They meet together regularly for participation in fellowship.

And if you're not part of that anymore, then it makes sense that you're not going to have as close a relationship as you once did.

Now, as I draw to a close, I want to make one final note.

There's another issue that never goes mentioned in this meme, never is really mentioned a lot in churches today, and that's the subject of church discipline.

Some people leave churches because they are in sin and some people leave churches because the church has recognized their sin and has called them to repentance and they do not want to repent.

And I will say that is where the situation gets very tricky because if a person leaves the church because they are in sin or if the church has excommunicated them because they have been brought before the church and refused to repent, then if the relationship with the church is not the same as it was before, that is by nature, because when a person is under discipline, then the church is called to not fellowship, but rather to instead treat that person, as Jesus said in Matthew 18, as a tax collector or a sinner, someone who is outside of the community of faith.

And that has to happen.

And that's a difficult thing.

People have to really think through how they're going to practice that and what it's going to look like.

Ultimately, I think the main thing in that is you pray for that person to repent and be restored.

But unfortunately, as many people know, very few people are willing to repent and be restored because they're in sin.

And unfortunately, people love their sin oftentimes more than they love anything else.

So, again, this is a major subject and it just it was on my mind tonight.

I'm returning from a time of fellowship.

I was sitting around with people from my church and I was thinking, I'm thankful for the fellowship that I have within the body.

I'm thankful that I have several different people within the church who enjoy going and doing things.

And I enjoy going and being with people.

And I love that.

And like I said, I have friends who have left the church that I'm still close to, but the closest relationships that I have in this life are with the people that are actively working together in the faith community, which I am a part of, and we are all working towards the same goal, the glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ through the preaching of the gospel as we gather together as the saints.

And what brings us together is we are all part of the same faith community at Sovereign Grace Family Church.

It's not because it's a business.

It's because it's a family.

So I hope this has been helpful.

I hope this has been challenging and maybe that this has challenged you on your thinking on this important issue.

Thank you for listening to the program today.

This has been Coffee with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.

He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.

May God be with you.