Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

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00:02

Hi, this is Jimmy. On the podcast today, John and I seek to answer the question, what do you do when it is time to leave your church?

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Perhaps you've been listening to Theocasts and other reform podcasts and you begin to sense this shift that you're having in your local church context that you may need to leave and worship elsewhere.

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We discuss the ways that are unhelpful to leave and the ways and things to consider to be gracious and kind and charitable as you consider a new church family.

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In the members' podcast, we talk about some primary and secondary issues to consider in thinking about a new home of worship.

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We hope this conversation is helpful to you and we look forward to you listening.

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Thanks. A simple way for you to help support Theocast and join the Reformation is by shopping at Amazon.

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That's right. Everything that you purchase there, they will take a percentage of it and donate it to our ministry.

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All you have to do is go to smile .amazon .com and then search for Theocast Inc. and choose us as the supporting donation.

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To learn more about this and other ways of supporting us, you can go to theocast .org slash give.

01:25

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the

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Christian life from a reformed perspective. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church here in beautiful Willmar, Minnesota.

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Our other co -host, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. He is not with us today.

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That man just needs some time off. He's a hardworking man. He's actually moving at the moment, moving low, moving his house.

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Well, I was going to say he's the best looking of all three of us, so he just needs some time to keep that up.

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Some rest. He needs some beauty rest. You know what's so funny? It's not much embarrasses, Justin, but that does.

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It does. It does. He does not like, he's going to say, after he listens to this, he's going to send us a text that just says

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SMH, SMH boys, and we will get a good giggle.

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So we have some exciting things going on here at Theocast, John. So why don't you share about a new resource we have coming out for the people?

02:37

Right. We have a new primer. So this will be our third primer that's come out, the second primer from these hosts.

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And it's one that we, I would say, are very passionate about. And really, we worked really hard on this to make sure that it was clear and concise and just an easy resource.

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So we have a new primer. It's called Safe in Christ, a Primer on Assurance. And it's a different kind of a book where it's conversational.

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This is, you're going to have in the intro of the book, you're going to hear from all three of us and our backgrounds and the struggles that we've had, the theology that we had to work through.

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And then we are going to show you from scripture how you can truly find rest in Christ and have assurance and how does that play out and some of the pitfalls and some of the struggles that you're going to come against, things like the radical movement or Lordship salvation.

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So it's an easy, what we tried to do is if someone is new to Reformed theology, if they're new to understanding law, gospel, distinction, this book literally is an introduction for them and helping them understand the language of resting in Christ and assurance.

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So it's available right now in digital and paperback. You can go to theocast .org store and find it there.

03:55

So it's a great resource, one, for your own soul and encouragement, but two, it's also a great resource to hand out.

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So you might want to buy a couple of copies. Yeah, I'm really excited about that one, just because assurance has been a giant theme and the struggle with it has been a giant theme in my own

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Christian life. And I know that even before I was a host on Theocast, this podcast was profoundly helpful in my understanding of that doctrine.

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And we say all the time that really the Reformation was kind of a recovery of the doctrine of assurance.

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And so it is not something that we want to take lightly. It is something that we want to address pastorally, and we think that this resource does just that.

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And so in light of that, some of the things that I just said, John, can you believe that it's been almost one year since I came on as host of Theocast?

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It has gone by fast. It's hard to believe that, you and Justin. So it's our one year is coming up,

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I think, soon. I can't remember when. I'll have to go back and look. But we started recording in June.

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They didn't come out until, I think, August. So yeah, no, it's been encouraging.

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It's been a fun ride. So if you've been listening since Justin and myself have joined John, maybe you're new to Reformed theology, maybe you are new to a covenantal understanding of the

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Christian life or a confessional mindset of churches, and perhaps after a year of listening to us three, you're now in this place where you're beginning to ask the question,

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I'm buying into this. I'm buying into this Reformed perspective of church and the

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Christian life. But the current context that I'm in, the current church that I'm worshiping in, is not like that.

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So what John and I want to have a conversation around today is that very situation, what do you do when you find yourself in a church context where you perhaps disagree theologically with what is being preached from the pulpit?

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Perhaps you disagree with the overall theology of the church. What is a person to do when they find themselves there?

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So that is what we're going to have our conversation around today, and let us just be clear from the get -go that our aim in this conversation is not to pick on those churches, is not to pick on the churches that perhaps we would disagree with as hosts, rather it has always been our aim here at Theocast in the past year to be charitable, to seek unity.

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We know we have a lot of listeners that probably personally disagree with a lot of our stances on things.

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But in the end, our hope is to be loving, and kind, and gracious, and charitable, to be that kind of voice.

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And so we hope to have this conversation today with those themes in mind. So John, why don't you help us frame this conversation a little bit more?

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Yeah. Well, every other email we get and every other request through social media has to do with,

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I've been listening to you guys for a while. I love what you're saying. Can you recommend a church in our area?

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And I'll be completely frank, it breaks my heart every time

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I get those emails because I understand the pain. I understand the frustration where your heart is exploding.

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Your mind is being refreshed anew. You can't believe what you're hearing. And you're tired of drinking from a podcast.

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You want to go swim in the pool, man. It's like, give me Christ and Him crucified every

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Sunday. And when I get those, it's really hard. You know, I don't have a resource yet.

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It's something we're looking into. So the first thing we want to start with is, you're not crazy.

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This is something we tell everyone. Hey, look, you're not alone. There's a large group of people who are making this transition.

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I made this transition about 12 years ago where I found myself desiring more, wanting more, reading old resources and thinking there seems to be an older way.

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I don't like saying a better way because that's to think that it's new. There's an older way that has been abandoned, that's been lost.

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We've put carpet over the top of the hardwood floors and the beauty and the joy of what was original is now gone.

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So yes, you probably used to go to church and enjoyed yourself. And now you're feeling guilty because now you go to church and you feel critical.

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You feel like someone handed you cold mac and cheese that's been sitting out for three days when you're just wanting the meat of the word.

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And now you feel guilty because you're criticizing the teachers and the preachers that you once loved and you still love them, but you're almost thinking to yourself,

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I don't really want cold mac and cheese anymore. It's not giving me the sustenance that I need. So you're not crazy.

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There are lots of people who are in this situation and it's a good thing because what's happening is that people are actually hungering after Christ.

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It's not a movement. We aren't giving you some new movement that is this new thing that's exploding.

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And if you can get on this, then your church will explode. The desire of Theocast is to strengthen the local body and to encourage churches.

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And we do. I was on the phone yesterday with a guy in Indiana just trying to help him write a primer, more pastors writing on this language and on his true historic

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Reformed faith is what we need. So this is kind of where we would start. I know Jimmy and I have this conversation.

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Jimmy, you're not crazy, but you're not alone in this circumstance. Yeah, it's almost like one of those things where, even in my own background, the experience of Christianity that I was really discipled in,

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I had heard names like John Calvin, Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon.

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I heard these names, but I had a very specific lens through which I read those guys and the lens that I had was very much this

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Calvinist evangelical approach to the Christian life that was very centered and focused almost in a hyper way on what

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I did, my works, my obedience. And over the course of listening to this podcast, reading other thinkers and writers about the

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Reformation and the Reformers themselves, I began to question those things and really my struggle with assurance was kind of the catalyst into moving into a deeper

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Reformed understanding. But perhaps you're like me where you just have kind of had this lens shift where you might even hear

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Calvin and Luther quoted from the pulpit, but you have this inner cognitive dissonance where you're saying, yeah, but I don't think they would agree with how you're using their quotes.

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I don't think they would agree with how you're presenting them. And so I began to read those guys.

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I want to stop reading what other people said about Calvin and what other people said about Luther. I want to read those guys myself.

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And so once I started reading them, I began to have this completely different understanding about preaching, about a sacramental approach to the

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Christian life, about the means of grace, about spiritual disciplines. And so I just know that there are guys and gals listening to this right now, and that's where you're at, where your lens has completely changed.

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When you go to church or when you listen to a podcast or when you listen to a sermon, you have a completely different grid through which you're filtering everything, and so the first thing that I would say, if you're in a context right now where you feel like you're beginning to shift in a different theological way than your church, the first thing that I would say to that person is take a deep breath, take a deep breath, and try to assess realistically where you are.

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I think one of the dangerous things that can happen is you can enter into this cage stage where you begin to just kind of light up everybody around you, where I remember personally, and this is terrible, you would just flat out call people pietists, and you'd say, you're a pietist, and people would be like, what in the world are you?

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I've never even heard that word before. And it's just really unhelpful, and so you don't want to be that person.

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Or anything that, any imperative or any instruction in Scripture is pietism.

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Everything is pietism. That's right. Everything is pietism, yeah. Yeah, exactly, where you see everything through this super strict, indicative imperative model where all imperatives are bad, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no, we don't want to go there.

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That's overreacting. Don't overreact. It's kind of the pendulum swing. Don't go from one end to the other.

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And so the first thing that I would kind of advise somebody is learn from my mistakes and slow down, take a deep breath, and ask really good questions of yourself and just kind of realistically where you're at, and so,

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John, when somebody's beginning to have this shift, what are kind of the first steps that we would encourage them toward?

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Yeah, funny thing is this week I had lunch and conversations at my own church helping people think through leaving a context that they're currently in.

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And, you know, as a pastor, I'm very sensitive to how people leave and how they should leave and how, because listen, the way the

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Bible describes it is that you are a living organism attached to another living organism, and so you can't just detach yourself and think it's not going to have effects on people.

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Now, if you're in a large church and you're just kind of an attender there and no one even knows who you are, that's one thing, but if you're in a smaller context, you can't just rip the

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Band -Aid off. It's really not the loving thing to do. So one of the things you have to realize is that a lot of times you'll listen to Justin and Jimmy and I, and you're thinking, man, if I could just go to their church, well, that's not necessarily true.

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We've had people come visit my church and they're underwhelmed. It's not Mecca. It's not what you think it's going to be.

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Nothing magical here. Justin Perdue No, and now to be fair, we do preach the gospel and we do present the means of grace, and that probably is different for a lot of people and they'd be encouraged by that, but I think what you need to do is you have to take a fair assessment of where you're at.

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So if you're in a church where they actually do attempt to preach God's word verse by verse, they're trying to present it from a gracious manner where they're trusting in Christ.

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They may dip into pietism once in a while. There might be some, you know, okay, I don't, you know, we're, we may have just got into a little bit of a be like Daniel, but if the overarching message is kindness and mercy, it's good leadership, but it's not a confessionally reformed church and there isn't a confessionally reformed church or a confessional church in your area, then you are feeling like you are being fed

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Christ and you're growing. Well, I wouldn't leave a good context for one that you think is better because you probably will be sorely disappointed with that circumstance.

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Absolutely. So that would be the first thing I would say. Yeah. I mean, just to add to that,

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I'm going to assume a couple things of the listener right now. I'm going to assume that because you're listening to a

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Christian podcast, you're taking time. I'm going to assume that we're not the only Christian podcast that you're listening to.

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I'm going to assume that you, you take these things seriously. You think about them a lot. And so I'm also going to assume that you're probably health, healthily involved in your local church, that you know your leadership and your leadership knows you.

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And so I think the most important and loving and kind thing that you can do, and I'm just speaking on behalf of pastors right now, is you broach a conversation with them and you just say,

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Hey, can we get together? I want to discuss some thoughts I've been having, some feelings I've been having, perhaps a theological shift that I'm having, and you want to work through that with them.

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You want to give them an opportunity to care for and shepherd you. And I would say if you're attending a church that perhaps isn't confessionally reformed, however, the leadership of your church cares for you.

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They love you. They know you. They know your family. They've been there for you. You want to be slow to walk away from that context.

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In a quick manner, you want to be able to say, Hey, we have something that we're going toward because we think it's a better theological fit.

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You don't want to just kind of rip the bandaid off and walk away in a harmful manner.

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And so I would also encourage you to sit down with your leadership. Give them an opportunity to hear you out.

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And so I think that's kind of the positive thing that I would encourage. Now, a negative thing that I would discourage is if you're a member at your church, there's a difference if you're in leadership and if you're just kind of a member or attender of a church, by the way, we encourage church membership, be a member of your local church, but if you're a member at your church, you're not in church leadership, the last thing you want to do is be that guy or that gal that you're constantly sending podcast links and theological articles to your pastor saying,

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I want you to think about this, I want you to do this, I want you to preach this way. In other words,

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I want to discourage you against trying to reform your church in a vigilante sort of way where you're not in a position to do so.

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You're not in a position to walk into an elder meeting and say, you guys are not preaching Christ, I want you to preach

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Christ the way that I want you to preach Christ. And here's a podcast that you should listen to and our church is going to begin reforming.

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Or I would say even worse, if you're a small group leader and you're beginning to have differences with your church leadership, you need to be upfront with that right away.

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Because the last thing you want to do is create some sort of schism in your church where you have a group of four or five families and you are saying,

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I'm going to do my best to shape these people and it's going to spill over, and so that's kind of both the positive and the negative thing that I would say.

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Positive, have conversations with your leadership, be realistic, be honest, be loving, be kind, be gracious.

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And on a negative sense, I would discourage against trying to reform from the bottom up.

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Now there's nothing wrong with, hey, pastors, leaders, this is a book

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I'm reading or this is a podcast I'm listening to, would love to know your thoughts because now you're asking for advice.

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That's different from, you should listen to this and do it, because it says in Hebrews that you should not make the job of your leaders hard.

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You need to make it easy for them. And so if you come in and put a mandate on them, I'm going to tell you right now, if someone does that to me as a pastor,

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I love and graciously will say, wow, maybe I wasn't very clear in our position of where we're at as a church.

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I will definitely take that into consideration and we can talk, but I hope there's not a confusion here.

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And we've had people who've had to leave because it's like, look, I'm not dispensational, I'm covenantal.

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This is why we hold to a confession. So I would agree with, I would agree. And to speak to this from a personal side,

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I actually ended up having to leave a church that I was on staff at because I found myself in counseling situations where I knew what

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I wanted to say was not the same thing that the leadership would say. And so over time, in good conscience,

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I thought it's going to slip out and then I'm going to be opposing the leader. So I had to go to the leadership and say,

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I think it's better if I resign because I don't want to cause a conflict or split in this church.

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I don't want people to be of John and not of the pastor. And so it was a painful, it was very painful, it was very hard.

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I've had to help, I mean, Jimmy was in the same circumstance. I've had elder pastors who've come to me and said, you know, and if you're the senior pastor and you've made this shift, please know that trying to change a congregation that's established is not as easy as you may think.

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And you need to let your elders know you're making, or your leadership know that you're making this transition because they may not want to make it along with them and it's not fair to drag them through this and really split and blow up the church so that you may have to come to the conclusion of,

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I think I need to walk away from this church because it's better if they have a pastor that agrees with their doctrinal statement or agrees with their culture.

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So I would, you know, you may need to resign and go somewhere else. We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a primer on rest. And we, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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And you can get this at theocast .org slash primer. And if you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

22:09

You can do that by joining our total access membership. That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry.

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And you can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

22:28

Yeah, a quick couple of thoughts. So we want to be clear that there are distinct moments when it is absolutely clear that you must leave a church.

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And some of those would be, there are spiritual abuse happening. You're being guilted and shamed by your church leadership, and I would say that is an unhealthy situation.

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And I mean, just to interject, if you're in sin and that's why they're doing it, then you need to repent. Yeah, exactly right.

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That's one thing. Yeah, yeah, very good. Like if you're shacking it up with your boyfriend or girlfriend and they're coming after you and you're just saying, you're abusing me, well, you've got another...

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That's not pietism. No, no, you've got another thing coming, my friend. That's right. But if you are being spiritually abused in the sense that you're being guilted and shamed, that everything you do is kind of under a watchful eye or a suspicious eye, that's unhealthy.

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If heresy is coming from the pulpit, that is also unhealthy. You need to get out. If a church is beginning to take a really strong liberal political agenda,

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I would say that is a time to leave. When a church begins to become, in my opinion, pro -homosexuality,

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I would say I think that is a clear time to leave. So we do recognize there are times when you just need to up and leave.

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And a simple conversation with the leadership, just saying, hey, look, this is where we're different, our mind is made up, this is a black and white issue.

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We need to go. Now, the other thing I would say is that obviously there are less clear things.

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There are perhaps secondary issues, if you will, that you want to leave over. Let me just also make another distinction.

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If you are a pastor or a staff member at a church, we can have one conversation.

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If you are a congregant at a church, it is a completely different conversation. So John and I both have left churches, but we were pastors or staff people at the church.

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And so us leaving the church is going to look different than your everyday congregant because there were things as a congregant that you can kind of plug your nose and partner with.

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You can say, you know what, this isn't how I would do it, but overall, the pastors are loving, they're kind, they're gracious, they preach the gospel.

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I wouldn't perhaps have the same philosophy of ministry, but right now this is good for me, it's good for my family, so I'm going to plug my nose and partner.

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But as a pastor or a staff person, if you are beginning to theologically stray from where your church stands, that is kind of a red flag, particularly if you are not the lead pastor.

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If you are an associate or student pastor, or perhaps you are some sort of director, you need to be very, very clear with,

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I would say, your lead pastor and your elders to say, hey, I'm beginning to have a shift here and I need to work through this.

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And eventually, when you feel like you can no longer be an agent of unity in your church, it is probably time for you to leave and step down, which is difficult, right?

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As pastors, it's our livelihood and it's a scary thing. Trust me, I've been there, right? I left a church with nowhere to go and shoveled snow, right?

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It was an odd time of my life. John remembers those days. It's one conversation for a staff person.

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It's a different conversation for congregants. I think the next thing that I would say is be careful not to over -spiritualize your leaving.

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John, I know you have all sorts of comments on this, so I'll shoot it over to you. Yeah, just to jump back before we go to that because that's a very important topic.

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I would say, listen, just to help you on what you should hold your nose on, because this is part of the over -spiritualizing before we get into it.

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Look, if you disagree with the music or what the pastor wears, or maybe the translation of the

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Bible, or they're not using liturgy, be careful you're not nitpicking preferences, even how maybe some ministries are run, you know, how they do children's ministry or whatever.

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Just, we need to be kind and gracious. If you nitpick your wife or your husband the way in which you nitpick a church, you probably would get divorced because you can find a thousand reasons to be upset and disagree with people that you live with.

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So just be careful with that. You need to really think through, is this something I must die over? Because I guarantee you there's not a church out there that's the perfect church that you want to go to.

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They don't exist. As a matter of fact, the three churches that are on this podcast, all three of them are different and we do things differently.

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We all have different preferences. And as pastors, I like to do it this way.

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And it's not that one way is right or wrong. It's just, we feel like it's the best thing to do in the culture that we sit in.

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So I would just say focused on the primaries and the secondaries, let's be a little bit more gracious and cautious there.

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Maybe we should do a podcast on what's primary, secondary, and very soon. Overspiritualization is something that,

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I'll be frank, it's something that boils my blood, and if a congregant comes in and tries to do this with me,

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I very kindly and very graciously press them on this because it is an easy card to throw that shuts everyone down.

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And it's just, I think it's dangerous. So it goes like this. Well, pastor,

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I just feel like the Lord is leading us in a different direction. And so the moment you throw that, that's the trump card.

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Are you going to counteract that? And so I graciously and kindly will say, please explain that to me.

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What does that look like? How do you know it's God and not just what you want?

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Which they can never give me an answer to that. They'll try and say, well, I prayed about it.

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Well, I read their scriptures. That's great, but you are blaming God right now for your decision. You better be sure it's

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God and not you. How are you sure it's God? Right. Yeah. I have a friend that always, he says, and I think he quotes somebody else.

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He says, what the heart wants, the mind justifies. I think that might be a Kramer quote, Thomas Kramer. I'm not totally sure, but man, if I had a nickel for every time

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I heard, we're just not sure, or we think that the Lord wants us to do this or that, or the other thing, it's, look,

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I'm glad. I'm glad you're trying to use good, pious language. I'm really glad that you are trying to be sensitive to what the

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Lord desires. But man, some things you just don't need to over -spiritualize. And this sounds so weird, right?

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I know. Because you have two pastors talking about one of the most spiritual things on earth, which is the body of Christ.

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And we're saying, don't over -spiritualize it. And frankly, because here's the thing, you can apply that over -spiritualization to kind of anything and just say, well, even though this church is spewing forth heresy, we think the

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Lord wants us to stay because we can be an agent of change, and it's like, no, you can't.

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God has abandoned that church. He does not honor heresy coming from the pulpit.

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And so leave, you know, get up on out of there, right? And so on the same token, going to your church pastors and elders and saying, the

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Lord wants us to leave is just going to be really difficult and it's not going to set you up for success, right?

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It's going to create a difficult and awkward situation. It is better for you to say, we've thought about it.

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We've conversed. We have prayed, right? You certainly want to kind of soak this in prayer.

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We've sought wisdom from other people and we sense that at this time, between all of those things, it is right and good for us to part ways and for us to consider a different place of worship.

30:57

Yeah, I think that's really good because what's going to happen, especially if you are heavily involved in the church, what you do, you are going to have people ask you, well, why are you no longer here?

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And if you say, well, the Lord's just leading us away, you then have to answer why, because they're going to think, well, why isn't the

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Lord leading me away? Why would the Lord lead one of his children away and not another of his children away?

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So it's a very, I think it's a very dangerous stage. You know, you have to be very careful when you use that phrase, the

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Lord is leading me, which is, look, I do believe that God can impress on people's hearts and put desires in our hearts for us to do certain things.

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But you should be very careful with that phrase. The other thing that I always encourage people with, unless you're in a dangerous circumstance, you never leave a church, you never go away from something.

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You always go towards something. You always move towards a better context or a different context or a context that fits your circumstances.

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So I have had several people I've had to coach in this, including Jimmy, where you don't want to just leave, because what happens is a lot of people leave churches and then just never go back for a long period of time, and it's worse.

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It's better for you to stay and at least receive the benefits of the body as weak as they may be.

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Again, if it's not an abusive circumstance, but you always want to move towards something. And I think it's easy to say to people and to the congregants that says, we feel like this church is the best for our family and where we are at theologically.

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We do not think this church is wrong, heretical or dangerous or any of those things, but this is on a preferential level.

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We feel like that this would fit where we feel most comfortable in pursuing our relationship with God.

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Don't over -spirit it, put it on you, name what it is. Listen, it is a preferential issue.

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Unless it's a flat -out doctrinal issue, you're like, I just cannot stay under that teaching. Even then, you need to be very careful, because if people aren't where you're at, you don't need to leave a bombshell behind you and try and drag as many people as you can with you.

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One of the best things that you can do, particularly if you're in a town where you're going to be going to a different church across town, one of the best things that you can do is leave peaceably, leave with peace.

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Don't damage relationships. As much as it depends on you, don't do it. Speaking from experience here,

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I know what that's like. You want to be sensitive, you want to be kind, you want to be gracious. I like what you said there,

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John. Put it on you. Most likely, the person that we're talking to right now, listening, your church hasn't changed.

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You have. You need to keep that in mind, that being angry and saying, oh,

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I can't believe you preach this way. You do this way. You can't be mad at them. They've been doing that all along.

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You're the one that has changed. You're the one that decided to listen to three knuckleheads talk on a podcast about things like pietism.

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It's your fault, Matt. It's our fault. But what I'm trying to say, kind of tongue in cheek, is you want to realize, hey, it is going to be good for me to leave peaceably.

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Most likely, you may have children too, and so they're going to watch how you leave a church and go to a different body.

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I remember when we left our church and we started attending elsewhere, we had to explain to our kids, why are we going to this different church?

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We tried to not use over -spiritual language. We would just say, this is a better fit for mommy and daddy and our babies right now.

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This is where it is good for us to be. Again, don't over -spiritualize, and as much as we can stress, don't just walk away from something when you have nowhere to go.

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Now, granted, there are caveats to that. If it's abuse, heresy, so on, things like that, get up on out of there and give us a call and we will do our best to help you out, but as I said earlier, if your pastoral team, your elders are caring for you, they're loving you, they're calling you, they're trying to get together with you, understand where you're at, and you're just like, no,

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I'm just not here, but I have nowhere else to go, and then you still leave, that is going to be a lot worse for you because you are going to enter into a hole of despair and jadedness that you did not think that you would ever be in.

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Yeah. Amen. Well, one of the things, I've been mentioning this for years, and I know it makes people feel very uncomfortable, but there are things that I feel very strongly about, and I think they come from Scripture.

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When your physical needs become in jeopardy and you are no longer able to provide for the needs of your family, the

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Bible says it's worse than being an unbeliever if you aren't willing to work and provide for your family, right?

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So you, and I know people who have had to move locations, they had to move states, they had to move cities to go find work in whatever field that they were in so that they can provide.

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What is sad is that we treat our physical needs more important than our spiritual needs. And there are people who live in very dry and desert areas, or they'll even move to a location for a great job and cannot find a church within an hour of their location, and they're driving an hour, an hour and a half, two hours to find a church.

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And my encouragement to you is that once you understand that resting in Christ is the primary focus of the

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Christian life to where you cannot truly find strength and joy without there being the means of grace, the constant preaching of the word, the table, prayer, corporate prayer, well, that becomes a problem.

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And so I have told, when I was in college ministry, I very strongly told college students, do not accept a job unless you know there is a good church in that area.

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And I can't tell you how many hours I spent with college students on websites trying to find churches for them.

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And I've had students say, you know, I'm not going to take this job. I, we can't find, and I don't, I don't mean nitpicky, like exactly like where we are.

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I just mean a good, solid church that may not even be confessional. But they, if they are preaching

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Christ and crucified, that's fine. But it, I think it's just as important to the bottom line of your dollar is the long -term health of you spiritually.

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I think another thing to consider is if you're married, be sensitive to your spouse, be like -minded, be like -minded about your decision.

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It's probably unhealthy for you to wake up one day and say, honey, we're not going to go to this church anymore.

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This is something that my wife and I had to do. Obviously when I was on my journey into greater reform thinking,

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I had to bring my wife along with me and still do to this day, right, help her to understand why it is

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I'm thinking this way, why we're moving in this direction. Like it's not enough just to kind of wake up one day.

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And let me just say this, please do not stay somewhere or go somewhere merely because it is good for your kids.

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And I know I just probably put a dagger in your heart, but if you and your spouse are struggling, but you're staying somewhere because it's good for the kids,

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I'm going to tell you right now, that's not good for the kids. It's not because particularly your kids will bounce back when you move or shift or go somewhere else, but you will not bounce back if you are suffering in the pews every

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Sunday. That's right. I know I probably just offended a lot of people, but I'm sorry.

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Yeah. Well, and it's hard, you know, you want to do what's right for your kids. You want your kids to be excited about church, but what you are training your children in what church is becomes what they are looking for when they go to college, and you know, that's tough.

39:42

Jimmy and I think that the time that your children have at home, now listen, we believe in the sovereignty of God and that God's the one who draws them to ourselves, but I think children can flounder, believing children can flounder because they weren't given a true, strong theological upgrade.

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They weren't catechized. They weren't taught how to participate in the means of grace and how to receive and strengthen their faith.

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They were taught how to play games and be entertained and have fun.

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Those things aren't wrong, and churches can have activities and do things like that, but if we aren't training our children on how to participate and be a part of the local body, you know, that's, that I think you're, yeah, it's going to, it's going to be complicated in the long run,

40:29

I think. Yeah. Yeah. And certainly the podcast. Right. And, and certainly there are nuances within that, right?

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If you have, if you have older children, teenagers, you're going to have to sit down and have conversations with them and invite them to be part of that process.

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If you have little kids, like two, three, man, they're not going to remember anything, right? So don't, don't, don't, don't overthink it, you know, it's okay.

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But now that isn't to say you shouldn't consider your kids at all, that they're just kind of lifeless beings that live in your home and eat all your food and, you know, require diapers and care and things like that.

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You do want to consider them and be sensitive. But at the same time, you know, one of my personal philosophies has been the spiritual health and wellbeing of mom and dad will have its effect on Bobby and Susie, the little kids.

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It just will. I, I just, I don't, I don't see how making, we already live in a society where we, we kind of base everything we do off of our kids, right?

41:34

I mean, we can't go out to eat right now because our kids need a nap. My dad still, my dad still goes bananas when he hears that from young couples.

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He's just like, you people, you people and your kids. But anyway, I just remember growing up, like we'd go to somebody's house and my dad would be like, you're tired?

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Go take a nap in the corner. Like, just figure it out, you know? So we already, we already base a lot of our, our life on our children, but when it comes to the life and health and resting in Christ and being, sitting under the means of grace, mom and dad need that.

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They need a place where they can do that and rest in Christ. And the children will, will know that. And there will be a difference in the home because of that.

42:15

So John, we're kind of coming up on, on the, uh, the members podcast. We are. And you kind of mentioned it before and I'm going to,

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I'm going to throw the bomb at you right now. Oh no. Um, and so for our members, what I'd like to talk about is what are some primary and secondary issues when it comes to leaving the church?

42:34

And so we might even disagree on a couple of these. So I'm, I'm a little, I'm a little excited. We might have to call JP and just tell him to get on.

42:40

Oh, wow. Call him on the phone. If you are interested in trying to find a church, um, we don't really have a resource yet.

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It is something we are praying about. We need finances to be able to afford to put that together.

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It's, it's, it's a pretty big undertaking. There are people, for those of you that don't know, we have a pretty, very active

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Facebook group. I think there's over 1300 people in there. Uh, they're great lively discussions.

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It's really designed to help ask questions and dialogue about the podcast, but there's often people who will put in, uh,

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I live in this area. Do you know of any churches in our area? That might be the best resource right now to do that.

43:23

Um, we get emails and I just, I'm not, I don't really know if there's, you know, there's 1300 people in there that are all over the world in the

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United States. They may have a better shot at knowing than I would. So I would encourage you to possibly go there first. Well, thank you for taking the time today to listen to this podcast.

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We, we realize that this is such a sensitive issue when you consider where are you going to put down roots in a church, we know it's difficult.

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It takes time. It takes a lot of conversations. We cannot reiterate enough to be patient, to be prayerful, to be gracious, to be conversational with the current leadership of your church.

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Thank you in particular to our members who support us and make podcasts like these possible.

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We look forward to continuing this conversation over in the members podcast. If you want to learn more about what it means to be a member and all of the benefits therein, please log on to theocast .org

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and you can check out some other resources we have available there. Members, we will see you over in the members podcast.