Among Family

Before You Begin

If anyone is in danger right now, stop reading and call 911 in the United States, or the emergency number where you live. If someone in your church is harming you or a child, or you are afraid of your leaders, or afraid of what will happen if you leave, go to Chapter Two now. You do not have to be sure it is abuse. The rest of this book will wait for you.

Dear friend,

This letter is for you if you are standing at a church door and are not sure which way to walk through it.

Maybe you are thinking of leaving. Maybe you have already left, and you are thinking of coming back. Maybe you have moved, and it is Sunday morning in a town where you know no one.

Maybe you are tired. Maybe you are grieving a church that changed, or a pastor who left, or a friend who turned away. Maybe you are in a church where someone is being hurt, and no one will say so.

You are not all in the same place. This book was written so that every one of you is safe reading it.

These things are written to you so that you may make this choice in the light, and not in fear.

This book will not tell you whether to leave your church. It cannot see your church. It cannot see your heart. That decision belongs to you, before God, with the people who love you. It will not tell you which church is right, and it names no church as a good example or a bad one.

But it does not pretend to have no view. Where it holds a conviction of its own, it marks it plainly: The conviction of this book.

Here is the heart of it. A church that is safe is your family in Christ, the believers nearest to you on the vine, and they are not something to trade in lightly. Most reasons people give for leaving are reasons to have a conversation first. The conviction is mostly about how to decide: slowly, after the conversation, never lightly.

It rests on what Jesus prayed on the night before He died, and on what His apostles wrote to the churches. It does not rest on numbers. No survey can tell you whether you should stay.

And this is held just as firmly: harm is never a difference to live with. Every word in this book about staying was written for a church that is safe. If yours is not, none of those words are for you, and the book will say so again wherever it matters.

Where others have counted something, the book says who counted it. The counting, with what it cannot show, is at the back, under What Has Been Counted. Where the book describes what a church teaches, it uses that church's own words. Scripture is quoted from the NET Bible, and every verse was checked against the NET text.

One more thing you should know. This book was written with the help of Claude, a machine. A machine can gather and draft and check. It cannot know your church or your family. It cannot pray for you.

People can. Do not let any book, and certainly not any machine, stand in the place of the people God has put near you.

The question in your hands is real. But it is not the first question. The first one has already been answered.

That is where we begin.

Chapter One — The Answer Before the Question

Drawn from The Upper Room

"Now this is eternal life—that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent."

— John 17:3 (NET)

You are not a bad person for asking. Start there.

A believer who loses sleep over a church has not stopped caring about the church. People who never ask whether they belong where they are have often stopped paying attention. The question is serious, and you are allowed to ask it.

But it is not the first question. And it should not be asked as if it were.

Before you ever asked where to worship, God had already said what He wanted. Paul puts it this way: "he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him in love. He did this by predestining us to adoption as his legal heirs through Jesus Christ" (Ephesians 1:4–5, NET).

Adoption. Heirs. A Father and His children.

A companion essay, The Upper Room, says it in four words: God wanted a family. John, whom the church has long known as the disciple who leaned on Jesus at the supper, wrote it this way:

"See what sort of love the Father has given to us: that we should be called God's children—and indeed we are!"

— 1 John 3:1 (NET)

And indeed we are. That is the answer before the question.

You did not earn your place in God's family by choosing well. You were called into it by grace. The great traditions of the church differ on how a person is joined to that family, through faith, through baptism, through the Church, and Chapter Four lets each of them say so in its own words.

Some say more. The Catholic Church teaches that those who, knowing the Church to be necessary, refuse to remain in it "could not be saved," and Chapter Four gives its words in full. If that is your Church, take it seriously, and take it to a priest.

But none of the traditions teaches that you earn the Father's love by picking the right congregation.

This matters for everything that follows. A person who treats the church question as the way to win God's favor will be crushed by it, because no church can carry that weight. A person who knows he has already been received can ask the question with open hands.

Jesus named that posture first of all: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them" (Matthew 5:3, NET). The beggar at the gate is not shopping. He is grateful for a seat at the table, and humble about which seat he is given.

Humility about a seat is never consent to harm at the table. If that is your church, go to Chapter Two.

So hold the question inside the answer. Then ask it honestly.

People come to this door by many roads.

Some have moved. Some have married into another tradition, or out of a marriage. Some watched their church change until they did not recognize it. Some read their way into convictions their church does not share. Some are tired of the same faces and the same songs. Some are lonely in a crowd of three hundred.

Some have been wounded. A few are in danger.

And some are not thinking of leaving at all. They love their church, and they have realized they do not know what it teaches, or what the Bible says. Chapter Nine has a word for them.

Most people who change churches change because they moved. The harder decision, the one in front of a person whose church is still there on Sunday, is the one the counting says least about. (What has been counted, and what it cannot show, is at the back.)

That decision is mostly a matter of Scripture, the teaching of your church, prayer, the Spirit's leading, the counsel of people who know you, and conscience. That is why most of this book is about those.

One honest word. Those six do not always agree, and the traditions do not weigh them the same way. A Catholic, an Orthodox Christian, a Presbyterian and a Pentecostal would each tell you differently what to do when they pull in different directions. This book cannot rank them for you. Your own tradition does, and the chapters ahead will point you to it.

This book is written to slow you down.

It asks you to name your reason. Then it sets that reason beside what Scripture says about the church, and about the kind of reason it is.

Part Three sorts reasons by weight: the ones that are not yet reasons, the ones that call for a conversation, the ones that may justify leaving, and the ones that require it. Those names weigh kinds of reasons. They are not a verdict on yours.

Reasons for staying are tested too. A reason to stay can be borrowed as easily as a reason to go.

This book does not tell you what God wants for you. It sets before you what Scripture and the church's long wisdom say, and then it sends the question where it belongs: to prayer, to the Scriptures, and to the people who know you.

And it will not shame you, whichever way you are leaning.

A person who stays is not stuck. A person who goes is not a consumer. Both can be faithful, and both can be wrong. The difference is rarely in the decision itself. It is in how, and why, it is made.

There is a deeper staying than staying in a congregation, and it governs this one.

In John 6 a crowd of disciples heard a hard teaching and walked away. Jesus turned to the twelve:

"So Jesus said to the twelve, 'You don't want to go away too, do you?' Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.'"

— John 6:67–68 (NET)

Peter did not answer with an argument. He answered with a Person.

That is where this book stands. It is where you can stand, before you weigh anything at all. Whatever you decide about a church, do not decide anything about Him.

Remain in Him. That is the one staying no one can take from you.

Here is the outcome most to be feared at this door. It is not the wrong congregation. It is a slow drift, from church and then from prayer, until the question has been answered without ever being asked.

If that has already happened to you, you have not gone too far. The door is still open, and Chapter Ten has a word for you.

And if you stepped away from a church because it harmed you, that is not drifting from God. Chapter Eleven is for you.

Lord, to whom would we go? Let that be the floor under your feet.

Chapter Two — If You Are Being Harmed

Go straight to the help lines

This chapter comes early on purpose.

If you are reading this book because someone in your church is hurting you, or someone you love, read this before anything else. The weighing in Part Three is not for you. Harm is not one reason among others.

Your safety comes first.

If anyone is in danger right now, call 911 in the United States, or the emergency number where you live.

If a child is being harmed, contact the police or your state's child protective services. A church's own process is never a substitute for that report. No one in a church has the authority to tell you not to make it.

If your child has been harmed. Believe your child. Tell them it is not their fault, and that telling you was right. Do not press for details or ask the same questions again and again; trained people will do that.

Report to the police or child protective services yourself, even if the church says it will. Do not warn the person who did it, and do not take it to church leaders before you report. If the harm was sexual and recent, take your child to an emergency room, and ask there what to do before washing clothes or bathing.

Other children may be at risk, and your report may protect them. In many states, clergy, youth workers and teachers are required by law to report suspected child abuse; if you are one of them, report now. Find a counselor trained in child trauma for your child. Get help for yourself as well.

What harm looks like. Some harm is easy to name, and some is not.

There is sexual abuse, of children and of adults. When a pastor or priest draws an adult in his care into a sexual relationship, that is abuse, not an affair, whatever anyone calls it.

There is physical violence. There is emotional abuse: contempt, humiliation, threats, rage, the slow wearing down of a person until they doubt their own mind. There is financial abuse: pressure to give what you cannot give, money taken or misused, a household kept dependent.

And there is the kind that hides best, because it wears religious clothes. Researchers call it spiritual abuse.

The word that carries the weight in that definition is pattern.

A pastor who disagrees with you is not abusing you. An elder who corrects you kindly and in the open is not abusing you. A church that teaches something hard is not abusing you.

What makes it abuse is control: a pattern of using God's name, God's book or God's authority to keep someone afraid, silent, isolated, or obedient to a person.

You may not be sure which you are facing. Then hear this. If you read that list and saw your church, trust what you saw. You do not have to be sure it is abuse to ask for help. Not knowing is reason enough to tell someone outside.

What Scripture says about shepherds who do this. Scripture does not treat this as a gray area. Through Ezekiel, God spoke against the leaders of His own people:

"You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bandaged the injured, brought back the strays, or sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled over them."

— Ezekiel 34:4 (NET)

Jesus set the rule for His own people against the way the world uses power: "You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them. But it is not this way among you." (Mark 10:42–43, NET.)

Peter, writing to elders as a fellow elder, said the same: "And do not lord it over those entrusted to you, but be examples to the flock." (1 Peter 5:3, NET.)

And Jesus' warning about those who cause little ones to stumble is one of His sternest: "it would be better for him to have a huge millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the open sea." (Matthew 18:6, NET.)

Paul named plainly what false leaders were doing to one church: "For you put up with it if someone makes slaves of you, if someone exploits you, if someone takes advantage of you, if someone behaves arrogantly toward you, if someone strikes you in the face." (2 Corinthians 11:20, NET.) He did not call it a test of patience. He called it what it was.

The shame belonged to those who did it.

There is a sentence in the story of Tamar, after her brother Amnon raped her, that every church should read slowly. Her other brother said to her: "Now be quiet, my sister. He is your brother. Don't take it so seriously!" (2 Samuel 13:20, NET.)

The text does not approve of what he said. It records that Tamar lived on in his house, devastated.

When a church tells a victim to be quiet because the abuser is a brother, it is saying Absalom's words.

Name the enemy. There is more in this than human sin, and Scripture does not hide it.

In the same letter where Peter tells elders not to lord it over the flock, he goes on: "Be sober and alert. Your enemy the devil, like a roaring lion, is on the prowl looking for someone to devour." (1 Peter 5:8, NET.)

Jesus spoke of the thief who climbs into the sheepfold some other way than by the door: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come so that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." (John 10:10, NET.)

And Paul, writing about false leaders who were exploiting a church, said: "even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness" (2 Corinthians 11:14–15, NET).

That is why harm in a church so often wears a title, a collar, a Bible verse. The enemy prowls where the sheep gather. He has always loved the disguise of a shepherd.

Jesus called him "a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44, NET). Every pattern on that list runs on lies. That you are to blame. That no one will believe you. That God is on the side of the one hurting you.

Two things must be said together.

Naming the devil never excuses the man. The one who harmed you chose to, and he will answer for it, before God and before the law. Of such servants Paul says their "end will correspond to their actions" (2 Corinthians 11:15, NET).

And naming the devil never blames you. You were not hunted because your faith was weak. The lion hunts the sheep. That is not the sheep's fault.

Then hear how it ends.

"For this purpose the Son of God was revealed: to destroy the works of the devil." (1 John 3:8, NET.)

"The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." (John 10:11, NET.)

"The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." (1 John 4:4, NET.)

And Peter's next words are for you: "the God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you" (1 Peter 5:10, NET).

The prowler does not get the last word. The Shepherd does.

What this means for you. These are not differences to live with. They are not a season to wait out. They are not a test of your humility.

The conviction of this book: if you are being abused, or a child is, or leaders are hiding wrongdoing, you are not being asked to stay, and leaving is not a failure of faith.

Getting yourself and the people you love to safety is an act of faith. So is telling the truth. You decide when to tell it, and to whom. If a child is in danger, report now.

Here is what to do.

Tell someone you trust, outside the church. Not someone whose position depends on the person harming you. A friend in another church, a family member, a counselor, a doctor, a pastor in a different congregation. Abuse grows in secrecy, and the first thing that breaks it is one person outside who knows.

If the person harming you is the pastor, or the leaders protected him, do not take it to them first. If a crime was done, it goes to the police. If your church has a bishop or a wider body over the congregation, you may take it there too, and above that person if he is the problem.

If you are Catholic, you have doors that do not belong to the man who harmed you. The U.S. bishops' Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, approved in 2002, requires every diocese to have a victim assistance coordinator for those abused as minors; many also help adults, so ask your diocese for that person's name. Since 2019 a universal Church law, Vos estis lux mundi, revised in 2023, has set out procedures for reporting sexual abuse, including of vulnerable adults, and its cover-up, including by bishops. If the harm was not sexual, you may still write to the bishop.

Two more things are true for you. The seal of confession binds the priest, never you: you may tell anyone what was said or done to you. And you do not have to sit before the one who harmed you in order to keep Sunday. Your Church's law says that a person "who assists at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite" satisfies the obligation (canon 1248). Go to Mass at another parish.

If the person harming you lives with you, leaving can be the most dangerous time. Make a safety plan first. The National Domestic Violence Hotline, listed below, can help you make one.

If anyone is in danger, contact the authorities. This is not disloyalty to the church. Scripture calls the governing authority "God's servant for your well-being" (Romans 13:4, NET). A church that tells you otherwise is protecting itself, not you.

Write down what happened, with dates, while you remember it. Keep it where the person harming you cannot reach it. Keep texts, emails and messages; do not delete them. If someone may be checking your phone or computer, use one they cannot reach.

You do not need anyone's permission to leave a place where you are being harmed. Not a pastor's. Not an elder board's. Not a bishop's.

If a leader threatens you with spiritual consequences to keep you in an abusive situation, that threat is itself part of the pattern. That is not the same as a church's settled teaching about leaving it, taught openly and joined to no threat. But even settled teaching becomes part of the pattern when it is used to hold you in place.

Getting away from an abusive leader or congregation is not the same as leaving your tradition; a Catholic or Orthodox reader can go to another parish. And getting away from harm cannot cost you your place with God.

You may lose friends. That is a real grief. It is not your fault, and it is not God leaving you.

You do not have to face anyone alone. Matthew 18:15 says to go to a brother privately when he sins. It was never meant to send a victim alone into a room with an abuser, and no faithful reading of it requires that. When there is abuse, the first step is safety and an outside witness, not a private meeting.

If you are safe enough to keep reading, Chapter Eight says more about harm as a reason to leave, and Chapter Eleven is for the long road afterward.

If you are not, close the book. It will be here.

And if you read on, know this: Chapters Three through Six, Nine and Ten were written for churches that are safe. They are not about yours.

Part Two: What You Would Be Leaving

A person can only weigh leaving something if he knows what it is.

Many carry a picture of church they have never looked at closely: a building, a service, a schedule, a pastor, programs. Some of that is church. Much of it is only the room. This part asks what the church itself is. It asks Scripture first, and then the great traditions.

Chapter Three — The Family in the Circle

Written for a church that is safe. If yours is not, go to Chapter Two.

"Then Jesus' mother and his brothers came. Standing outside, they sent word to him, to summon him. A crowd was sitting around him and they said to him, 'Look, your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you.' He answered them and said, 'Who are my mother and my brothers?' And looking at those who were sitting around him in a circle, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.'"

— Mark 3:31–35 (NET)

Look at what Jesus did in that room.

His mother and His brothers had come to take Him home. A few verses earlier Mark says His family thought "He is out of his mind" (Mark 3:21, NET).

Jesus did not disown them. He loved His mother to the end. From the cross He gave her into the care of the disciple He loved (John 19:26–27). After He rose, His mother and His brothers were in the upper room, praying with the disciples (Acts 1:14).

What He did in Mark 3 was say what makes a person His kin. Not blood. Not being in the right room. "Whoever does the will of God" (Mark 3:35, NET). Luke gives the same saying this way: "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it" (Luke 8:21, NET).

His mother had been the first to do it: "let this happen to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38, NET).

So the family of God is not a club that replaces the family you were born into. Scripture never lets faith become an excuse to abandon the people at home. Jesus rebuked religious men who used a gift to God to dodge caring for their parents (Mark 7:9–13). Paul wrote, "if someone does not provide for his own, especially his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Timothy 5:8, NET).

Your church family is not more than your family by blood.

But it is far more than a room full of strangers. They are the brothers and sisters who are, for now, nearest to you on the vine.

That is the picture to hold. Christ is the vine. Every believer is a branch joined to Him. The people of your congregation are the branches growing closest to yours: fed by the same sap, pruned by the same Gardener, tangled together in the same weather.

You did not make yourselves neighbors on the vine. He placed you there.

The New Testament uses family words for this kinship. Paul calls believers "members of God's household" (Ephesians 2:19, NET). He calls the church "the household of God" and "the church of the living God, the support and bulwark of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15, NET). He tells the Galatians to do good to everyone, "and especially to those who belong to the family of faith" (Galatians 6:10, NET). Believers are brothers and sisters throughout the letters.

No one leaves the vine by moving from one part of it to another. (Some traditions teach that knowingly leaving the Church itself is another matter; Chapter Four lets them say so.)

But the branches nearest you are the ones you are given to love first, because they are the ones you can see. John put it bluntly: "the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20, NET).

Whom he has seen.

No one loves the family of God in general. We love the particular brothers and sisters God has put within reach. That is why leaving them is never nothing, even when it is right.

People come to their church family by different roads.

In many traditions you choose a congregation and join it by a covenant you make on purpose. In others you are joined to a parish and to the Church by baptism, and the parish is simply where you live. And for a great many people the road was simpler than either. Their parents went there, so they did. Some of them never made the faith their own. That matters enough that Chapter Six gives it a section of its own.

Whatever road brought you, here is what faith confesses. It is a confession, not something anyone can measure: the people beside you on the vine were placed there.

You may have chosen the door. You did not choose them.

Jesus said to His disciples, "You did not choose me, but I chose you" (John 15:16, NET), and faith confesses that the ones He chose, He placed beside one another. That is just as true of the people in the church down the road.

The conviction of this book: the burden rests on leaving, not on staying. Preference alone is not a reason to trade one set of brothers and sisters for another.

This is where you learn to love people you would never have picked. It is where your rough edges meet theirs, week after week, until both are worn a little smoother. Paul's description of what that takes is not written for people who agree about everything:

"with all humility and gentleness, with patience, putting up with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you too were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

— Ephesians 4:2–6 (NET)

"Putting up with one another in love" assumes there will be something to put up with. Patience assumes delay. Gentleness assumes someone has given you a reason to be harsh.

Paul wrote this to real people in a real congregation. He did not think the friction meant the church had failed. He thought the friction was the ground on which unity is kept.

Paul's other great picture is a body:

"The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need you,' nor in turn can the head say to the foot, 'I do not need you.' On the contrary, those members that seem to be weaker are essential, ... so that there may be no division in the body, but the members may have mutual concern for one another. If one member suffers, everyone suffers with it. If a member is honored, all rejoice with it. Now you are Christ's body, and each of you is a member of it."

— 1 Corinthians 12:21–22, 25–27 (NET)

In Romans he says it in one line: "so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members who belong to one another" (Romans 12:5, NET).

Members who belong to one another. A body does not attend itself. Each part is given to the others, and you were given too.

Your gifts were given "for the benefit of all" (1 Corinthians 12:7, NET). "Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of the varied grace of God." (1 Peter 4:10, NET.)

So the question changes.

A person who thinks of church as a service will ask whether he is being served well. That is a fair question, and Chapter Six takes it seriously, because Scripture does say shepherds must feed the flock.

But a person who thinks of church as a body will ask a second question too. Who here would be weaker if I left? Who would I no longer be there to carry? "Carry one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." (Galatians 6:2, NET.)

Some who leave have never been asked whom they would leave behind. It is a fair question to weigh beside the others. It is a question for a safe church only. No one is asked to carry others by staying where they are harmed.

On the night before His death, Jesus prayed not only for the twelve but for everyone who would believe through their word:

"I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me."

— John 17:20–21 (NET)

This is where the conviction of this book about staying comes from. Not from what happens to people who stay, which no one has counted. From this prayer.

Jesus tied the oneness of His people to the world's believing. That does not settle any one person's decision. It does mean that no parting among believers is small, whichever way it goes.

Earlier that same night He said, "Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another" (John 13:35, NET). And Paul's question to a church split into fan clubs still lands: "Is Christ divided?" (1 Corinthians 1:13, NET.)

None of this means pretending any congregation is perfect. The New Testament churches were not.

Corinth had factions, lawsuits, drunkenness at the Lord's Supper, and a man living with his father's wife. Galatia was being talked out of the gospel. In Revelation the risen Christ writes to seven churches and has a complaint against most of them. One has left its first love. One tolerates a false teacher. One has a reputation for being alive and is dead. One is lukewarm.

But notice what He does. He tells the churches to repent. He tells the faithful in Thyatira, "hold on to what you have until I come" (Revelation 2:25, NET). He stands at the door and knocks (Revelation 3:20).

He also warns that a church that will not repent can lose its lampstand (Revelation 2:5). He is patient with flawed churches, and He does not call His patience endless.

These letters are about a church's faults. They are not a word to stay where you are abused.

Jesus told a parable about weeds. An enemy sowed them among the wheat, and the servants wanted to pull them up. "No," the master said, "since in gathering the darnel you may uproot the wheat along with it. Let both grow together until the harvest." (Matthew 13:29–30, NET.)

Jesus said, "The field is the world" (Matthew 13:38, NET). Augustine and Calvin both taught that the church on earth is mixed, as Chapter Four shows. Either way, the parable warns against making a pure church by our own pulling.

It does not cancel the discipline Jesus gave in Matthew 18, or Paul's command about a church member who does evil: "Remove the evil person from among you" (1 Corinthians 5:13, NET). Chapter Eight takes that up.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who led an underground seminary under the Nazis, wrote a short book on Christian community that believers of many traditions still read. One sentence from it belongs on the wall of every church: "He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial."

Some who leave a church are not leaving the church in front of them. They are leaving the dream of a church they carried in, which this one failed to match.

The dream may have been a good one. But the church in front of you is the one with actual people in it, and only actual people can be loved.

This is about dreams, not about harm. A person who leaves because she was abused is not leaving a dream. She is leaving the abuse.

And none of this means a church owes you nothing.

A family that never feeds its children is failing, and Scripture is hard on shepherds who feed themselves and not the flock (Ezekiel 34:2). Jesus' charge to Peter by the sea was "Feed my sheep" (John 21:17, NET).

A church is where you are fed with the word and the sacraments (which many churches call ordinances), where "we who are many are one body, for we all share the one bread" (1 Corinthians 10:17, NET), where you are known and prayed for, and where you are given a place to serve. When a church stops doing those things, something has gone wrong, and the chapters ahead take that seriously.

But a church is all of them together. Before it is anything else, it is the part of Christ's family He has placed nearest to you.

Start there when you weigh it.

Chapter Four — What Your Own Church Says

What these traditions say about a church's faults is about ordinary faults. None of it is about abuse. If that is your church, go to Chapter Two.

Christians do not all see leaving a church the same way. Before you decide anything, you should know where your own tradition stands.

A Catholic who leaves the Catholic Church, a Baptist who moves to another Baptist church across town, and a Presbyterian who joins an Anglican parish are not doing the same thing. Their own churches would tell them so.

This chapter lets each tradition speak for itself, in its own documents or through its own teachers. It does not rank them. It does not say which is right. The book has convictions of its own, as you know by now, but this chapter is not the place for them. Each quotation comes with a word about what its writer was addressing, so it is not made to say more than it says.

The ancient warning. The oldest strong words on this subject come from Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in North Africa, around AD 251. His church was being torn by rival factions setting up rival bishops and rival altars.

In his treatise On the Unity of the Church he wrote: "He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother." He compared the church to the seamless robe of Christ, which the soldiers would not tear.

Cyprian was writing against people who founded rival churches. He was not writing about a believer who moves across town, and not about anyone fleeing harm. Still, it is the oldest strong word on the subject, and every reader should know it.

Catholic. The Catholic Church teaches that the one Church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic Church (Catechism, paragraph 816), and that leaving it is a grave matter. Its Catechism defines schism as "the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him" (paragraph 2089).

It speaks with humility about how the great divisions came: "large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Church—for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (paragraph 817).

Of Christians born into other communities it says that "one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities ... and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers" (paragraph 818). It holds that "many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church," and that Christ's Spirit uses other churches and communities, "whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church" (paragraph 819).

And quoting the Second Vatican Council, it teaches that "they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it" (paragraph 846).

The word that carries the weight in that sentence is knowing. The very next paragraph says: "This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church" (paragraph 847).

What this means for a Catholic reader: your Church does not see leaving it as moving from one church to another. It sees it as leaving the fullness of the Church, and it calls that grave. That gentle word about Christians born outside it is not spoken to a Catholic who leaves.

But changing parishes is an ordinary thing for a Catholic, and it is not leaving the Church; Part Three of this book is written for that. If you are thinking of leaving the Catholic Church itself, speak with a priest before you decide, and ask him to explain paragraphs 846 and 847 to you. If a priest harmed you, or protected the one who did, you do not owe him that conversation. Find another priest, and see Chapter Two.

Orthodox. The Orthodox Church understands itself as the one Church of Christ, which cannot be divided. A teaching series published by the Orthodox Church in America says it simply: "The Church is one because God is one, and because Christ and the Holy Spirit are one." People "may be in it or out of it, but they may not divide it." The same text says that believers "may fall away and be separated from the Church."

In this view there are not many churches to choose among. There is one, and a person is either within it or has gone out from it.

What this means for an Orthodox reader: your Church does not see itself as one choice among many. It is where the bishop is and the Eucharist is given, and to leave it is to leave that communion. Moving between parishes, or between canonical jurisdictions in communion with one another, is not leaving the Church.

If you are thinking of leaving the Church itself, speak with your priest, and ask him to tell you plainly what your Church holds. If a priest harmed you, or protected the one who did, you do not owe him that conversation. Go to another priest, or to the bishop, and see Chapter Two.

Lutheran. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 defines the Church by what happens in it: "The Church is the congregation of saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered." It adds that "for the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments."

It is frank about the mixture: "many hypocrites and evil persons are mingled within them in this life," and the Word and the Sacraments are still effective "even if they are administered by evil men" (Articles VII and VIII, Concordia translation).

What this means for a Lutheran reader: your Confession tells you to look first at what is preached, and what is given at the altar and the font. The faults of the people around you, even of the pastor, do not by themselves undo a church where the gospel is taught and the sacraments are given. Abuse is not one of those faults. No confession quoted here asks you to stay under it.

Reformed and Presbyterian. John Calvin gave a whole chapter of his Institutes to this question, and he titled it the duty of "cultivating unity" with the true Church, "as the mother of all the godly." Wherever the word of God is "sincerely preached and heard" and the sacraments are "administered according to the institution of Christ," he wrote, "there we cannot have any doubt that the Church of God has some existence" (IV.1.9).

He warned hard against leaving such a church over its faults: "we are not on account of every minute difference to abandon a church, provided it retain sound and unimpaired that doctrine in which the safety of piety consists, and keep the use of the sacraments instituted by the Lord" (IV.1.12). Of people who demand a perfectly pure congregation he said that "through hatred of wickedness" they "withdraw from a genuine church" (IV.1.13). He called that attitude "more the result of pride and a false idea of sanctity" (IV.1.16).

But Calvin also held the other half, in the next chapter: "The communion of the Church was not instituted to be a chain to bind us in idolatry" (IV.2.2). Where the gospel and the sacraments have been corrupted, he believed departure was right. He applied that to the Roman church of his day, which the Catholic Church rejects. This book reports both and settles neither.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, which many Presbyterian churches hold, gives both halves in one paragraph. It begins, "The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error," and goes on to say that some churches have so degenerated as to be no churches of Christ (25.5).

What this means for a Reformed reader: your tradition gives you marks to look for, and it tells you not to leave a church that has them over lesser things. It also tells you that a church can lose them.

Anglican and Methodist. The Church of England's Articles of Religion define the visible church this way: "The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached," and the sacraments are duly ministered (Article XIX).

John Wesley, a priest of the Church of England all his life, preached a sermon called "On Schism." He argued that in Scripture schism means a breach of love within a church, and that in a wider sense it means "a causeless separation from a body of living Christians." He called it "both evil in itself, and productive of evil consequences."

He also said exactly when he thought a person must leave. If you "could not remain in the Church of England without doing something which the word of God forbids, or omitting something which the word of God positively commands," then you "ought to separate." And where a church requires neither, "it is then my indispensable duty to continue therein."

What this means for an Anglican or Methodist reader: your Articles look to the word preached and the sacraments ministered. And the best-known preacher in your family of churches set the bar for leaving at conscience under the word of God, not at preference.

Baptist and free church. Many Baptist and free churches place the church first in the local congregation. The Baptist Faith and Message (2000) puts it this way: "A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel." It also speaks of the church as "the Body of Christ which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages."

In this view, joining a church is entering a covenant with a particular congregation, and membership can be moved from one congregation to another of like faith.

Reformed Baptist churches hold the Second London Confession of 1689. It says all believers are bound to join themselves to particular churches where they have opportunity (26.12). It tells a member who has taken offense, and has done his duty toward the one who gave it, not to stay away from the church over it (26.13). It also gives both halves of the old line: "The purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan" (26.3).

What this means for a Baptist or free-church reader: your tradition does not treat moving from one faithful congregation to another as leaving the Church. But it does treat your membership as a covenant, and a covenant is not ended by silence. Chapter Ten says more.

Anabaptist. The Anabaptist churches, Mennonite, Amish, Hutterite and others, understand the church as a gathered body of believers who have committed themselves to walk together, set apart from the world, and to be corrected by one another. They weigh the purity of that gathered body more heavily than many other traditions do.

The Schleitheim Confession of 1527 set out a pattern of discipline drawn from Matthew 18: a member who falls is "admonished twice in secret and the third time openly."

In these churches belonging is a serious covenant with a community. In some, such as Old Order Amish communities, a baptized member who leaves may be shunned, and the community holds that as the discipline of Scripture; most Mennonite churches do not practice it. Chapter Eight says more, and gives the conviction of this book there.

What this means for an Anabaptist reader: your tradition asks you to take the covenant you made seriously, and to be corrected within the body. Ask your elders what your congregation teaches about leaving, and what it would mean for you.

Pentecostal, charismatic and non-denominational. Pentecostal churches are a tradition of their own, with their own denominations and statements of faith. The Assemblies of God, one of the largest Pentecostal bodies in the United States, holds a Statement of Fundamental Truths. Its tenth article, "The Church and Its Mission," begins: "The Church is the body of Christ, the habitation of God through the Spirit, with divine appointments for the fulfillment of her Great Commission."

Charismatic believers are found in many traditions, Catholic, Anglican and Protestant. Independent charismatic and non-denominational churches usually have their own statement of faith and membership covenant, and for them that document is the primary source.

What this means for a Pentecostal or charismatic reader: your tradition takes the Spirit's leading seriously, and so does Scripture. At Antioch, while the church was worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit said to set apart Barnabas and Saul, and the church fasted, prayed, laid hands on them and sent them (Acts 13:2–3). The Spirit spoke, and the church heard it together.

Read your church's statement of faith and covenant. Ask your pastor what it teaches about membership and leaving, and how your church helps a person test a call.

Mainline Protestant. The Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Methodist Church and others hold the historic creeds and confessions, but they hold them in different ways, and several make room on purpose for members who differ.

If your church is one of these, read its constitution or book of order. Ask your pastor what it asks of you, and what it leaves to you.

What most of them hold in common. Set them side by side and the differences are real. A Catholic and a Baptist do not mean the same thing by "the Church," and this book will not pretend they do. The Anabaptist churches weigh purity more heavily. So nothing more is said here than the sources say.

Every tradition quoted here treats leaving as serious. None of them treats it as a matter of taste.

And most of them say, in their own words, that the church on earth is mixed. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, writing a century and a half after Cyprian, used Jesus' own image: "the good fish and the bad are for the time mixed up in the one net" (On Christian Doctrine III.32). The Lutherans say hypocrites are "mingled within." The Reformed and Baptist confessions say the purest churches are "subject to mixture," and that some churches can fall so far they are no churches at all.

These traditions, in their own words, say that an imperfect church is not, for that alone, a church to leave.

So if you are thinking of leaving, learn first what your own tradition says, from its own teachers. Then learn what the tradition you are drawn to says about the step you would take.

You may decide that your tradition is wrong about this. People do. But decide it in the light, knowing what you are deciding.

Part Three: The Weighing

This part sorts the reasons people give for leaving a congregation into four kinds, from the lightest to the heaviest.

The sorting is not a scale that adds up to an answer. Many people have more than one reason, and a light one and a heavy one can sit side by side. The sorting is there to help you name your reason honestly, and to ask what that kind of reason calls for.

Some call for patience. Some call for a conversation. Some may justify leaving. A few require it.

Three things before we begin.

First, this part is for safe churches. If someone is harming you or a child, or leaders are hiding harm, nothing here is yours to weigh. Go to Chapter Two.

Second, if you are Catholic or Orthodox, read this part as being about your parish. Moving to another parish of your own Church is not leaving the Church. Leaving the Church itself is a different question, and Chapter Four is where it begins.

Third, reasons to stay can be borrowed too. Fear can dress up as faithfulness. So can not wanting a hard conversation, not wanting to lose a seat on a committee, not wanting to disappoint your mother.

The chapters ahead ask of each reason to leave, "What has to be true?" Chapter Nine asks the same of staying.

If you have used the Denominational Mapping Instrument on this site, you have already asked which of your convictions are musts. Ask it again here.

If your tradition teaches that some points bind every member, then some of your musts are set for you, not chosen by you. Ask your pastor or priest which they are.

A map can show you where you and your church differ. It cannot tell you what the difference should cost. That is what this part is about.

Dear friend, these things are written to you so that you may weigh your reason in the light. Whatever it is, light or heavy, bring it out where it can be seen.

"But the one who practices the truth comes to the light" (John 3:21, NET).

Chapter Five — Reasons That Are Not Yet Reasons

Written for a church that is safe. If yours is not, go to Chapter Two.

Drawn from What Isn't in Your Bible and Why

Some reasons for leaving are real feelings that have not yet become real reasons.

They are named gently here, because they are the most common, and they are the easiest to act on without noticing.

Style. The music is too loud, or too old. The service runs long, or feels thin. The building is cold. The liturgy is unfamiliar, or too familiar.

These things matter to people, and they are allowed to matter.

But style is where a church's way of worship meets your habits, and habits are mostly what we are used to. Something unfamiliar is not wrong for you because it is unfamiliar. Something familiar is not right because it is familiar.

Many believers who grew up with an organ have learned to worship with a band. Many who grew up with a band have learned to love an ancient liturgy.

What changed was not the music. It was the worshiper.

A program. The youth group is small. There is no ministry for your stage of life. The church down the road has more for your children.

Programs matter. A parent's care for what his children become is a serious thing, and Chapter Six takes it up.

But a program is not a family. A church may have few programs and many people who know your children by name. That church may be forming them better than one with a full calendar.

Bigger, nearer, newer. A larger church has more energy. A nearer church is easier on a Sunday morning. A new church plant feels alive.

Each of these can be a fair reason in its season. Distance most of all. It matters more than people admit.

But each can also be a way of saying, "I want church to cost me less." A disciple should be able to tell which one he is saying.

Boredom and restlessness. Sometimes nothing is wrong. The sermons are faithful, the people are kind, and it has all gone flat.

A church can go dry. So can a soul.

The risen Christ had a word for the church that had left its first love, and His counsel was not to find a more exciting church. It was to "remember from what high state you have fallen and repent! Do the deeds you did at the first" (Revelation 2:5, NET).

Sometimes the dryness is in the congregation. Often it is in us. And if it is in us, a new church will not cure it. Only going back to Him will.

Curiosity. Sometimes the pull is not that anything is wrong here. It is that you want to know what is there.

A friend loves her liturgy. A neighbor's church prays for the sick by name. You read something from another tradition and cannot stop thinking about it.

Curiosity is not a sin. It is how the first disciples came.

Two men began walking after Jesus, and when He asked them what they wanted, they asked where He was staying. "Jesus answered, 'Come and you will see.' So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day." (John 1:39, NET.)

The Bereans were called "more open-minded" because they examined the scriptures "carefully every day to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11, NET).

So do not put your curiosity away. But know three things about it.

First, curiosity is not yet a reason to leave. It is a reason to look, and you can look without leaving.

Many believers visit other churches now and then. Some of the counting is at the back.

Go to a friend's service. Read what another tradition says about itself, in its own words; Chapter Four is a place to start. Ask good questions.

If you are Catholic or Orthodox, ask your priest first what it means for you to attend, and to receive Communion, in another church. Your Church has teaching on both.

Second, keep it in the light. Curiosity kept secret tends to grow into a quiet leaving. Curiosity spoken to your pastor or priest, and to your spouse, stays where it can be talked about and prayed over.

Third, watch where it leads.

Sometimes curiosity is only restlessness, and it passes.

Sometimes it leads you to a conviction you did not have before. If that happens, it is no longer curiosity. It is a difference on a must, or a question about crossing from one tradition to another, and Chapters Six and Ten are for it.

And sometimes it sends you home grateful, having seen how other brothers and sisters love the same Lord. That is a good end too.

In John's telling, the first curiosity ended where all of it should end: they stayed with Him that day.

Wherever your looking takes you, let it take you nearer to Him.

A hurt not yet spoken. Someone said something. Someone did not call when you were in the hospital. You were passed over for a role. A friend chose a side.

These are real wounds, and some of them are deep.

If the hurt is abuse, none of what follows is for you. Go to Chapter Two.

But an ordinary hurt between brothers and sisters that has never been spoken has not yet become a reason to leave. Jesus put the first duty on the one who caused the hurt:

"So then, if you bring your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your gift."

— Matthew 5:23–24 (NET)

He was speaking to the one who did the wrong. If you have hurt someone, go.

If you are the one who was hurt and the other has not come, it may still be yours to go, because Jesus also said to go to a brother who sins (Matthew 18:15).

Families hurt each other. Most ordinary hurts can be healed with one honest conversation. That conversation is love doing its work.

"The church hid this from you." Some people do not leave over anything that happened in their church. They leave over something they watched.

A video says the church hid the Book of Enoch, or cut books out of the Bible, or buried the real story of Jesus. It comes with dramatic music and the promise of secrets.

Here is what is true. The church did not hide these writings. It read them, named them, and weighed them in the open.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, one of the oldest churches in the world, keeps 1 Enoch and Jubilees in its Bible. The letter of Jude, in every Bible, mentions Enoch by name and quotes his prophecy (Jude 14–15). The other churches knew these books and judged that they were not to be read as Scripture.

A companion volume, What Isn't in Your Bible and Why, tells that story book by book. Its finding is plain: what was buried "was not a suppressed truth. It was a body of writing the church had already read, named, and answered in full view of history."

Paul saw the pull of this coming: "For there will be a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. Instead, following their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves, because they have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things. And they will turn away from hearing the truth, but on the other hand they will turn aside to myths." (2 Timothy 4:3–4, NET.)

John's counsel is the old one: "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world" (1 John 4:1, NET).

The conviction of this book: a church that set boundaries around what is read as Scripture was caring for its flock, the way the Father prunes the vine so that it will bear more fruit (John 15:2).

And the steady stream of "they hid it from you" is one of the enemy's oldest ways. He is the father of lies (John 8:44). He does not argue you out of the truth. He pulls your eyes away from it. He teaches you to distrust your church before you have asked your church anything.

Curiosity is not the problem. The problem is a story that has already decided your church lied.

Check the claim. Then take your question to your pastor or priest, and hear what they say. The truth is not afraid of the light.

A disagreement not yet talked through. You heard a sermon you disagreed with. You read the church's statement of faith and found a line you do not hold. The elders made a decision you would not have made.

Before any of these becomes a reason, ask whether you have talked to anyone about it.

Some disagreements dissolve in the first conversation, because what you heard was not what was meant. Some do not, and Chapter Six is for those.

When politics comes into it. People leave churches over politics. A pastor said something in public. A church took a stand on a question in the news. The church seemed too political, or not political enough, or on the wrong side.

This is a real reason. Many who have left name it.

The conviction of this book: a church's stand on a party or a candidate is rarely the gospel. A disagreement about that is, for most believers, a difference a family can hold.

But some questions in the news are also questions of moral teaching, and believers on every side hold some of them as a must. If that is your case, this book does not call your question small. It is a difference on a must, and Chapter Six is for it.

For the rest, treat it as you would any other difference. Talk to the pastor or priest. Ask what the church holds as a matter of faith and what is one man's opinion from the pulpit. Ask whether you are welcome there if you vote differently.

If the answer is yes, you have found a family that disagrees about politics. Many families do, and they still love one another.

There is a harder case. A church may make a political loyalty a test of fellowship, or its leaders may use the pulpit to treat other believers with contempt. That is no longer a disagreement about politics. It is a question about what the church has put at its center, and it belongs in Chapter Seven.

The grass on the other side. Every church you have not yet joined looks better than the one you are in, because you have not yet met its people.

The new church has the same human nature and the same sins. That is not cynicism. It is Augustine's net and Jesus' field.

A person who moves from one church to another will likely meet, in time, some version of what he left. The question is whether what drew him away was something real, or only something new.

What leaving costs. Leaving is not free, and its cost is rarely counted beforehand.

It costs relationships that were years in the making. It costs children the friends and teachers they grew up with. It costs the church the gifts you carried and the work you did.

It costs you the people who knew you at your worst and stayed. It costs the slow shaping that happens only when the same people pray for you for twenty years.

For some readers it costs more still. A Catholic or Orthodox Christian who leaves the Church leaves the altar where, in his tradition's teaching, Christ gives Himself.

"For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn't sit down first and compute the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?" (Luke 14:28, NET.) Jesus said that about following Him, and it fits every serious decision a disciple makes.

What staying costs. Staying is not free either.

It can cost a conscience that never rests. It can cost a child who does not feel at home. It can cost a marriage where one spouse goes alone.

Count both. Count them before Him, and in the light.

And if your church has harmed you or your child, count the cost of staying first. Chapter Eight is for you.

Leaving in small ways. There is a kind of leaving that never makes a decision. It is attending less, serving less, giving less, until a person is a member on paper and gone in fact.

Hebrews names it: "not abandoning our own meetings, as some are in the habit of doing" (Hebrews 10:25, NET). The word is habit.

If you are going to leave, leave well; Chapter Ten describes how. If you are going to stay, stay with your whole heart; Chapter Nine describes how.

Half-staying is hard on everyone. It is hardest on the one who drifts.

Dear friend, if you have already drifted, you have not gone too far to come back.

And if you pulled back because you were hurt or afraid, this is not about you. Stepping back from harm is not drifting. Chapter Eleven says more about that verse.

Whatever your reason, small or large, bring it into the light, and bring it to Him. He knows it already. He has not stopped loving you.

Chapter Six — Reasons That Call for a Conversation

Written for a church that is safe. If yours is not, go to Chapter Two.

Some reasons are heavier. They are not matters of taste, and they should not be brushed aside.

But they are not yet reasons to leave. They are reasons to talk.

Love speaks to a brother before it speaks about him. Fear goes quiet, or it slams the door.

And the talking is not a formality. Scripture asks for it, and it often settles the matter.

A difference on a must. Sometimes a believer finds that his church teaches something that touches a conviction he holds as a must: about baptism, or the Lord's Supper, or who may lead, or how Scripture is read.

This is not boredom. But even here, talk before you decide.

You may have misunderstood what your church holds. Your church may hold it less tightly than you think.

Many churches teach a position and leave their members free to differ. The Denominational Mapping Instrument records, for every church it describes, whether a point is Required, Expected, Taught or Left to conscience. A church that teaches a view is not always a church that requires it.

Ask your pastor or priest directly. Is this something the church requires me to believe, or something it teaches? Could I hold my view here, and serve, and be honest about it?

A change in teaching. Sometimes the church moves, not you. A denomination changes a position. A new pastor brings a different emphasis. The church you joined is not quite the church you attend.

This is one of the most painful reasons, because you did not leave. The church did.

Even so, ask before you act. What changed, exactly? Was it a matter of faith or of practice? Who decided it, and how? Is there room for those who see it differently, on either side of the change?

Congregations that hold together through a change like this do it because people on both sides keep talking.

The first church faced a hard change: whether Gentile believers must keep the law of Moses. The apostles and elders did not settle it by parting ways. "Both the apostles and the elders met together to deliberate about this matter," and after much debate they wrote, "it seemed best to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15:6, 28, NET).

When the church itself divides. Sometimes the question is not whether you leave. It is whether your congregation leaves its denomination, or your denomination divides.

Then staying can mean two things: staying with the people and the building, or staying with the wider church. Both are a kind of staying.

Ask what vote is coming, who may take part, and what happens to those on the side that loses. Ask whether you can keep the friendships whichever way it goes.

People of good faith have chosen each way, and this book does not choose for you.

A pastor you cannot follow. Sometimes the problem is a person. A pastor is harsh, or distant, or proud, or simply a poor fit for you. Pastors are human, and some are not good at the work.

Scripture asks a great deal of believers toward their leaders: "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls and will give an account for their work" (Hebrews 13:17, NET).

It asks a great deal of leaders too: "Give a shepherd's care to God's flock among you ... And do not lord it over those entrusted to you, but be examples to the flock" (1 Peter 5:2–3, NET).

Both are true at once.

If your pastor's harshness is a pattern of fear, threats, shame or control, that is not a poor fit. It is abuse, and Chapter Two is for you. If you cannot tell which it is, tell someone outside and ask.

If it is not that, and you are sure it is not, go to him first. Tell him the truth, in private and in love, before you think of leaving.

Feeling unfed. "I'm not being fed" is one of the most common things people say when they leave. It deserves both respect and a question.

Respect, because shepherds are meant to feed the flock, and Ezekiel speaks hard words against shepherds who feed only themselves.

A question, because "fed" can mean many things.

It can mean the word is not being preached, or the sacrament is not being rightly given. For Catholic and Orthodox readers, and for many Lutherans and Anglicans, the Lord's table is where a believer is fed first, and a dull sermon does not make it less food.

It can mean the sermons are faithful but not stirring. It can mean the believer has grown and needs more than Sunday can give.

Ask yourself which.

If the word is not being preached, that is serious, and the next chapter takes it up.

If it is preached but not stirring, name what you are hungry for. It may be the word taught more deeply. It may be prayer, or worship, or a sense of God near. Traditions weigh these differently. Ask whether this church can give what you need, and whether you have asked.

If you have outgrown what Sunday gives, the first answer may not be to leave. It may be to feed others. Find a study. Read more. Ask your pastor for help.

The household. Some of the hardest conversations are not with the church at all. They are at home.

Spouses may not agree. One wants to stay and the other to go. One was raised in this church and the other married into it.

The conviction of this book: do not let a church come between you and your spouse. A marriage is a covenant made before God, and it is not the lesser thing in this weighing.

Talk long. Pray together. If you cannot agree, seek counsel from someone you both trust.

Do not win the argument and lose the marriage.

All of this is for a disagreement about a safe church. If your spouse wants to stay in a church that is harming you or your children, you may protect yourself and them without your spouse's agreement. If your spouse is the one harming you, this paragraph is not about you. Chapter Two is.

Children have a place in the conversation. A teenager who wants to leave the youth group may be lonely, or bullied, or doubting, or restless, and each needs a different answer. Or someone there may be harming him.

Ask gently, listen, and believe what you hear. If you learn your child has been harmed, stop reading this chapter and go to Chapter Two.

"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but raise them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." (Ephesians 6:4, NET.)

Ask what your children are being taught and by whom. Ask whether the church has written down how it keeps children safe, and whether it does what it wrote.

A church that cannot be trusted with your children is not a matter for a conversation. It is a reason to leave, and Chapter Eight says so.

Aging parents may be in the same church. Leaving may mean leaving them, or taking them from the only church they have known.

For some people the congregation is their whole world: the people who visit when they are sick, who bring meals, who notice when they do not come.

Weigh that. It is not sentimental to weigh it. It is what a family does.

When the faith was never your choice. Many believers were baptized as infants, or simply went to church because their parents went.

Then one day, often in the teenage years, it begins to feel as though none of it was ever theirs.

Some say they were brainwashed. Some resent the church as the institution that held them before they could think for themselves. Some quietly set it all down at the first chance, the first year away from home.

It usually happens young, often before the person is grown.

And how the faith was handed on matters a great deal. Those who remember a home where the faith was warm very often stay. Those who remember it as cold or harsh very often leave it altogether. (What has been counted is at the back.)

Here is what can be said honestly. Handing a faith to a child is not brainwashing.

Every home hands something on, and Scripture commands believing parents to hand on this: "you must teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up" (Deuteronomy 6:7, NET).

Paul honored the faith Timothy received from his grandmother and mother (2 Timothy 1:5).

But a faith that is never explained, never questioned, and never offered as one's own can feel like a cage. And the one who breaks out of the cage may leave the faith behind with it.

None of the traditions teaches that a faith received as a child is the end of the matter. The churches that baptize infants say the opposite.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church: "The faith required for Baptism is not a perfect and mature faith, but a beginning that is called to develop," and "For all the baptized, children or adults, faith must grow after Baptism" (paragraphs 1253–1254).

The Westminster Larger Catechism calls "improving our Baptism" a duty "to be performed by us all our life long" (Question 167).

In the Orthodox Church a baptized infant is chrismated and receives Holy Communion, and grows up inside the life of the Church. Lutheran and many other churches practice confirmation, when the young affirm for themselves the promises made for them at their baptism.

And the Baptist and Anabaptist churches baptize only those who confess the faith themselves: "Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer" (Baptist Faith and Message, Article VII); baptism "shall be given to all those who have learned repentance and amendment of life" (Schleitheim Confession, Article I).

This book does not settle the question of infant baptism. It only notes that every one of these traditions, in its own way, asks for your own yes.

So the choice is real, and it is yours now.

Joshua put it to a people who had inherited their faith from their fathers: "choose today whom you will worship" (Joshua 24:15, NET).

But choose with your eyes open. What you are tempted to set down may not be the faith at all. It may be the version of it you met at thirteen, or a parent's harshness, or one cold Sunday school room.

Before you leave the faith of your childhood, meet it as an adult.

The boy Jesus was found in the temple "sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions" (Luke 2:46, NET). Do that.

Read a Gospel for yourself; John wrote his "so that you may believe" (John 20:31, NET). Ask your hardest questions out loud, to someone who can answer them. Separate Christ from the way He was handed to you.

"Come and you will see" (John 1:39, NET).

Dear friend, if you are one of those who left in anger, hear this. What you rejected may not have been Him.

He has not stopped calling you by name (John 10:3).

If you are the parent of a teenager who pushes back. Teenagers often disagree just to find out whether disagreement is allowed.

A parent who answers with anger, or with fear, can teach a child that the faith has no room for questions. The child may remember that lesson long after he has forgotten the argument.

Scripture speaks to parents directly: "Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they will not become disheartened" (Colossians 3:21, NET).

What has been counted says the same. The faith is handed down most often in homes where it is practiced, and where parents are warm as well as firm. Cold or harsh homes hand it down far less often, whatever the parents believe. (The details are at the back.)

So let the questions be asked at your table. Answer what you can, and say plainly what you do not know. Do not make every disagreement a battle for the soul.

Keep praying. Keep the door open.

The father in Jesus' story did not chase his son down the road with arguments. He watched the road, and when the son came home, he ran (Luke 15:20).

"There is no fear in love" (1 John 4:18, NET).

Your child will keep the faith he has seen loved far more often than the faith he has been forced to defend.

Tight churches and loose ones. Some of those who set down a faith that felt imposed do not leave church at all. They move to a church that holds its people more loosely: fewer rules, less structure, more room to question.

That freedom is real, and for some it is a relief. It also has a cost, and those who have lived on both sides can see it.

One believer was raised Catholic and now worships in a charismatic church. She has seen what can happen where there is little structure. People carry strange ideas for a long time, and no one corrects them. In the church she grew up in, that would not have lasted.

The Denominational Mapping Instrument on this site has two words for how tightly a church holds its people. "Grip asks how much of what these 19 questions could require the church actually requires." "Firmness asks a narrower question. When the church does speak, how firmly does it speak?"

A high grip means a church expects a great deal from its members. A low grip means it expects little, or has written little.

Neither one is the gospel. A strict church can hold a wrong reading firmly. A loose church can leave a wrong idea uncorrected for years.

The same guide asks two questions about you, and sets your answers beside how each church holds its people.

If your church's teaching and your own reading of Scripture disagreed on something that matters, would you follow the church's teaching, keep your view quietly, say so openly and stay if the church allowed it, or follow your own reading even if it meant leaving?

And if your leaders, after a fair process, told you to stop something they judged to be sin and you were not convinced, would you submit, submit only if shown from Scripture, listen but keep the final judgment between you and God, or leave?

There is no score on those answers. They are a mirror. They show how tightly you want to be held, and they let you ask why.

Is it that you want to be free from control? Or free from correction?

Those are not the same freedom.

How far does "setting yourself free" tend to go?

Most who leave the church they were raised in do not land in a looser church. Many land in no church at all.

Nothing counted here shows that strictness itself decides how children turn out. What shows, again and again, is the home: whether the faith was practiced there, and whether it was handed on with warmth. (The figures are at the back.)

The conviction of this book: the structure of a church is part of how Christ shepherds His flock.

"He himself gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry ... So we are no longer to be children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching" (Ephesians 4:11–12, 14, NET).

Paul told the elders at Ephesus to "shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son" (Acts 20:28, NET).

A church that teaches, corrects and guards is doing what the Gardener does: "He prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it will bear more fruit" (John 15:2, NET).

And the winds blow hard now. Every phone carries a thousand teachers.

The conviction of this book: churches have often been slow to answer those winds.

That is not a call for any church to change what it believes. It is a call not to treat its habits as if they were its doctrine.

Jesus said that "every expert in the law who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and old" (Matthew 13:52, NET).

The treasure does not change. The way it is brought out can.

How to have the conversation. Jesus gave a pattern for when a brother sins:

"If your brother sins, go and show him his fault when the two of you are alone. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others with you, so that at the testimony of two or three witnesses every matter may be established. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church."

— Matthew 18:15–17 (NET)

Not every reason for leaving is a sin someone committed. But the shape of this pattern serves most hard conversations in a church.

It does not serve abuse. If someone has abused you or a child, do not go to him alone, and do not go first. Chapter Two says what to do.

For everything else, go first to the person, alone. Go to regain your brother, not to win. If that fails, bring someone wise with you. Only then take it wider.

And notice the goal: "you have regained your brother." The point of the conversation is the brother.

Staying and speaking. Scripture records a hard conversation held in the open.

When Peter drew back from eating with Gentile believers at Antioch, Paul did not leave the church. He spoke: "I opposed him to his face, because he had clearly done wrong" (Galatians 2:11, NET).

He did it because the truth of the gospel was at stake. He did it in front of everyone because the wrong had been done in front of everyone.

Paul elsewhere names two women at Philippi, Euodia and Syntyche, who had fallen out, and asks a friend in the church to help them "agree in the Lord" (Philippians 4:2, NET). He did not tell one of them to find another church.

The conversation is not a step to get through on the way to leaving. It is often the answer.

You may find the difference is smaller than you feared. You may find you are welcome to hold it. You may find the church is willing to change. The one who leaves without speaking never finds out.

And a person leaving harm does not owe anyone this conversation.

Chapter Seven — Reasons That May Justify Leaving

Some reasons do justify leaving. A book that pretended otherwise would be lying to you.

Scripture records believers parting ways, and it does not always condemn them. The traditions in Chapter Four, even the strictest, name conditions under which a person may or must go.

This chapter gives those reasons their full weight. It also asks of each one, "What has to be true?" Any of them can be borrowed by a lighter reason dressed as a heavier one.

John told the churches to test the spirits (1 John 4:1). Test your reasons the same way, gently and honestly, in the light.

When the gospel itself is denied. The heaviest reason is when a church no longer holds the faith at its center: who Christ is, what He did on the cross, His rising from the dead, salvation by God's grace.

Paul did not soften this:

"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are following a different gospel—not that there really is another gospel, but there are some who are disturbing you and wanting to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we (or an angel from heaven) should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be condemned to hell!"

— Galatians 1:6–8 (NET)

John wrote that "Everyone who goes on ahead and does not remain in the teaching of Christ does not have God" (2 John 9, NET).

Paul warned of teachers who "do not agree with sound words (that is, those of our Lord Jesus Christ)" and who "suppose that godliness is a way of making a profit" (1 Timothy 6:3, 5, NET).

The Protestant traditions agree here more than anywhere. The Lutheran confession defines the church by the gospel rightly taught. Calvin held that where "lying and falsehood have usurped the ascendancy," there is no church (Institutes IV.2.1). Wesley set the line at being made to do what the word of God forbids.

What has to be true: this reason is about the gospel, not about every doctrine you hold dear.

A church that differs with you about the end times, or the mode of baptism, or the gifts of the Spirit, has not denied the gospel, even if it is wrong. A church that no longer confesses Christ as Lord and Savior, or that preaches another way to God, has.

Be honest about which you are facing. Ask your pastor plainly what the church believes about Christ.

If the answer is the historic faith, you are in a family that disagrees with you about something smaller. If it is not, you may be in a place that has stopped being what it was.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians do not hold that a believer may judge the Church itself to have lost the gospel. They hold that Christ keeps His Church in the truth.

For them, a priest or parish that strays is taken to the bishop. It is not a reason to leave the Church. Chapter Four gives their view.

When the church requires what your conscience forbids. Sometimes a church does not deny the gospel, but it requires its members to do or affirm something a believer cannot do in good conscience before God.

When the authorities commanded the apostles to stop preaching, they answered, "We must obey God rather than people" (Acts 5:29, NET).

Paul treats conscience with great seriousness too. On matters where believers differ, "Each must be fully convinced in his own mind" (Romans 14:5, NET), and "whatever is not from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23, NET).

What has to be true: Romans 14 cuts both ways, and it is easy to read only half.

The same chapter that protects conscience commands believers not to despise or judge one another over these matters: "Now receive the one who is weak in the faith, and do not have disputes over differing opinions" (Romans 14:1, NET).

Most matters of conscience can be held inside a church that does not share them, as long as the church does not require you to act against them.

The line is not "my church holds a view I don't share." It is "my church requires me to do or say what I believe God forbids." Those are very different.

A point your church only teaches, or leaves to conscience, is not a point it requires of you.

When leadership cannot be corrected. Every leader errs. A church is in danger when its leaders cannot be corrected by anyone.

John wrote about such a man:

"I wrote something to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not acknowledge us. Therefore, if I come, I will call attention to the deeds he is doing—the bringing of unjustified charges against us with evil words! And not being content with that, he not only refuses to welcome the brothers himself, but hinders the people who want to do so and throws them out of the church!"

— 3 John 9–10 (NET)

Scripture gives a way to correct even an elder: "Do not accept an accusation against an elder unless it can be confirmed by two or three witnesses. Those guilty of sin must be rebuked before all, as a warning to the rest." (1 Timothy 5:19–20, NET.)

Some churches cannot do this. The leader answers to no one. Those who raise concerns are pushed out. That church is in the condition John described.

What has to be true: the question is not whether the leaders disagree with you. It is whether anyone can correct them when they are wrong.

Ask this of any church: who decides what Scripture means here, and who can correct that decision?

Every tradition has an answer. In some it is a bishop. In some it is a presbytery or a synod. In some it is the congregation. Find out your church's answer, and whether it works.

If the path exists and has been used, you are in a church that can be corrected, even if it is slow. If it exists only on paper, or not at all, that is a serious thing to weigh.

A Catholic or Orthodox reader will add something. What the Church has defined as faith is not open to that kind of correction. The conduct of her bishops and priests always is, and the path for that runs through the bishop and those above him. This question is about conduct.

When you are called elsewhere. Some believers leave a church not because anything is wrong with it, but because God is sending them somewhere: to plant a church, to serve in a mission, to strengthen a struggling congregation, to go where there is no church at all.

At Antioch the Holy Spirit said to the church at worship, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them," and after they had fasted and prayed, the church laid hands on them and sent them off (Acts 13:2–3, NET).

This is a good reason to go. A church that loves its members should be glad to send them.

What has to be true: a call is tested, not assumed. "Do not extinguish the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt. But examine all things; hold fast to what is good." (1 Thessalonians 5:19–21, NET.)

That testing is not a proof. It is a way of receiving humbly what you believe has been given.

Ask whether the people who know you best confirm it. Ask whether it is a call to somewhere or only a wish to be away from here. Ask your pastor or priest to pray with you about it.

A real call can bear being tested. A church that sends you with its blessing has given you a gift.

When you move, or life changes. A move across the country, a new job, a marriage into a family of another tradition: these are the most common reasons people change churches.

They need no defense. The only questions are how to leave well and where to go next, and Chapter Ten takes up both.

When the household cannot be fed or kept safe. A parent's first duty is to the children God gave him. If a church cannot teach your children the faith, or cannot be trusted to keep them safe, that is a real reason.

So is a church that has no place for someone in your household, because of a disability or for another reason. So is a church where your spouse cannot worship in good conscience.

What has to be true: if the question is safety, nothing has to be asked first. Go to Chapter Two.

If the question is teaching, or room for your household, ask first. Many churches will make room when asked. If they will not, or cannot, a parent is not being disloyal to seek a place where his whole household can be fed.

When a church has put something else at its center. Some churches drift from the gospel without ever denying it on paper.

Their center becomes something else: a political cause, a single issue, a personality, a building campaign, a set of rules heavier than Christ's yoke.

Jesus said of the religious leaders of His day: "They tie up heavy loads, hard to carry, and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing even to lift a finger to move them." (Matthew 23:4, NET.)

Where a church makes loyalty to a party, a cause or a leader the real test of fellowship, it has set a second thing beside Christ. A believer may weigh that seriously.

What has to be true: be careful here, because this reason is easy to borrow.

A church that preaches on a moral question, and comes down where you do not, has not necessarily put that question at its center. A church that disagrees with your politics has not necessarily made politics its gospel.

Ask what is preached most Sundays. Ask whether people who differ are welcome. Ask whether the cross is still the center of the worship. Then be honest about what you hear.

The test is the same for every cause, whichever side it is on.

Parting without condemnation. Scripture records one parting that has comforted many believers who had to go.

Paul and Barnabas had worked together for years. They disagreed about whether to take John Mark on their next journey:

"They had a sharp disagreement, so that they parted company. Barnabas took along Mark and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and set out, commended to the grace of the Lord by the brothers and sisters."

— Acts 15:39–40 (NET)

Luke does not say who was right. Both men went on serving.

And years later Paul wrote from prison: "Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is a great help to me in ministry" (2 Timothy 4:11, NET).

The parting was real. So was the trust in Mark that came back later.

Paul and Barnabas were partners in ministry, not a member and a church, so the likeness is loose. But it shows what a parting can look like.

It is done in the open. It does not make the other side the sinner. It leaves room for trust to come back. And both go on serving the same Lord.

Chapter Eight — Reasons That Require Leaving

Chapter Two was about safety in the moment. This chapter is about the decision that follows.

Some things do not call for weighing. They call for leaving, or at least for stepping away until safety and truth have been restored.

Dear friend, God does not ask you to sit in the dark to prove that you love Him.

Abuse, and the hiding of it. When a leader abuses people, sexually, physically, emotionally, financially or spiritually, and the church protects him, the church has failed at the most basic thing it exists to do.

When a church learns of abuse and hides it, it has made itself a partner in it.

"Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but rather expose them." (Ephesians 5:11, NET.)

John wrote that "God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5, NET). A church that keeps abuse in the dark has stopped walking in His light, whatever it says on Sunday.

And Jesus' warning about causing little ones to stumble (Matthew 18:6) is not a warning that can be weighed against a church's reputation.

The conviction of this book: a church that hides abuse is not a church family you are bound to. You may leave it.

Get away from the people who hid it. Tell the truth about why to those who need to know: the authorities, if a crime has been committed, and a trusted person outside the church.

If the church repents, removes the abuser from any place of trust, cares for the victims, and lets the truth be known, it may become a true church family again.

That is for God and time to show. It is not yours to wait for.

For a Catholic or Orthodox reader, getting away from a parish or a priest who hid abuse is not the same as leaving the Church.

You can go to another parish. You can take what happened to the police and to the bishop, or above the bishop if he is the problem. Chapter Two names the doors.

Whether to leave your Church is a separate question. Your tradition answers it, and Chapter Four says how.

Unrepentant abuse by a leader. Some churches remove an abuser and then, after a short time, put him back. Some let him keep leading while the matter is "handled internally."

Scripture sets a higher bar for leaders than for anyone else, and it does so for the sake of the flock: "The overseer then must be above reproach" (1 Timothy 3:2, NET).

A man who has abused those in his care has shown he cannot be trusted with them. A church that restores him to leadership has chosen him over the people he harmed.

Coercion and control. Some churches do not abuse in ways that make the news. They control.

They tell members whom to marry, where to work, whom to speak to. They discourage members from reading anything the leaders have not approved. They demand that members confess to leaders, and then they use what was confessed. They use threats about salvation, family or friends to keep people quiet and in place. They punish questions.

Some traditions teach openly that leaving them is grave. Teaching that is not control.

But when any church's teaching about leaving comes with threats to your family, with cutting you off, with watching you, or with a leader claiming to speak for God about you, it has become part of the pattern, however openly it was taught.

Chapter Two named the marks of this kind of control. If you see them in your church, you are not in a family. You are in something that has taken a family's name.

And if you cannot tell, that is reason enough to tell someone outside.

Shunning those who leave. A church that cuts off a person for leaving, forbids members to speak to him, or tells his family he is under God's curse, so that no one else will dare to go, is ruling by fear.

Several traditions practice church discipline, including excommunication, for serious unrepentant sin, and they ground it in Scripture (Matthew 18:17; 1 Corinthians 5:11–13). That is a different thing, done in the open, aimed at restoring the sinner.

A church can call shunning "discipline" and still be using it to control. If you were cut off for asking questions or for telling the truth about harm, that was not the discipline Scripture describes.

There is one hard case to name honestly. Some Anabaptist communities shun a baptized member who leaves, openly, and hold it as Scripture's discipline.

The conviction of this book: cutting a person off only for leaving is not what Matthew 18 describes. Your tradition may answer otherwise, and you should hear it from your elders.

But if that practice is used to keep you silent about harm, it has become part of the pattern.

What to do next. If any of this describes your church, here is the order.

The friend in God's house. There is a particular grief in being wounded by people you worshiped beside.

David knew it:

"Indeed, it is not an enemy who insults me, or else I could bear it; it is not one who hates me who arrogantly taunts me, or else I could hide from him. But it is you, a man like me, my close friend in whom I confided. We would share personal thoughts with each other; in God's temple we would walk together among the crowd."

— Psalm 55:12–14 (NET)

Dear friend, if that is your grief, Scripture has already given it words, and Chapter Eleven is for you.

The God who heard David hears you.

Leaving a church that harms people is not a failure of love for the family of God. It is love for the family of God, including the members of that church who are still being hurt.

The gentle words elsewhere in this book about staying, and putting up with one another in love, were written for families.

They were never written for this.

Part Four: Either Way

Whatever you decide, the decision is not the end of the matter.

Staying can be done well or badly. So can leaving.

This part is for afterward: for the one who stays, the one who goes, the one who is coming back, and the one who has been hurt and does not know yet whether to go anywhere at all.

These things are written so that, whichever way you walk, you may walk in the light, as He Himself is in the light (1 John 1:7).

It ends where the book began, with the family God wanted.

Chapter Nine — If You Stay

Written for a church that is safe. If yours is not, go to Chapter Two.

Drawn from The Anchor Below the Storm

The conviction of this book: staying is a good outcome. It is not a failure to choose, and it is not what people do when they lack courage.

For a believer whose church is still a true church family, the burden rests on leaving. You should not go lightly, and not before the conversation.

Often that means staying, and staying is often the harder road. It is easy to leave a church. It takes years to love one.

And love is what He asked of us: "I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." (John 13:34, NET.)

A church that hides abuse, or protects someone who harmed you, is not that kind of church, and nothing in this chapter is about it.

When staying is borrowed. Staying must be tested the way leaving was.

Fear can borrow a reason to stay. So can the dread of a hard conversation. So can the wish to keep your place, or not to disappoint someone. So can the plain comfort of what you know.

Ask yourself, What has to be true?

If you are staying because you love these people and believe God has put you among them, stay with your whole heart.

If you are staying because you are afraid of what would happen if you spoke, ask what you are afraid of. If it is a person who shames, threatens or controls, read Chapter Two first. If it is only the dread of a hard conversation, Chapter Six is where to begin.

If you are staying because you are afraid of what would happen if you left, read Chapter Two, and then Chapter Eight.

And if, after the conversation and a season of prayer, you find you are staying only out of fear or habit, you have found a reason to look again at going.

Staying is not holy because it is staying. Fear is not how love keeps its people.

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear" (1 John 4:18, NET).

Stay with your whole heart. Half-staying is its own kind of leaving.

If you decide to stay, decide all the way. Come back on Sunday as a member, not as a visitor waiting to see whether things improve.

Learn names. Sit somewhere new. Ask someone to lunch.

A church family is not a place you are in. It is a set of people you belong to, and belonging is done with your feet and your time.

"Be devoted to one another with mutual love, showing eagerness in honoring one another. Do not lag in zeal, be enthusiastic in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, endure in suffering, persist in prayer."

— Romans 12:10–12 (NET)

Serve. Few things change a person's view of a church like serving in it.

The person in the pew sees what the church does not give him. The person in the nursery, the kitchen, the hospital room or the choir sees what the church is.

Every member was given a gift "for the benefit of all" (1 Corinthians 12:7, NET). Ask your pastor or priest where you are needed. Then do it, and keep doing it after it stops being new.

Jesus washed His disciples' feet and said, "you too ought to wash one another's feet" (John 13:14, NET).

That is what love looks like in His family.

Love in deed. John, who heard Jesus say it, wrote it down for the rest of us: "Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue but in deed and truth" (1 John 3:18, NET).

Staying is where that sentence is lived. It is the casserole, the phone call, the ride to the doctor, the seat kept for the widow.

It is plain work, and it is how the family is loved.

If you inherited your faith. Some of you are happy where you are. You were baptized there, perhaps confirmed there, married there. Your parents' faith is in the walls.

And one day you realized that you do not really know what your church teaches, or what the Bible says.

You know the prayers. You know when to stand and when to kneel. But if someone asked you why, you could not say.

That is not a reason to leave. It is a reason to learn. (If your faith was handed to you and you are thinking of setting it down, read "When the faith was never your choice" in Chapter Six.)

An inherited faith is a gift, and Scripture honors it. Paul wrote to Timothy, "I recall your sincere faith that was alive first in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and I am sure is in you" (2 Timothy 1:5, NET). He reminded him "how from infancy you have known the holy writings" (2 Timothy 3:15, NET).

What was handed to you was meant to be handed to you. But it was meant to become yours.

John wrote to believers who had been taught from the start:

"As for you, what you have heard from the beginning must remain in you. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father."

— 1 John 2:24 (NET)

What you heard from the beginning is meant to remain in you.

It cannot remain where it never went in.

You are not alone in this, and it is not one tradition's problem. In every tradition, people inherit a faith they were never taught to read. (What has been counted is at the back.)

Here is why it belongs in this book. When people leave a church, some say they found elsewhere what they never knew their own church had.

Many who have left the Catholic Church for evangelical churches say their spiritual needs were not met there, and many name the way their Church taught the Bible.

Some of what they went looking for may have been at home all along, unread.

Dear friend, before you go anywhere, find out what you already have.

Your own church asks this of you.

The Catholic Church, at the Second Vatican Council, "earnestly and especially urges all the Christian faithful ... to learn by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures the 'excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ' (Phil. 3:8). For ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ." (Dei Verbum 25; the Catechism repeats it at paragraph 133.)

Since 2019 it has set apart the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time for "the celebration, study and dissemination of the word of God" (Aperuit illis). Every Sunday Mass gives three readings and a psalm, and over three years the Sunday Gospels move through Matthew, Mark and Luke.

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese's family ministry says it simply: "Our families should read the Bible together, as well as individually."

And a Protestant church that confesses the Bible as its highest authority is asking you to read it.

Learning will raise questions. Take them first to your own church, where your faith was planted. The word on curiosity in Chapter Five applies here.

And remember what the learning is for.

Jesus said to men who knew the Scriptures better than anyone: "You study the scriptures thoroughly because you think in them you possess eternal life, and it is these same scriptures that testify about me, but you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life." (John 5:39–40, NET.)

The goal is not to know more about your church. It is to know Him, the knowing that John 17:3 calls eternal life.

Read so that you may come to Him.

Speak up, kindly. Staying does not mean keeping quiet. A family where no one says what is wrong is not a healthy family.

If something needs to change, say so, to the people who can change it, in the way Chapter Six described.

Paul calls it "practicing the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15, NET). Truth means you say it. Love means you say it to help, not to wound. Love says it to the person, not about him.

Once you have said it, let it be heard. You may not get the change you asked for. You will have done your part. Leave the rest with Him.

Staying is never silence about harm. If you stay in a church and learn that someone is being abused, or that leaders are hiding wrongdoing, staying does not mean living with it. It means doing what Chapter Two describes.

You can stay in a church and still be the one who tells the truth.

And if the harm is done to you, or the church is hiding it, you do not have to stay in order to tell the truth. Chapter Eight is for you.

Hold a difference without poisoning the family. Some believers stay in a church where they disagree about something real. They have talked it through, and they have decided the difference is one a family can live with.

That is a mature decision. But it has a danger: a difference held in silence can turn bitter.

Hebrews warns about "a bitter root springing up and causing trouble, and through it many become defiled" (Hebrews 12:15, NET).

If you hold a difference, hold it in the light, and hold it lightly. Speak of it to those who can change it, and to God, and to no one else.

Pray for the people on the other side of it. And remember that they may be holding a difference with you, with the same patience.

"bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if someone happens to have a complaint against anyone else. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also forgive others. And to all these virtues add love, which is the perfect bond."

— Colossians 3:13–14 (NET)

Seasons of dryness. Some who stay will go through a long dry season. The sermons do not move them. Prayer feels empty. Worship is going through the motions.

This is not always the church's fault, and it is not always yours. It is part of the walk, and the saints have written about it for centuries.

Do not take the dryness as proof that you belong somewhere else. Take it to God. Keep coming.

But dryness is not dread. If you feel fear and not flatness when you walk in, listen to that, and read Chapter Two.

A companion sermon, The Anchor Below the Storm, has one line for the dry season: "You are not required to feel it for it to be true."

The dry season ends. Some who stay through it find that the church was carrying them the whole time.

Remember what you were given. At the end of a year, or five, or twenty, a person who stays in a church may have something rare.

People who knew him when he was young and foolish. People who prayed him through a divorce or a diagnosis, who held his children at their baptism, and who will stand at his grave.

"Look! How good and how pleasant it is when brothers truly live in unity." (Psalm 133:1, NET.)

That is not a small thing. It is one of the great gifts God gives in this life, and staying is one of the ways He gives it.

Those who must move often, military families among them, can share in it too. Join quickly. Love hard wherever you land. Many who had to leave a church have found this gift again in another.

Chapter Ten — If You Go, or If You Are Coming Back

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.

Some will receive you with a simple welcome. Some will ask for a period of instruction, or confirmation, or chrismation, or baptism. Some will tell you that your step is a grave one.

Hear them out. That is part of counting the cost, and it is a cost your household should count with you.

Finding the next church. If you are looking, look carefully and look more than once.

In the Pew survey, most people who looked for a church attended a service, and about half talked with a minister (the figures are at the back).

But most of what matters cannot be seen at one service. How does the church treat someone who fails? Who can correct the pastor? Are people known and cared for? Is the gospel the center, week after week? These take time to learn.

The Denominational Mapping Instrument on this site has a page of questions to take with you when you visit a congregation, at /dmi/visit/.

They are grouped by how you find out: what you can see at a service, what you should ask the pastor or priest, and what you can only learn from members or with time.

Use them. Begin with the questions closest to your musts. And keep apart what you saw from whether it suited you. Something unfamiliar is not wrong for you because it is unfamiliar.

How long to visit. Longer than you think. One Sunday tells you very little about a church.

Visit several times. Go to something other than the main service: a study, a meal, a work day.

Talk to the pastor. Talk to people who have been there ten years and people who came last year. Ask how the church handled its last hard season.

Then give it time after you join. You do not know a family after a month.

Do not bring the old church's wounds as a test. If you left because you were hurt, you will carry the hurt into the new church. That is natural.

You will watch for the signs you missed before, and that is not unfair to the new church. It is wisdom you paid for.

Ask the new church the hard questions: who can correct the pastor, what its policy is for keeping children safe, what it did the last time someone was harmed. A church worth joining will be glad you asked.

The only unfair thing is to hold its people guilty of what others did. Let it earn your trust slowly.

If the same thing happens again, you will know. If it does not, you will have been healed a little by a church that did not do what the last one did.

Join something. Some who leave a church never quite join another. They visit. They watch online. They stay on the edge. Months become years.

The conviction of this book: do not let leaving one church become leaving the church.

You were made for a family, and no one is fed for long on the edge of one.

When you find a place, commit to it. Be known. Serve. Come under the care of a shepherd. Belong.

If a church hurt you, Chapter Eleven sets the pace for this, not this paragraph.

If you are coming back. Some of you are not in any church. You were raised in one, and somewhere along the way you stopped going.

Maybe nothing happened. Life got full, you moved, and Sunday filled up with other things.

Dear friend, this letter is for you too.

You do not owe anyone an account of where you have been. The father in Jesus' story did not ask his son for one before he ran to him (Luke 15:20).

If you no longer know what you believe, you can still come and listen.

If you were raised in a particular tradition, Chapter Four can tell you how it sees coming back. If you were raised Catholic or Orthodox, ask a priest what returning involves.

Start small. One service. One conversation. One friend who will go with you. The Father is already watching the road (Luke 15:20).

Chapter Eleven — If a Church Has Hurt You

Dear friend, this chapter is for you if you have been wounded by a church, and are not sure whether to go back to any church, or when, or how.

Read it slowly. There is no deadline in it.

You are not alone, and you are not imagining it. Many people carry wounds from church.

Some were abused. Some were shamed. Some were pushed out for asking questions. Some were betrayed by friends. Some watched a church they loved fall apart over a scandal or a split.

You are not the only one. Many have carried this, and some of the counting is at the back.

If you were hurt by a church, you have company. That does not make the hurt smaller. It means your wound is not proof that something is wrong with you.

God is near the brokenhearted. Before anything else, hear what Scripture says to the wounded.

"The Lord is near the brokenhearted; he delivers those who are discouraged."

— Psalm 34:18 (NET)

"He heals the brokenhearted, and bandages their wounds."

— Psalm 147:3 (NET)

Isaiah described the Servant of the Lord this way: "A crushed reed he will not break, a dim wick he will not extinguish" (Isaiah 42:3, NET). Matthew says that was Jesus (Matthew 12:20).

The Lord is not like the people who hurt you. He does not snap what is bent. He does not put out what is barely burning.

He is the shepherd Ezekiel promised, who said, "I will seek the lost and bring back the strays; I will bandage the injured and strengthen the sick" (Ezekiel 34:16, NET).

And Jesus' own invitation was addressed to exactly the people religion had worn out:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry."

— Matthew 11:28–30 (NET)

If the yoke you were given at church was heavy, it was not His.

Grief is allowed. You may need to grieve. Not only the hurt, but the loss: of a church, of friends, of the trust you had, of the person you were before.

Lament is a form of prayer, and many of the Psalms are laments. The writer of Psalm 55, quoted in Chapter Eight, told God exactly what his friend had done.

You may do the same. God can hear it.

Healing takes time, and help. Wounds from church can touch the deepest places a person has, because they are tied up with God.

Many people need help to untangle what was done to them from what God is like. A counselor who understands harm in religious settings can help. So can a pastor from a different church, or a friend who listens without needing to fix.

Do not try to heal alone, and do not let anyone rush you.

If it was your child who was hurt, your grief is real too. Get help for yourself, not only for your child.

Trust is rebuilt slowly. You may not be able to trust a church, or a pastor, or a group of Christians, for a long time. That is not a failure.

Trust should be earned, and it is earned slowly. When you are ready, you can let it be earned again, a little at a time.

If you still feel guilty. Some of you left years ago and still feel it, on a Sunday morning, or when an old hymn plays.

Hear this. Guilt is not always the voice of God. Sometimes it is the voice of the place that taught you to fear leaving it, still speaking after you have gone.

If our conscience condemns us, John wrote, "God is greater than our conscience and knows all things" (1 John 3:20, NET).

If there is a real sin, confess it to Him, and He is faithful. If there is not, you may set the weight down.

Leaving that place was not leaving Him.

Returning, or not yet. Some of you want to know: must I go back? Here is where a verse is often used badly.

Hebrews says, "not abandoning our own meetings, as some are in the habit of doing" (Hebrews 10:25, NET).

It was written to encourage believers to keep meeting together, and the verse just before it is about how to "spur one another on to love and good works" (Hebrews 10:24, NET).

It was not written as a club to beat the wounded back into the pew. The meeting it protects is one that spurs people on to love. A meeting that crushed you is not what it means.

And Jesus said, "where two or three are assembled in my name, I am there among them" (Matthew 18:20, NET).

You are not under a deadline. You do not have to walk back through any door this Sunday.

When you are ready, and not before, know that you were made for a family, and that the family of God is larger and kinder than the part of it that hurt you.

When you are ready, start small: a friend who prays with you, a small group, a quiet service where no one will put you on the spot. Let the Shepherd bring you in at your own pace.

"I will not abandon you as orphans, I will come to you" (John 14:18, NET).

The God who runs. Jesus told a story about a son who left home.

When the son came back, "while he was still a long way from home his father saw him, and his heart went out to him; he ran and hugged his son and kissed him" (Luke 15:20, NET).

That son had left his father. You may not have left your Father at all. Leaving a church that hurt you is not leaving Him; He did not stay behind in that building.

But if you feel far from Him, He is watching the road. And He will run to meet you.

Chapter Twelve — Remain

This book has weighed reasons. It is time to put the weighing down.

The question you came with is a real one, and it may take you a season to answer. But it sits inside something already settled.

Before the foundation of the world, God wanted a family. He did not wait for us to be good enough.

"The Word became flesh and took up residence among us" (John 1:14, NET). He knelt with a towel. He went to the cross. He rose.

And on the night before all of it, He prayed for you. He did not say your name, but He prayed for everyone who would ever believe:

"The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one—I in them and you in me—that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me."

— John 17:22–23 (NET)

Read the last line again. The Father has loved them just as He has loved the Son.

That is what the church is made of. Not the love of people who agree about everything. The love of the Father for the Son, poured into a crowd of ordinary, flawed, quarrelsome people sitting in a circle around Jesus.

He looked at the ones who had come to hear Him and called those who do the will of God His brother and sister and mother.

He is still looking.

"We love because he loved us first" (1 John 4:19, NET). Everything this book has asked of you comes after that sentence and depends on it.

If you stay, you will be able to love the people beside you only because He loved you first. If you go, you will be able to leave well only for the same reason.

If you have been hurt, the love that will heal you is His, and it came first.

So one thing is asked of you, whatever you decide about a congregation: do not decide anything less about the family.

If you stay, stay as a brother or a sister, not as a customer. If you go, go as a brother or a sister, not as a scorekeeper.

Writing down what was done to you, and telling it, does not make you a scorekeeper. It is telling the truth.

If you have been hurt, know that the family is larger than the people who hurt you, and that its Head is gentle.

And wherever you end up on a Sunday morning, you will be sitting among people Jesus prayed for on the night before He died.

Treat them that way. They are His before they are yours.

There is one more thing, and it is for everyone who looks sideways at what others are doing.

After the resurrection, by the sea, Peter saw John following and asked, "Lord, what about him?" Jesus answered:

"If I want him to live until I come back, what concern is that of yours? You follow me!"

— John 21:22 (NET)

Some of your friends will stay. Some will go. Some will judge you for whichever you choose.

What concern is that of yours? You follow Him.

The deepest staying is not in any building. Jesus put it in three words, and they are the words this book keeps coming back to:

"Remain in me, and I will remain in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me—and I in him—bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing."

— John 15:4–5 (NET)

Christ is the vine. No congregation is.

The branches of a vine do not choose one another. They are joined because they are joined to Him.

These words are a call to remain in Christ, and the traditions in this book differ on how a person remains in Him. A Catholic or Orthodox Christian would say that to remain in the vine is to remain in the one Church. Many Protestants would say it is to remain in Christ within a faithful congregation.

All of them would say at least this much: apart from Him we can accomplish nothing.

A few verses later He said it again, and said what it was for: "Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; remain in my love. ... I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete." (John 15:9, 11, NET.)

That is why these things are written to you.

Not so that you would stay, and not so that you would go, but so that your joy may be complete in Him, wherever He has you.

So before you decide anything else, go back to the vine.

Pray. Read John 15. Ask the Father what He wants of you, and wait for His answer with people who love you.

Then do the next faithful thing, whatever it is.

"And now, little children, remain in him" (1 John 2:28, NET).

God wanted a family. He still does. Remain in Him.

What Has Been Counted

This is the research behind the few places in this book that mention what surveys have found. It is gathered here so the chapters can speak plainly and you can still check every figure.

None of it can tell you whether you should stay or go. Where the book draws a conclusion from it, the conclusion begins with the word Judgment.

Judgment: in every tradition many members do not know their own church's teaching or the Bible well. The figures do not show this to be one tradition's problem.

Judgment: the data do not show that a strict church or a loose one produces faithful adults. They show that the faith is most often kept by those who saw it practiced at home and handed on with warmth, and that those who leave a church of their upbringing go to no church at least as often as to a looser one.

Judgment: most church changes in America follow a move. The decision this book is mostly about, leaving a church you could still attend, is the smaller share and the one the research says least about. No study found here measures whether staying or leaving served people well. The conviction of this book that staying is often right does not rest on these numbers. It rests on Christ's prayer in John 17 and on what His apostles wrote to the churches.

When You Hear Yourself Say

This book was built to be opened where you are standing. The left column is something you might hear yourself say. The right column says where to turn.

The table does not replace the book, and the book does not replace the Scriptures or the people who know you. It has one purpose: to put you in front of the right page in the time it takes to ask.

Sources and Companions

Among Family quotes Scripture from the NET Bible, and every quotation was checked against the NET text. It quotes the church's historic writers and confessions briefly, from the translations named below, and it reports research from the organizations named below.

Scripture. The NET Bible, second edition (NET Bible 2.1, copyright 1996–2019 Biblical Studies Press).

The church's writers, confessions and law (Chapters Two and Four). Cyprian, On the Unity of the Church, sections 5–7 (Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 5, trans. Robert Ernest Wallis). Augustine, On Christian Doctrine III.32 (trans. J. F. Shaw). Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 133, 816–819, 846–847, 1253–1254 and 2089. The Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 167. The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), Article VII. The Schleitheim Confession (1527), Article I. Code of Canon Law, canon 1248. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum 25. Pope Francis, Aperuit illis (2019). United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "Questions about the Scriptures used during Mass." Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, "Reading the Bible as a Family." United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (2002). Pope Francis, Vos estis lux mundi (2019; revised 2023). The Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox Faith, vol. I, "Church." The Augsburg Confession, Articles VII–VIII (Concordia translation). John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.1–2 (trans. Henry Beveridge). The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, Article XIX. The Westminster Confession of Faith 25.5. John Wesley, Sermon 75, "On Schism." The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), Article VI. The Second London Baptist Confession (1689), 26.3 and 26.12–13. The Schleitheim Confession (1527), Article II. The Assemblies of God Statement of Fundamental Truths, article 10 (as printed in the 2021 Constitution and Bylaws). Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (trans. John W. Doberstein).

Research (Chapter Two and What Has Been Counted). Pew Research Center, "Choosing a New Church or House of Worship" (2016). Pew Research Center, "Why Do Some Americans Leave Their Religion While Others Stay?" (2025). Lifeway Research, "Church Switchers Highlight Reasons for Congregational Change" (2023). Lifeway Research, "Most Teenagers Drop Out of Church When They Become Young Adults" (2019). Barna Group, "Five Trends Defining Americans' Relationship to Churches" (2020). Pew Research Center, "What Americans Know About Religion" (2019); "Just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church that Eucharist is body, blood of Christ" (2019); Religious Landscape Study (2014); "U.S. Protestants are not defined by Reformation-era controversies 500 years later" (2017); "Faith in Flux" (2009, rev. 2011). CARA and the McGrath Institute, "Eucharist Beliefs: A National Survey of Adult Catholics" (2023). Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research, "State of Theology" (2025). Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study (2023–24) and "Tradition and Change Among Latter-day Saints in the U.S." (2026). Saint Mary's Press and CARA, Going, Going, Gone (2018; as reported in the publisher's press release). Barna Group, "Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church" (2011), "Resilient Disciples" (2019) and "Ex-Christians Aren't the Only Ones Deconstructing Faith" (2024). Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk, Handing Down the Faith (Oxford, 2021; as excerpted and in interview). Vern L. Bengtson, Families and Faith (Oxford, 2013; as quoted in a review). Koch, Herm and Rhodes, "Religious Bestowment," Journal of Sociology and Christianity 8:2 (2018). Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan P. Burge, The Great Dechurching (Zondervan, 2023; as reported by the publisher and reviewers). Lisa Oakley, "Understanding spiritual abuse," Church Times (2018).

Help lines (Chapter Two). 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline; National Domestic Violence Hotline; RAINN; Childhelp; GRACE. Checked on their own websites October 29, 2026.

Companions on this site. What Isn't in Your Bible and Why; The Upper Room; What You Carry; The Anchor Below the Storm; The Vine Is the Path; and the Denominational Mapping Instrument, with its visit questions.

Soli Deo Gloria

The Michlaude Discipleship Project · Coram Deo