When Church Members Leave (Pt. 4)

- September 22, 2023

Recently, a pastor told me a story about a person that had left his church with no notice and no goodbye. The pastor called him and said, “Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?” He said that the man started laughing and exclaimed, “Why in the world would I owe you anything?” The pastor said “This was the day when I realized that as a pastor I would always feel closer to my people than they feel to me.”

For the church member, it may just feel like switching from Walgreens to CVS when they leave one church and go to another, but for the pastor, it can be extremely painful and leave severe wounds.

In our series of blogs, we have attempted to examine the most common reasons that people leave a church, how to deal with it as pastors, and how we may be able (in some cases) to even prevent it.

In our previous blogs we explored three subjects (click the link to read that blog):

Today let’s examine a fourth reason…

Church members leave because they disagree with the church’s direction.

Most church people would tell you that they don’t want to be a part of a church:

That is stagnant and not moving forward.
That is stuck in a by-gone era of the past (not relevant to today)
That is not attracting young people
That has no vision for the future.
That has no real meaning or impact on the community.

Who wants to be a part of a stale and dead church? There may be some people that are comfortable in a church like that (don’t disrupt our status quo), but those are not the kind of people you are wanting to attract to your church. In order to avoid all those pitfalls, a church must have a clear, proactive vision for a preferred future.

A vibrant church that is alive, growing, impacting the community, and attracting young people is a church with vision. Never confuse vision with mission.

Mission is a short sentence that explains why your church exists.
Vision creates a picture of where the church is heading into the future. Your vision initiatives are specific and measurable.

For example, a church may say, “We want to proclaim the gospel of Jesus and equip people with truth for everyday life.” That would be a mission statement (this is why we exist). But a vision initiative would be, “We want to invest $100,000 in church planting and we want to launch our own new campus site in the next 2 years.” This is vision because it creates a picture of the future and it’s measurable. It is easy to know if you accomplished those two things. Without clear vision churches will continue to do what they have always done. While this may be comfortable and create less work, churches without clear vision die!

Every church needs to know what their mission is (why they exist), and also what their vision is (specifically what they want to see God accomplish through them). Your mission never changes, but your vision constantly changes as the church continues to try and press forward and impact its community for Jesus. Your vision basically puts handlebars on your mission. For example, the mission may be, “We want to love Jesus, love others, and proclaim the good news of Jesus.” Great! But how do we do it? What is our game plan? Where are we headed in the next two to three years? Vision answers all those questions. When I pastored, we would do a huge “Vision” meeting every 3 years with the entire church to lay out our vision initiatives. But let me give you a warning!

When you begin to share and implement clear vision initiatives, it will both rally and repel people. Some will love it, embrace it, give generously to it, and sacrifice for it. Others will decide that they don’t like your direction and they don’t’ want to be a part of your cause. This is totally normal. If people aren’t leaving your church, your vision either isn’t strong enough or you haven’t communicated it clearly. Allow me to give you an example from my own life.

At one point in my 30 year pastorate, I became convinced from God that our church had to do a better job attracting, communicating to, and reaching young people – the next generation. When I became pastor, the church had a 30 year history of being very traditional and we had tried hard to move that needle the other way, but as I looked around our membership meetings I noticed that it was still predominantly seniors that we were attracting. While that is great, a church that mainly appeals to seniors will probably not be around in a few years or will be on life support. The leadership formulated vision initiatives that would specifically help us to reach young people and young families (example: Build a coffeehouse and indoor playground that is open all week to the community, put in an outdoor splash park, remodel our youth center, sports programs for the community, etc.). As I began to share these vision initiatives, there were three things that happened among our church:

Some were very attracted to that vision. Such exciting days as we were reaching people, seeing the church grow each week, watching our giving sky-rocket, and before long our church and our membership meetings were filled with young people (by the way, seniors didn’t quit joining either…cool, godly seniors want to see the church filled with young people too).
But some were repelled by the vision and left the church to find another church where they could be comfortable.
Some stayed in the church but secretly complained and griped (those are the worst and the ones you really have to be careful about!).

But a leader cannot be deterred by this. Remember, inside voices are always louder than those you are trying to reach outside the church. When the church mainly focuses on the selfish opinions and demands of “insiders”, it is sure to decline and quit reaching all demographics.

As a pastor, what do you do about a person that is about to leave the church due to a disagreement over the church’s vision? You definitely can sit down with them and try to explain your reasons and get them on board. But at the end of the day, if they don’t agree with your vision and direction, they really need to find another church where they can get excited about the church’s direction.

Nobody would say that they want to be a part of a dead church with few young people, but many are not willing to make the personal sacrifice of their own preferences in order to have a vibrant church that is alive and teeming with the generation to come! Pastors, stay the course! Don’t sacrifice your vision and direction for a few disgruntled people in the church. Yes, they may leave the church, but sometimes it is in the best interest of the cause of Christ if they do!