Chapter Ten — If You Go, or If You Are Coming Back (1 of 2)

Written for leaving a church that is safe. If yours was not, read the next paragraph first.

If you are leaving a church that harmed you. You do not owe the person who harmed you, or the leaders who protected him, a meeting, an explanation or a goodbye. You may leave by letter, or without a word.

You do not have to apologize, forgive or pray for anyone on someone else's schedule. The counsel below is for leaving a safe church.

Some of you will go. The reasons may be any of those in Part Three: a move, a call, a conscience, a church that has stopped being what it was.

If you go, you go as a child of God, and nothing in this step changes that.

So go well. Go in the light, and go in love. How you leave matters almost as much as why you leave.

Talk to your pastor or priest first. Before you tell your friends, before you visit another church, tell the person charged with your care. Say why, honestly and kindly.

You owe your pastor that, and you may be surprised. You may hear something that changes your mind.

If you are moving within your tradition, your pastor may confirm your decision and bless it, or may need to hear you for the sake of others.

If you are Catholic or Orthodox and thinking of leaving the Church itself, your priest will not see it as a change of address. Hear why.

Whatever the answer, you will have done what a member owes a shepherd. Leaving without a word is hard on the people left behind, and it closes a door that a goodbye would have kept open.

Do not gossip, and do not take people with you. If you are leaving over a real problem, tell the people who need to know: the leaders, and anyone at risk.

Do not hold meetings in your living room to explain why everyone should go. Do not recruit.

"A perverse person spreads dissension, and a gossip separates the closest friends." (Proverbs 16:28, NET.)

If others decide to leave, let them decide before God. Do not decide for them.

The exception is harm. If people are in danger, warning them is not gossip. Chapter Eight said how.

Say goodbye. A church is a family, and you do not leave a family by disappearing.

Tell the people you served with. Thank the ones who loved you. Finish what you committed to, or hand it off well.

If your church has membership by covenant, ask to be released from it, or have your membership moved, rather than letting it lapse in silence.

If you are Catholic or Orthodox, there is no membership to transfer in that sense, though you may register at your new parish; your baptism joined you to the Church. If you are leaving the Church itself, the goodbye that matters is not to a committee. Make it before the Lord, in His presence, and speak with a priest before you go.

A goodbye done well leaves the door open. And doors left open are sometimes walked back through.

Make peace where you can. If you are leaving after a conflict, do what you can to be reconciled before you go.

"If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people." (Romans 12:18, NET.)

You may not be able to fix the conflict. You can make sure your part of it is clean. That means apologizing for what you did wrong, even if the other side did more. It means forgiving, even if no one asks, as the Lord has forgiven you (Colossians 3:13).

If you were abused, this paragraph is not for you. No one may set a schedule for your forgiveness. Forgiving never means meeting, reconciling with, or keeping silent about the person who harmed you.

Keep praying for the church you leave. It is still part of Christ's family, and it is still full of people you love.

Pray for it by name. Pray for its pastor. Pray for the people who stayed.

John wrote to a friend he loved, "Dear friend, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, just as it is well with your soul" (3 John 2, NET).

Pray that for them.

If you are crossing from one tradition to another. Leaving one Baptist church for another is not the same as leaving the Catholic Church for a Pentecostal congregation, or a Presbyterian church for an Orthodox one. Chapter Four showed why.

If you are crossing traditions, speak with the pastor or priest of both: the one you are leaving and the one you are going to. Ask each what your step means in that tradition.