Home Pastors When It’s OK to Let People Walk Away from Church

When It’s OK to Let People Walk Away from Church

You may believe I ran over every detail of our conversation to see if I had failed him in some way, if I should have picked up on what he was going through and should have responded to him differently.

I concluded I was in no way responsible for what he had done.

Sometimes, you have to let people walk away. It’s their choice.

People have the freedom to choose. They have the liberty to come in or go out.

Watch Jesus.

You quickly see He did not beat Himself up when an audience walked out on Him. After the entire crowd—people who called themselves His disciples!—got up and left in John 6, the Lord turned to the twelve and said: “Well, how about you? Will you go away, too?”

Simon Peter, gifted with the ability to say precisely the wrong thing, got one right this time. “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

I mentioned to my wife how the Lord allowed people to leave without going to pieces over it. She said: “That’s not all. He even drove some of them away when He cleansed the temple.”

Good point.

People are free, responsible, accountable.

They want to be free, but they don’t want to be held responsible and accountable for their freedom. So, they live in any ungodly way they please and when the fruit of that behavior begans to drop from the trees onto their lawn, they say, “Why did God do this?” Answer: He had nothing to do with this. You are reaping the harvest for which you have been sowing and working.

Many will want the freedom to come in and out of churches, doing as they please, and when things do not go to suit them, they blame the preachers.

How convenient. (I tell pastors to get used to this, that it comes with the package. If they treated the Lord this way, you should expect your fair share. Matthew 10:25.)

People are sinners and will often act like they are. Get used to it, Christian worker. They need to be saved. They need a new heart, the kind only available from a life-transforming experience with the living God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Regular readers of this blog know I believe most trouble-makers in churches are atheists. I believe they don’t have a clue that God is alive and in this place, that it matters to Him what they are doing and that Jesus Christ takes personally all they do—good, bad, ugly—to His Body the Church. I believe they will give account at Judgement as to how they treated the Bride of Christ (the Church) and the shepherd whom the Lord personally sent to that flock (see Acts 20:28).

If these people truly believed in Him, they would tiptoe into church and gently offer Him their lives and service.

Ministers must not obsess about some who leave.

Some people are in the way of what the God-appointed leaders are trying to do, they do not share the values of the Lord, and are not remotely interested in changing.

They should get out.

When they do, it will signal a new birth of freedom for their church.