REASONS FOR NOT LEAVING AN
“UNFAITHFUL” CHURCH

I use the term “unfaithful” advisedly, for a church is not unfaithful just because someone supposes it is. Such terms as liberal, fundamentalist, charismatic, legalistic, institutional might be used just as well, for people question a church’s faithfulness on all these grounds and more, depending on their perspective. And so they leave an “unfaithful” church and start a “faithful” one. This is the story behind our many divisions all through the years, not only among ourselves but among Christendom at large.

An assumed mandate to start a “true” church is behind most all the divisions within Christianity. A group of Episcopalians, led by a few bishops, have recently started a true Episcopal church because the main body has begun ordaining women to the ministry. A generation ago a noted professor at Princeton Seminary, J. Gresham Machen, walked out of his Presbyterian denomination and started both a new seminary and a new denomination. Princeton had become too “liberal.” Since then the Missouri Synod Lutherans had a similar experience over the same issue. The same liberal-fundamentalist controversy has all but divided the Southern Baptist Church. On and on it goes, division after division, among virtually all sects and denominations.

The reason is basically the same. They are leaving an “unfaithful” church, for whatever reason, and starting a faithful one. It is this mentality, productive of so much pain and trauma, that I question in this essay. I am going to argue that there are good reasons, scriptural ones, not to leave an “unfaithful” church. My thesis is that this is both divisive and sinful, for it runs counter to our Lord’s prayer for the unity of his people. I further contend that every congregation is “unfaithful” on some counts, for none is perfect, and that anyone can find a “reason” for leaving a church if she wants to leave. My point in this article is that one does not have to leave and that the biblical mandate is to stay, in most instances at least.

I am aware that we have to establish an irreducible minimum for a true church, for any church must have some basic loyalties before it can be considered a true church of Jesus Christ, even if it is “unfaithful” in some respects. A basic standard has to be recognized or we should not be in said church to start with. I would say this is loyalty to Jesus Christ. But I would say more, borrowing this time from John Calvin: a true church is one that preaches and teaches the word of God and practices the ordinances of the Lord’s Supper and baptism. There may be flaws and errors in both the teaching and the ordinances, but there is at least a sincere effort to communicate the Holy Scriptures and the ordinances are practiced in one way or another.

This standard excludes all cults and some sects. A Christian should not be in such a “church” (?) to start with. If one is in such a cult or sect and considers himself a Christian, he should leave and find a community that is loyal to Jesus Christ, honors the Scriptures, and practices the ordinances. Once he does this he will never have to leave said church so long as it is true to the basics, not even if in time he discovers it is in some ways an “unfaithful” church.

I am not talking about leaving a denomination or a congregation because one just doesn’t seem to fit and he believes he can serve God better elsewhere. That is leaving because of incompatibility, and we all understand that, considering all our mutual hangups and prejudices. And sometimes it is for racial, linguistic, or cultural reasons that one leaves one church and goes to another. I am talking about leaving because you do not consider it a true church and you are going to start a true one of your own. That is what is behind sectism and denominationalism.

By and large all churches are true churches in the sense that I have described. In my hometown of Denton, Texas I have over the past several years visited every congregation of every sect and denomination that has a building, along with a few that do not, 70 in all, and I was impressed by how much we all have in common, except for two or three sects or cults. All the mainline churches meet Calvin’s (and my own) irreducible minimum for a true church. They all teach and preach the Bible, and only the Bible, as the Holy Scriptures; they all “call upon the name of the Lord,” the standard repeatedly referred to in Scripture; and they all practice the ordinances of Communion and baptism.

But are they all also “unfaithful”? Yes, all of them, in one way or another, including the one where I am a member. Especially in being lukewarm, inert, and indifferent. I found very few congregations filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, almost none with a passion for Christian unity, and too few that appeared committed to evangelism or concerned about poverty, racism, and injustice, especially in the Third World.

It could well be argued that every true church in the history of Christianity has also been an unfaithful church in at least some respects. It was the case with the apostolic churches. Paul came down hard on the churches in Galatia and Corinth. He made some harsh judgments, such as “I cannot speak to you as spiritual people but carnal” (1 Cor. 3:1). Carnal? That means they were of the flesh, and yet the apostle refers to them as “the church of God” and as “the Body of Christ” in whom the Holy Spirit dwelt. That made them a true church of Christ! But still they were seriously wrong about some things Paul considered important. So with the Galatians whom he described as “O foolish Galatians” (Gal. 3:1) and “You have fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4). Still they were the churches of Christ of Galatia and he calls them his “brethren” over and over again.

This is one good reason for not leaving an unfaithful church. Paul did not tell the “sound” and “faithful” ones in the Roman and Galatian churches to leave and start a sound, faithful church. They were rather to hang in, stay where they were, and help to make the church all that it should be. We can all make a congregation more faithful by being faithful ourselves.

The same is true with the prophets of the Old Testament, such as those who preached against the (Jewish) church in Jerusalem. Isaiah told them that they were as bad as Sodom and Gomorrah, Jeremiah insisted that God would not even listen to their prayers, and Habakkuk pled with God to mix mercy with his wrath. But no prophet ever told the faithful to leave God’s own people and start another church or build another altar or erect a different temple. In all the apostolic letters the faithful are never told to separate themselves from the unfaithful, however wayward a church became. Even the Lord himself when he wrote to a church that he called “dead” urged the few faithful ones that he called “worthy” to keep on walking with him in white (Rev. 3:1-4). Why didn’t he tell them to leave and start a faithful church?

When I say these things, someone will invariably quote Rev. 18:4, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins.” But that is talking about coming out of pagan Rome with all of its idolatry. Nowhere in Scripture is there the slightest suggestion that part of God’s people should separate themselves from other of God’s people —for any reason!

The most important reason for not leaving, however, is Jesus’ teaching on the true nature of the kingdom of God, that it is made up of the good and bad, the true and false, the faithful and unfaithful, and that we do not have to make such judgments as “leaving an unfaithful church.” This teaching is evident not only in the letter to the church at Sardis but in several parables.

The first is in Mt. 3:12 where Jesus is described as having the winnowing fan in his hand, and “He will purge his threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the bam; but He will bum up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” The scene is the Last Judgment. The threshing floor is his kingdom or church or those who profess to be his followers. They remain together in their earthly sojourn, wheat and chaff together, only to be separated by the Lord in the judgment.

Other parables define this truth even more. In Mt. 13:47 Jesus teaches that the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that is cast into the sea and gathers some of every kind. He went on to tell how fishermen have their nets full of both good and bad, and once on shore they separate them. “So it will beat the end of the age,” the parable goes on to say, “The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire.”

Then there is the parable in Mt. 13:24 that likens the kingdom to a farmer who sowed seed in his field. His enemy came while his servants slept and sowed tares among the wheat. When the grain sprouted and made a crop, the tares also appeared. The servants told their master and asked if they should pull up the tares. The master told them, “No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, ‘First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

Isn’t Jesus teaching that this is the way it will be in his church on earth? You are not going to have a church that is all wheat. The enemy is sure to sow tares, and so the good and the bad, the faithful and the unfaithful will be in the church. So be it, Jesus is saying, and don’t worry about it, for I will make what separations need to be made in the judgment. You don’t have to leave because of the tares!

Jesus goes on to ask his disciples if they understood what he was saying. They said they did, which may or may not be the way it was. But it is apparent that we have not understood it, nor has the church through the ages. We have kept ourselves busy trying to root out the tares! Or to walk off and leave them, as if we can judge aright between tares and wheat. When we walk out and start a “loyal church” we are as likely to take with us as many tares as wheat.

Let them grow together!, the parable says, stating one of the most revolutionary truths of all the Bible. We can grow beautifully as wheat among the tares! In fact we don’t have to make any judgments as to who is true wheat and who isn’t. We don’t have to worry about it. We can grow and bloom and bear fruit where we have been planted, and be hanged with the tares. We don’t have to leave in order to be good wheat. We don’t have to do any separating or any judging. The Lord will do all that in his own time, and he can do it better than we can anyhow.

Isn’t it great to be free like that! So free that we don’t have to take off looking for a church that has no tares. —the Editor