Choosing Church

by Sharon Hodde Miller

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“Why are you leaving your current church?”

This past year, my husband and I recruited people to help launch our new church, and we asked this question often. Although we needed a team to unleash the vision God had given us, we were looking for folks who were called, not folks who were running. That put us in the interesting position of encouraging some people to stay where they were.

So, we asked this question again and again. Why are you leaving? And sometimes, depending on the answer, we affirmed them in the community where they were already serving.

The question of when to stay and when to leave a church is complex. It does not have a one-size-fits-all formula. Although there are clear reasons to leave—such as abuse, or a church’s departure from basic historic Christian beliefs—church members exit their churches for a myriad of other reason -  some valid, and some less so.

With that in mind, I want to share one reason my husband and I encouraged people to stay. Or rather, one reason we discouraged people from leaving their church:

Don’t leave your church simply because it’s hard.

Maybe you disagree with your pastor on how they are leading, or maybe you even disagree with something your pastor taught. Maybe you dislike much of the worship music. Maybe your small group had a falling out. Maybe your church has grown so large that you feel disconnected from the senior leaders. Or maybe you don’t feel appreciated, seen, or affirmed.

Each one of these scenarios can be extremely hard. Each one can be a source of frustration, and even deep pain. And yet, Jesus knew this when He established the church. Jesus knew we would get community very wrong, and still He encouraged us to pursue it anyway.

Why?

In our consumer-oriented culture, one of the things we misunderstand about church is that sometimes, sometimes, the hard parts are the very instruments of God’s work in our lives. The hard parts are precisely how God grows us. We encounter a similar dynamic in marriage. God ordained marriage, not simply as a source of companionship and joy, but to make us more like Him, and some of the hardest parts of marriage are our greatest opportunities to grow. Humility, forgiveness, perseverance, unconditional love—these are all gems that are formed in the heat and the pressure of living together as one. Gross covenant violations aside, if we abandon marriage when things are challenging, rather than leaning in, we miss out on some of God’s most precious purposes for our lives.

It is the same with church. When we treat church like a consumer good, and leave it because we are dissatisfied in some way, then we miss out on one of its most important functions. In the same way that friction smooths away a rock’s jagged edges, the friction of community has a similar effect on our souls.

This is the very reason my husband and I have long treated our church commitment like a marriage commitment. We take it seriously, and we do not leave a church lightly. Sometimes, this has meant enduring seasons of difficulty and intense frustration. But God has used those seasons to humble us, to teach us, and to make us more like Him.

Hebrews 10:25 challenges all followers of Jesus, “Do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.” Two thousand years later, community is still hard, and our human nature bucks at its complexity. Both then and now, we are tempted to abandon ship when things get really challenging. But with the exception of church sicknesses like leadership dysfunction, or false teaching, I hope you will lean into the hard parts, knowing that God is not scandalized or surprised by it. He is the redeemer who takes every broken thing and makes it even more beautiful than before, but we must hang around long enough to see it.

Sharon Hodde Miller

Sharon Hodde Miller leads Bright City Church in Durham, NC with her husband, Ike. She is also the author of Free of Me: Why Life Is Better When It’s Not about You.