November 20, 2025 Show with Christian McShaffrey on “Joining & Leaving a Church: Right & Wrong Reasons to Take Either Step”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 20th day of November, 2025.

Joining and Leaving a Church: Why the Topic Matters

Are you in the process of looking for a church to join? Perhaps you just moved to an area and you don't know what congregation to join yourself to, or perhaps you've left a church already for some reason or another, and you're trying to evaluate as you visit different churches, which one you should join.

Or perhaps you're already in a church, and you're experiencing some kind of disagreement or conflict, and you're wondering if you should depart from that congregation. Well, if that's you, you're going to want to listen to today's program, and in fact, if you know anybody that fits that description, contact them immediately and tell them to jump on ironsharpensironradio .com to listen to the live stream program today on the theme Joining and Leaving a Church, Right and Wrong Reasons to Take Either Step, and today we have a returning guest on the program to address that issue, Christian McShaffery, pastor of 5 Solos Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian congregation in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, and vice chairman of the Bonson Institute, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Ironsharpensironradio, Pastor Christian McShaffery.

Well, thank you, Chris, for having me back. The honor is all mine, and it's a very important topic that we'll be discussing tonight. I look forward to it.

Amen. And a shout-out to my dear friend, Pastor Bill Shishko, who was supposed to join us originally today for this conversation, pastor of the Haven Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comac, Long Island, New York, but he has some pretty agonizing back problems today and had to sit this one out, but we look forward to Pastor Shishko's return to the program at some point in the future when he is feeling better.

Well, as we always do, Pastor McShaffery, we have our guests, especially when they're pastors, describe briefly the congregation where they serve, and I'd like you to do that in regard to 5 Solos Church in Reedsburg, Wisconsin.

Sure.

I moved to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, in 2003 after graduating from Mid-America Reformed Seminary. I was called here as an evangelist or a church planter, so the main goal was to build a core group and to organize a church.

Through God's grace and over some 20 years of ministry, we are completely established, self-supporting, self-propagating, and a warmly knit-together body of Christ, so I thank God for His goodness.

We are located about 15 minutes from the Wisconsin Dells, which is a popular vacation spot for people, which blesses us with visitors from all sorts of Reformed and Presbyterian churches every summer.

So, if you're ever in the area, please stop by and join us.

Great, and the website is 5Solos .Church, and that's the word 5, F-I-V-E, Solos .Church, and God willing, I'll be repeating that website later on in the program. Well, this can be one of the most important decisions a human being who is a Christian can make in their lives, when to join a church, what criteria should be considered, what elements should be present, and also, when that sad day comes, when one is prayerfully considering leaving a church where they were already a member, when it is appropriate to leave.

But I know that this is a topic of great concern for you, and before we even address specifics, can you share with my listeners why?

Joining a church seemed natural enough to me when I first came to Christ, but when I became a church planner, I had to face the fact that there's a deep spirit of independency in our current culture that leads to a certain personal autonomy, leaving people unconnected, unattached, unaccountable.

I remember as a church planner, I had to write monthly reports to our home missions agency, and they would ask how many people I witnessed to, how many contacts were made, how many visitors we had, etc.

And also, how many new members. And as a church planner, I had the distinct displeasure of attracting every malcontent within three counts. And they would stay for a few weeks, sometimes a few months, and move on.

They were looking for some new thing under the sun, and we weren't it. So, building that core group of dedicated brothers and sisters who are willing to work together and worship together, live and die together in covenant community is something I longed for, and something I sometimes despaired of as I met all of these modern Christians.

And they had these objections, where does the Bible command it? Show me a verse, chapter and verse, thou shalt join a local church. And they'd say things like, well, it's just a piece of paper, who says I need to sign on a piece of paper?

They'd say, I'm a member of the body of Christ globally. And they had all of these things by which they comforted their souls. But there was great inconsistency there because they join Amazon Prime, they join Netflix, they join clubs, they join gyms, other organizations.

But when it came to the church, it seemed that people wanted to keep a safe distance so that they could just do what they wanted. So we had to sift through people and be patient and wait for those who were serious about serving the Lord.

And I just taught on the doctrine of sphere sovereignty at church here in our Sunday school class. Nobody doubts membership when it comes to the family. I mean, you could come and sleep on my couch for a few days and you're not a member of my family.

And nobody doubts membership when it comes to a nation. That's why so many conservative Christians are passionate about immigration reform and enforcement. But there's that inconsistency when it comes to the church, the kingdom of God.

Where does it say I have to be a member? And we can explore some of those verses tonight. I think we will. But that's kind of the background of my passion concerning this topic.

And I have been a Christian since the 1980s. Thank God. I have always been in what I believe to be a wonderful body of believers, faithful to the scriptures. I was saved out of Roman Catholicism in my mid-twenties, and thankfully I was saved in a church that was theologically reformed.

So I didn't have to unlearn anything later on because the evangelical spectrum is broad and has a lot of nonsense and heresy intermingled with those that are theologically sound. So I'm just glad that the Lord spared me of that.

But in all the years I've been a Christian, especially working in Christian media and and meeting so many people, I have become very disappointed by the shallow reasons that people join a church. The things that they have lifted up in their minds to possess the utmost importance are things that are not, in my estimation, the most important things in the scriptures to be looking for.

And very often it is because, oh, they have such a wonderful musical program. They have musicians that rival the music you hear at a Broadway play. And they have so many activities for the children, and on and on we could go.

And I have known a number of people who shared my theological and doctrinal convictions and yet joined churches that do not believe in these things that we both share because they wanted something that fit into the description that I just mentioned.

They wanted a wonderful musical program, and they wanted lots of things to do for the kids. And sometimes I get the impression that they want to be in a very large and heavily populated church so that they can kind of melt into the background, and sometimes I fear it's because they desire to avoid any kind of scrutiny at all from elders.

But tell us about what you believe should be a primary concern when people are looking for a church to join. Absolutely.

The Marks of a True Church and the Gospel

But first, let me just agree with you. Those are the wrong reasons to choose a church. And if you think about biblical history, Aaron gave the people wonderful music while Moses was up in the mountain.

They had a great time. It was a big party while the pastor was away, but it was the golden calf, and it invoked the Lord's anger and wrath upon the congregation because it was carnal. But as for positively, what we look for in a church is, first of all, that it be a true church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I also grew up as a Roman Catholic, so I understand your experience and can appreciate that deliverance from that potpourri is a wonderful blessing, but it also leads us to make a distinction between true churches and false churches because the Roman Catholic Church and even many Protestant churches and cults would have the name Christian on their billboard, but it doesn't always mean they're a true church of Christ.

Our understanding is that Christ only established one true church. He established his kingdom on earth. I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, but that doesn't mean the gates of hell don't try.

And the first step is corrupting true churches, and we can admit that all churches on earth are impure to some extent. There's no such thing as a pure church, so don't let that deter you in your search.

I speak to your listeners. But there is a spectrum between true and false, and the true churches in this world are evident. They can be tested and proven by scripture, and the ones that have become synagogues of Satan have to be marked and avoided.

So we need to understand what to look for, and what we call it, at least historically, is the marks of the true church, developed in the Belgic Confession, I think I remember correctly. And it's three points, the preaching of the true gospel, which we should go through point by point, but then secondly, the right administration of the sacraments, there being only two, baptism and the Lord's Supper, and then also the diligent exercise of church discipline, that is a faithful and integrity-filled process of bringing people in, and also putting people out, depending on the state of their souls.

So those are the three things that we're going to have to go through to evaluate any local church, but the most evident probably will be the preaching of the true gospel, because sermons take up a good half of the service in any given church.

And the true gospel has been defined historically as the five soul laws of the Reformation. First is grace alone, that it's God's unmerited favor that is the only ground of our salvation, no works, grace alone.

Also faith alone, which means the alone instrument of our justification is faith, we believe God's word, we believe and receive his promise. Christ alone stands at the center, because he's the only mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

Scripture alone, this is going to be a tricky one in many churches, but is the Bible the final arbiter of truth? Does it have the final word in all doctrine and practice? The answer has to be yes. And then, to God alone be the glory is the overarching criteria, and this you will see a difference.

Who is the spotlight on, as it were? The singers up front, the celebrity pastor in his skinny jeans, or are our hearts lifted heavenward to give glory only to the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?

So the marks of the true church are three, the five soul laws are five, and they have to be the criteria as you visit any given church.

Evaluating Doctrine, Discipline, and Church Leadership

So I'm assuming then that when people are visiting churches, they should be listening diligently to the sermons. They should be afterward or even beforehand, perhaps it'd be wiser, especially beforehand, to ask questions of those in leadership about what that church believes and teaches, and then it would be more of a matter of how the church presents itself as a corporate body of Christ, a local gathering of the sheep of Christ's flock.

And this is where it may become more difficult, because as I'm sure you would agree, there are churches out there that are right on the money when it comes to their doctoral positions. They may have a flawless confession of faith, well, as far as flawless, I mean, as far as the writings of men can be flawless, nothing is flawless except for the inerrant scriptures.

But you may agree with a lot of the things that they have on paper. But you may have come to notice or perhaps have heard from trustworthy brethren that there is perhaps a dictatorship going on in that church with heavy-handed elder rule, or perhaps it's the opposite.

Perhaps you have elders that are milk toasts who are terrified of offending anyone in the church because they don't want to lose anyone, and that's primarily because they don't want to lose the money that comes with those people.

And so you have no discipline at all being conducted in the church. You may have a theologically sound church when it comes to teaching, but then when it comes to practice, you may come to find out that there are unrepentant adulterers in the church that are not being disciplined.

We could go on and on with that. Do you have any thoughts on that? After you've already established the soundness of what a church teaches, how about how they seek to live out those things? Sure.

And to backtrack a little bit, before you ever visit a church, you do need to do some.

Homework.

Chris mentioned the Statement of Faith or the Book of Doctrine, and you can find that on most churches' websites. If they don't have one, don't visit there because it means they don't take doctrine seriously.

To help your listeners, I'll throw out a couple phrases that they can look for. Three Forms of Unity is a green light. Westminster Confession is a green light. 1689 Baptist London Confession is a green light.

You should look for those kinds of phrases. If they choose not to put a full Statement of Faith on, but rather some kind of summary, you need to watch for even small things. There was this one Baptist church in my town who used the word personalities rather than persons in describing the three persons of the Godhead.

I called one of the elders I knew there and I said, are you guys making a mistake? Are you really oneness? He was mortified and he fixed it immediately. They just copied and pasted it off another church.

You have to be careful about that kind of stuff. Know your theology, read the Statements of Faith on the website, and by all means call. This has, by the way, been a frustration for me, and this could help pastors who are looking for good people.

Answer your phone. I have people visit all over the country. I have people that we're moving and they're like, hey, pastor, can you help me find a good church? I'm like, absolutely. And pastors never answer the phone.

It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen, but you need to have those conversations with the leader of the church. And if he puts you off to a secretary or maybe like a small group, you might want to wonder about that being a yellow light rather than a green light.

Yeah, I want to pick up on answering the phone when we come back from our first commercial break because I do have a comment about that. If anybody likes to join us, send in your question to chrisarengin at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, at least, your city and state and country of residence. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, which would likely include any question that someone has regarding their own personal experience leaving a church.

We don't want you to identify publicly churches that you perceive as having serious problems because we wouldn't want to have that publicly reported unless we do our own investigation on your assessment.

We don't want to be guilty of slander or anything like that. So please remain anonymous if your question is about personal and private matters. But if it's a general question, give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

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We are talking about joining and leaving a church, and if you have a question, our email address is chrisharnson at gmail .com, chrisharnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

You were talking earlier about the frustrating experience of calling a church to ask them questions about what they believe or for any other reason, and nobody is answering, and perhaps you don't even ever get a phone call returned to you.

I experience that frequently because on this program, I announce, as anybody who listens regularly knows, I announce that I will try to help our listeners who do not have a biblically faithful church home.

I will help them find one, no matter where they live. And on some occasions, when I have to actually go an extra mile searching and go onto a search engine on the internet and so on, you will find churches that have no clear, detailed statement of faith, other than possibly they will have the bare-bones minimum of true biblical teachings that we can all agree upon.

But after that, you have no idea if they're Reformed, if they're Arminian, if they're neither. And even amongst our Reformed churches, I can no longer have the luxury of saying, oh great, you have a Presbyterian Church in America congregation near you.

Now, let me give you the details, because there are so many, and I know a lot of wonderful biblically faithful PCA pastors who will be the first to agree with me, that there are many in their own denomination that have been corrupted by the woke movement, and social justice warriors, and all that kind of thing.

So I have experienced great frustration with having to call pastors to find out more about what they believe, because their websites are so inadequate. And I would say half the time, I never get a call back.

So we went through this just last week. There was somebody listening to our program on the Bonson Institute, and you asked me to scout out a church in a remote area outside of the country. Yeah, I found one viable church, but I called, and the Google subscriber has not set up his phone or voicemail or something.

So it's a dead end, and it's so frustrating. And to your comment about Reformed churches, I have a ruling elder who's sitting on session right now, and we first met through a telephone call. He called me in the afternoon and just said, I have a couple quick questions that might seem out of left field.

And his first one was this, what do you think of wokeness and cultural Marxism? I said, well, it's of the devil, and it's satanic to its core. He goes, oh, I'll see you on Sunday. And we visited for a few months and became a member, and he and his family are so valued.

But could you imagine, I guess, the maybe timid or overly careful, maybe pusillanimous pastor would hulk at that question and maybe be afraid, to be honest, about cultural engagement and cultural issues.

We can't have that because people are hurting. They're in churches where they're feeling starved. They're in churches where they feel that there's a worldly agenda coming as a tidal wave against them, or at very least eroding at the foundations of their values and their core beliefs.

And they're looking. We need to be there. We need to help them. We need to make them feel safe and welcomed and also have them be discerning. Because you talk about diversity, maybe within a Presbyterian denomination.

Are you old school or new school? We should be able to just tell people in the first conversation because it'll save us much grief in the end.

That's right. In fact, you just reminded me that I was living in the 19th century parsonage before I moved into my current apartment. I was living in a 19th century parsonage of a Presbyterian pastor who was the first pastor of Second Presbyterian Church here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

And that church was formed over a split with First Presbyterian Church over the old school versus new school. And now those churches are barely distinguishable from each other. They're both in the PCUSA.

So I can't say this with any authority, but statistically, it seems that churches or denominations have about a 75 to 100 year time that they can hold on to their core distinctives. And they always then tend to drift.

I think we've seen that amongst many denominations, especially in America.

Yes. And of course, I'm sure you would agree that before someone even arrives in a place where they're starting to go on a church search, if this is involving someone who has moved into a new area, that person should have been doing that search long before they left where they were.

Don't you believe that far too often Christians do not make as an utmost priority the church where they will worship when they move to any particular location in the United States or the world, for that matter?

That seems to be like an afterthought.

It's actually a great tragedy. I've had probably three generations grow up in our church since I came as pastor, which means a lot of kids growing up, getting married, going to college, etc. And we always exhort them, don't even consider a location unless you have found a solid church and visited it to confirm that it truly is solid.

But I now receive phone calls from people all over the nation who are wondering, where should I go? There's no churches by me. And you hate to say it, but they should have thought of that first of all.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And that's a priority to make sure that you're in a Christ-exalting, Christ-obeying church before you move to college or even for a career. And I'd like to see a renewal of commitment so much to the Church of Christ that people would consider relocating.

We actually have a relocation page on our website for people that are looking for an old-school Reformed Presbyterian church. And we give demographic information, employment information, median income information to help them evaluate that kind of a decision.

Biblical Reasons to Leave a Church

Oh, great. Well, I don't know if you want, at this point, to move on to the more controversial area probably, the one that involves more pain, the one that involves more loss of friendships and so on, and that is when to leave a church.

Now, perhaps we should start with reasons that are completely biblical and acceptable where those on both sides of the departure, both the one departing and the church leaders of the congregation from which that person is departing, they should be both understanding with grace and without any kind of mean-spiritedness or what have you, is when someone in a church has come to a theological position that is within the bounds of orthodoxy.

I'm not talking about somebody who is denying the deity of Christ or something, but somebody like, for instance, you and I are from different schools of thought, if you will. I am a Reformed Baptist, you are an Orthodox Presbyterian, and there have been occasions where people from Reformed Baptist churches come to believe in and embrace infant baptism, and they have to approach their elders and say, Hey, I love you guys with all my heart.

You've been a blessing in my life, but I've come to believe in infant baptism, and I have a young and growing family. I really believe I belong in a place where the church will baptize my children. And then, of course, you have the reverse.

You have people in Pado-Baptist churches who have become convicted of credo-baptism, the baptism of believers alone. And what that especially applies as a reason for departure is if they have young children, and maybe perhaps if they plan to have more children, and they're of an age where that can happen.

And they're in a Presbyterian church that would insist that they have their children baptized, because I know that not all Presbyterian churches make that requirement. I know some folks who are Baptist by conviction, and they're in a Presbyterian church that does not enforce the baptism of their children there.

But in the case where they feel that the only option is for them to leave, there should be no anger over those things. I don't find anything wrong with loving attempts at persuading the person not to change their convictions, to change their convictions back, I should say, to what they originally were.

There's nothing improper about that. But we have to avoid being hostile in those cases, don't we?

Absolutely. And the church where I serve, we do not enforce infant baptism or family baptism. I've baptized just as many converts in immersion as I have through pouring, and I think that's something that we can do.

So we have been debating this doctrine for 400 years between the Presbyterian and the firm convictions. I think the best we can do is understand the other person's case and accommodate it as best we can.

So the way I do that is I accommodate it by offering late baptisms. We do offer immersion when there's a conviction of conscience, but we also have a request that you please don't make a stink, and don't stir up any trouble over this diversity of opinion.

And we've had members for decades in our church who disagree on this doctrine, and if it began to bother them, I would bring them back to those first conversations. Like, we talked about this, we know about our diversity, and we both swore to our own hurt, as it were, so let's not change.

And I think we can maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, even amidst differences concerning baptism, because sacraments are not essential to salvation. So I would be cautious about anybody who felt that they had to die on that hill and walk all alone into the dark night of no membership just because they disagreed on how much water or when.