Rationale.
Our church is a family; God’s family. We are united by our faith in Christ, ruled by his word and express this in loving service of each other. Its an astonishing God - given blessing to be part of a church. We want to believe this, live this and communicate this to each other.
This affects how we treat people when they leave us. God calls on us to be united in love for one another. We want to call on people to bear with each other, and forgive those that they have a grievance against. Our desire is that they will choose to stay and keep living for Jesus with us.
However, the sad reality is that people will choose to leave us. Sometimes, this is because they are moving away for work or family reasons. Other times, they are expressing dissatisfaction with our church (leaders) or with individuals within the church.
We still want to care for them after they have left us. Often this is simply exhorting them to push on with Jesus by joining a new church. We also want to see what lessons we can learn from their departure.
Process.
We need to know who we expect to be part of our church. We must a clear idea of what membership involves; that people are committed to living for Jesus in unity with his people, that they are committed to doing this with our church, and they are committed to respecting and submitting to the leadership of church. We also need to have a clear idea of who has chosen to join us and do this with us. We know who we are pastoring and our goals for them.
Usually, people don’t decide to leave us overnight. They have previously expressed a desire to move away. Or it been a long gradual process of withdrawing from church community.
There are usually three signs of the later. They’ve stepped back from being involved in a ministry team. They have been sporadic in their attendance at small group. They will often be more irregular at church, but this can be harder to spot in the Sunday crowd. However, this is usually revealed their kids declining attendance, which we must track for child safety reasons.
This means our small group leaders are often the first to recognise or hear that someone is leaving us. They notice the decline in attendance. Or the person outlines their personal plans as part of group discussions.
We want these leaders to be the first to pastor their members; to discuss these reasons with the person, pray with them, and if necessary challenge them. They will also need to inform staff of what is happening. This gives the staff the opportunity to have a follow up conversation, especially where its complex or emotionally charged.
Method.
Our aim is to encourage these people to continue with Christ. These conversations may follow the following pattern.
1. What is happening? ‘I haven’t seen you at church recently. Is everything ok?’
2. Gently ask why they are leaving. Keep asking questions to clarify. Remember that if sin is involved, people are often unwilling to be completely honest or forthcoming. So seek permission to ask them personal questions. As part of this, ask:
how can they see they have grown in Christ at our church?
explore what they feel church could have done differently.
what would they like to pass onto the church leaders?
how they think this move will help them kick on as Christians?
what church are they planning to join?
how can we support them as they make this move?
3. Assess these reasons. We need to recognise that we will make mistakes as a church. At the same time, a person’s anger or dissatisfaction with us doesn’t automatically mean that we need to change or could or should have things differently.
(a) if we are seeking to send them on to serve Jesus’ kingdom, then ask how we can continue to support them
(b) if we feel they aren’t leaving for good reasons (we are losing them), then we want to gently encourage them to stay and confront these underlying issues. In these cases, we need to recognise that these conversations will be awkward or challenging. For example, they might be leaving in order to
avoid repenting of sin
avoid dealing with difficult or bad relationships
avoid hearing unwelcome teaching
stop being a Christian
4. Pray with them.