Where you are fed, and where you can serve
What this guide could and could not tell you
This guide set what you believe beside what 26 churches teach in their own documents. Documents are part of a church, not the whole of it. The rest is people: how they worship, how they treat one another, whether you would be fed there and could serve. This page is about that part.
If you have a church (the author’s word)
It really is all right to stay where you are. Your church is family: Christ’s family. Staying is a good outcome of this guide, not a failure to choose. Leaving can also be a good outcome. Neither is a failure.
A difference on paper is not, by itself, a reason to leave. Look first at your musts, the questions you marked Required. If your church’s documents, and the way your congregation lives them, differ from none of your musts, the guide has found nothing that touches one. The other differences are for you to weigh, and many are the kind a family lives with. Some churches also ask their members to submit to their leaders and their discipline, and that is part of the family too. Talk the differences over with your pastor, elders or priest, read your church’s profile, and keep praying.
Some things are reasons to leave: a church that turns away from Christ, and a church that harms its people or covers up harm. How a church treats its people, and how it treats those who are hurt, matters as much as what it teaches.
If your church does differ on a must, begin with a conversation, not a decision. Your answers to the two questions about you (what you would do if your church and your reading of Scripture disagreed, and what you would do if its leaders corrected you) say how you would go about it, and your results set them beside how your church handles its teaching, whether by holding its people to it or by leaving them room.
Then take the visit questions to your own church, as if you were visiting for the first time.
Staying never means keeping quiet about harm. Public shaming, being silenced, being told to forgive and say nothing, leaders who cover for one another: these are harm, not differences to live with, and they do not need to be called abuse before you speak of them. Tell someone you trust outside the situation. If anyone is in danger, or a crime may have been committed, tell the police yourself; you do not have to wait for the church to act. If your church has a bishop, diocese or other oversight body beyond the congregation, it may be one place to take a concern, unless it is part of the problem. See “If a church has hurt you”, below.
If you are looking for a church
Maybe you have moved, or you have no church right now, or you have decided to look, or you are not sure what you believe. All of that is fine. You do not need to believe much, or be sure, to go and look. Visitors are expected. No one will ask you to say or do anything, you may sit at the back, and you may leave when you like. You do not have to take Communion (the visit questions ask how each church handles that), you do not have to give money, and you do not have to explain where you have been. If it has been years, no one needs the story. A first visit is usually an hour or so; most churches are easy about what you wear, and you can ask ahead.
This guide does not recommend a church, and it does not tell you to join one. Visit more than one, including churches very unlike the one you grew up in, and visit the same one more than once if you can. Talk with the pastor and with members. Take the visit questions. If you took the guide, start with the ones that touch your musts, the things you marked Required. You are not looking for a perfect match. You are looking for a family you can belong to, be fed in, and serve, and a place that is safe.
If a church has hurt you
Take your time. Nothing here has a deadline. You do not owe anyone a return, now or perhaps ever, to a church that hurt you. What happened was not your fault, and faith that has come through it is not weaker because you are away from a congregation. Scripture and prayer are still yours.
Harm is not only crime. Being shamed in front of others, being silenced, being told to forgive and say nothing, and being covered for or disbelieved are harm. Forgiveness is not silence, and it does not mean going back. Feeling unsafe is not merely unfamiliarity; trust it.
You may leave without a fight, without a conversation first, and without proving anything. If you are still inside a church that is not safe, you may stay quietly while you work out your next step, and you may leave on your own schedule. If your pastor or leaders are the source of the harm, do not start with them.
You might tell a counselor or therapist, preferably one outside your church; a trusted friend or family member; a pastor from a different church who has no tie to the leaders involved; or the police if there is a crime or danger. A church’s own oversight does not replace the police when a crime may have happened. If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.
You do not have to look for a church yet. Not being ready is an acceptable place to be. When you are, several of the visit questions are there for you: who leads and to whom they answer, who could correct a pastor and who hears a report of harm, how disagreement is settled, how a serious sin is handled, and what the church does to keep children safe. The visit page also has a place to write down anything that troubled you.
Four questions to ask yourself
Write your answers here. They stay on this device.
One family (the author’s word)
This guide began with Jesus praying for everyone who would believe in him, that they may all be one, so that the world may believe (John 17:20–21). It ends in the same place. Churches differ, and this guide has tried to describe those differences fairly. But the people in them are one family, and the family is Christ’s. Looking at the people sitting around him, Jesus said that whoever does the will of God is his brother and sister and mother (Mark 3:34–35). Wherever you worship, in the church you have now or one you have yet to find, you are among family.
That is the author’s reading. Churches describe the unity of Christians in different ways, and yours may describe it differently. Being one family does not mean every congregation is safe, or that you must return to one that harmed you, and unity never asks you to stay quiet about harm.
“God wanted a family.”