It is such a blessing to be involved in anything that God would do with His church. It's easy, I think, sometimes for perspective to be lost about how important the church is to the Lord. That's the bride of Christ. That's what we just talked about being bought with His blood. We need to handle issues that really impact the bride of Christ, the church, so carefully and so thoughtfully.

And so Kevin and I would like to try to sort of tag team this talk and give you a little perspective from which we both come as pastors and in some of the experiences that we've enjoyed about this just incredibly important issue about The title of the talk is, Is it ever right to leave a church? And I think the answer to that is obvious. I believe that it is. But there are some obvious easy answers to that. But the answer to the overall question is a clear yes.

Churches sometimes cease to exist. You have to find another church if the church that you were part of is disenfranchised and doesn't exist anymore. So sometimes you have to leave. Sometimes we move from one coast to the other, or from one geographical area to the other. And it requires that we leave when something like that happens.

Sometimes there are marriages, And the husband and wife-to-be are not a part of the same fellowship. And maybe they don't live in the same geographic area and we have to leave. So it's clear there's some obvious times when we just absolutely have to leave. But there's some other times that are more difficult and challenging in the application. And those are what we'll focus on a little bit more the rest of this talk.

One of those situations is just the grievous event when a church really leaves the doctrine of Christ. When a church becomes apostate. We see that described in 2 John 9 when the church is described as transgressing and not abiding in the doctrine of Christ. When a church has embraced apostasy, We have to leave. It doesn't mean that we instantly leave and that there aren't things that we do before we leave.

But if a church is determined to embrace a doctrine that really is apostate, we have to go. We have to find another church. And there can also be times where a church may not be apostate, but where by its practices or violations of jurisdictions that it really violates our conscience. And we're not able to worship there in spirit and in truth. And there are such differences that we just have to lead.

So there are applications that require that we leave the church. But my experience has been that people frequently leave too lightly and without enough thought, without doing the things that might be wise and profitable to be done before they up and leave. And so part of what Scott's asked me to talk to you about is really just to sort of tell you a story and give you a testimony. And some of you I know have heard this before and I'm sorry to repeat and go over some old ground but the testimony hasn't changed a whole lot. If you've heard me share it before, it's still real similar to what it was.

But hopefully there's some applications that will be helpful. For those of you who haven't heard it, I hope that it will at least cause you to think about some of the issues. The question that the brother asked early on about seeing churches transformed, really seeing an existing church understand that what they were doing, the programs with which they were involved are just wrong before the Lord. How do you bring that transformation process about? I have to confess right along with Scott, I haven't seen that.

I wish I had. In fact, there was a time where that was one of the things that I desired the most in my life was to see my own little church transformed and really embrace a completely different doctrine than they had embraced. I was a part of a church that my grandparents had helped to start. And this would have been six, seven years ago. And before that, the Lord had really begun to work in my heart as I see clearly that He has done and is doing in many of years about some of the practices of the church and the impact that those practices were having on the family and the impact that they would naturally have on my family.

And I became very convicted that I could not in good conscience continue to participate where we were if things were going to continue in the direction that they were. And it just broke my heart. This was a church that my grandparents had helped to start. They were among the 6, 8, 10 founding families who had started this little Baptist church. And my dad had been a deacon there for more than 40 years.

I had grown up in this church. This was the church my parents attended when I was born. I had been a part of everything from the cradle until I had gone off to college, which I wouldn't do now, which I did then. And then when I returned back, my family, we had just returned right back to membership there. And then the Lord really began to open my eyes as I looked at the fruit that the church was enjoying.

And I realized that if the church didn't change, I couldn't stay. I love the church. My closest friends were there. My roots were deep there. Our family really had deep roots there.

So I really had to ask myself a couple of pretty tough questions. Since I found myself in this spot, what was my duty? Did I have any right to ask the church to change? Should I just quietly leave and not rock the boat at all? What would be the most pleasing thing to do?

Well, I didn't want to leave. I really didn't. I just had such a love for the families in that church and people that I've known all my life and some of the older folks that were there, they're still dear friends and people I really love. And my ideal result would be for the church to change and for my family and I not to have to leave. And so I began to search God's Word and to consider the covenantal relationship that I had with the church, and I began to understand why I felt so strongly about my attachments to this sweet little church.

It's because I was in a covenant relationship with them. That really meant an awful lot. Our church membership is so, so important. Among the most important covenant relationships we ever experience is that relationship within our church. And so as I considered my relationship with the church, I just began to ask, what are my duties here?

If I see that this church is headed on a path that I believe may result in destruction for, what do I do? Well, I didn't conclude from studying Scripture that it was my duty just to slip quietly away. Pastors will tell you the quiet disappearing act is one of the most destructive things that happens in churches. People, You don't just disappear and nobody notices. It raises gigantic questions.

It creates enormous heartache. It gives rise to speculation. It begs for gossip and for all kinds of bad things. And I realized I couldn't just quietly slip away even though I didn't want to create controversy and didn't want to rock the boat. So what should I do?

Well, I concluded in the zakzim and Scripture that my duty to my brethren there was like my duty to any other brother that I thought might be in sin. It was to one another them. But to do it in the jurisdiction in which I found myself. So, I believed and understood from Scripture that I had a duty to appeal before I would really be free to leave or before I could even really ask to leave. So that's what I sought to do.

And I'll just admit to you that there was a season there where in my flesh I thought, you know, I can win this deal. We can get this done. I really have good intentions. I said to myself, and I've watched how changes have come about in the church. And here's how the program seems to work.

You build a big enough coalition. You get enough people on your side. You create enough of a stir. There's enough division. And all of a sudden, you've got enough leverage to get some things done.

And that's what I'd seen frequently in church life. But I knew in my heart that that was not anything close to the right way to approach seeking change in the church. And I had to be careful that I didn't lie to myself and say, you know, the ends justifies the means here, doesn't it? Because that's a temptation. Even for those of us who know better, who know that God speaks to the method.

Sometimes when we really believe that what we want is clearly God's will, there's temptation to just do anything to get there. And I could have really brought some leverage to bear. We really had some credibility in the church because of how long we've been there, how much we'd invested in our lives there. That was an approach that I could have been tempted to fall into, but thankfully the Lord wouldn't allow me to do that despite my competitive nature, despite the fact that I really don't like to lose. Honestly, I did not want to fail in seeking to see change come about in this church.

But it was clear from God's Word that the way to handle the questions that I had was to appeal within the proper authority that existed there. And to do it in the right jurisdiction and not to step outside of mine. So, I was a man under authority in a church that had problems. And what I understood that I needed to do was appeal to the leadership in that church, to those who were setting the direction. And so that's what I did.

We had a man who was in his first senior pastorate in this little Baptist church, And he was really doing a fine job. And I didn't know him very well when we had just sort of returned to that area and the Lord was doing all these things. And so I realized that I needed to approach him and do it privately and not do anything dishonoring or divisive, but to approach Him and try to do it properly. And that's one of the points that I would really encourage you to consider is taking action that's neither dishonoring nor divisive when you find yourself in a church situation where you have concerns. Even if you're positive you're right, the method still matters.

Don't be dishonoring. Don't be divisive in how you seek to have change implemented. Well, in my human thinking, I didn't think I had a very good opportunity for appeal, honestly. This is not a man I'd known all my life. He was fairly new.

This was his first pastorate, and if I were in his shoes, I'd be very excited about that. And if you're thinking about the sort of typical pastor's career path, He had just come upon a very important part of that in my human understanding of where he was. Not only that, he was a seminary trained man and I found out that his seminary master's degree was in Christian education. He had a master's in Sunday school. I really didn't think he'd be very receptive to the idea that segregating the family was a bad idea, that much of what Sunday school was built around needed to be rejected.

There were lots of reasons that I thought I might not be successful. But I also had some reasons for hope. This man was a family man. He loved his children and his wife was home schooling. And so He had a heart turned to discipleship.

But not knowing what kind of reception I might have, I went to him. And you can sort of picture from his perspective what this must have been like. New pastor, well paid, really doing well, well liked, just embraced in the church. Just advancing right along his career path. And here comes some guy you don't know very well.

And he says, you know, everything this church is doing and everything you think you believe really is off track. And let me try to explain why. And have I got a deal for you, brother. If we really go forward with this, you may very well lose your job. You may be having to look for another one outside of ministry.

I don't know what will happen if you try to implement these changes in this church that's done it this way for as many generations as I've been alive and for as many as I can remember. So I can only imagine what my dear friend John Latham must have felt whenever I came and approached him. But I was surprised at his response. I went and I began to describe some things we've been talking about during this entire conference. How the model of youth ministry is just unbiblical and just the things that we don't need to reiterate all those in the course of this talk.

And I just laid those things out for him in my convictions. And I barely got it all out, especially the term youth ministry, when he just interrupted and said, oh, you're telling me. That's what I did before I came here. Believe me, I know that it doesn't work. And Surprise, surprise, the Lord was working in the heart of this man.

And instead of the polite meeting and the polite, yeah, please feel free to go along your way and quickly and don't make trouble in my church that I really sort of expected. The Lord was working in John's heart. And we began to have lunch. And we had lunch once, twice a week for the better part of a year as we talked through these things. And He came to me towards the end of that season and said, Brother, this has got to change.

I can't continue to lead down a path of destruction for this church. Now, I'll stop there for just a minute because I pray that as an elder, just as a man, that I would be that courageous when the Lord convicted me about something that could cost me everything I've been working for and toward my whole life. I hope I would have that kind of a heart before the Lord and say, you know, whatever it may cost, whatever it may cost me, if this is right before the Lord and my conscience before the Lord says that it is, and His Word clearly affirms that, and I know that this is the direction I have to go, then I'll just go regardless of the consequences. May the Lord raise up godly men and leaders like that. That's the response I got.

And he said, you know brother, we've been talking about the structure of church leadership and I should have another elder serving here with me. We both know that plural eldership is the picture of Scripture. And as I have looked over the past year at the church family, I believe you're a man qualified for eldership to come alongside me. And I want us to go before the church and tell them that we believe we are supposed to go in some different directions and that I believe you're the man to come alongside me and serve. And we did that.

And the church received that. And we began to appeal to the church and to explain the vision that we had. And we had meeting after meeting and long discussions. We had big groups like this just peppering me or sometimes John with questions about the direction we would go and the things that might change. And to make a long story short, we really, to the very best of our ability with our whole hearts presented the vision to our church family.

We started off with this premise. I'm just hoping that you'll draw some inferences and woven into this testimony about some things that may help you to make some decisions if you're in tough spots in churches yourselves. But one of the things that we had in common when we started was that we agreed with our whole church family that Scripture would be our authority. That what God's Word said, that was what we would do. So whoever could prove from Scripture the truth about what they believed and were suggesting, well, that would be our authority.

You know, we went through this process for a good long season and we talked about lots of things. We began a family integrated Sunday school class, which quickly grew to the size of the rest of the church probably. And that was an encouragement And also something that caused some suspicion because in a little church like that it really stuck out. But we went through lots of different things. And we were really seeking to understand boy, this is slow and I don't know where this is going and what are we supposed to do, Lord?

And he really gave us a clear answer. We got to a point where we had answered every question that they had and we presented everything that we believed that we had to present with regard to our vision. And the church as a whole, Many folks wholeheartedly agreed. There were a number of other folks who said, you know, we see from Scripture that what you're saying is true. We really don't have any more arguments to make about the scriptural basis of what you're suggesting we do as a church family.

It was a great exercise for John and me. And I pray we'll bear fruit for many years in the lives that saw it. But there was a but that came. And the but was, but It just won't work here. And the rules have changed.

And the authority was no longer the same. And that really to us was when we knew that it was a whole lot better to start another work than to try to continue to lead in a direction that rather than transforming a church that we both loved, that John had grown to love and that I had a deep and abiding love for, the best thing for us was to ask for the blessing of that church family to start a new work. And so that's the approach that we took. And we made mistakes along the way, but I'll tell you the things that we really tried to do as we transitioned out. And these are some things that Kevin's about to come and talk to you about.

We really tried, as much as it depended on us, to be sure that whatever we did, we did honorably. And that if the time came to leave, that we would leave honorably. And we didn't try to create coalitions. We didn't want to seek to be divisive. We tried not to be harsh.

We tried not to lord it over. Even the people that we were trying to lead, we tried to really draw them. Sheep are led. They're not driven. And we really tried to honor the Lord in the approach there.

And I'm blessed to tell you that probably 90% of the folks we left, we left on genuinely, not words that they didn't mean, but on genuinely sweet and blessed and beloved terms. And maybe it wasn't even 10%. There was a little remnant that sort of threw rocks at us after we went, but it was a blessed time. Really, as much as it depended on us, we really tried to appeal honorably, to appeal using the authority of God's Word, and to transition out and to leave honorably and to leave with blessing. And I'm grateful that a couple of months after we left, I'm not grateful that this man died.

That didn't seem to come out quite right. But when one of the men in the church who had been dear to us passed away and went to be with the Lord, he was a deacon in that church. And his wife actually came and asked me to officiate his funeral with the new pastor from the church. And so that was just evidence that we'd really been able to transition out and to leave well and to start a new work genuinely with the blessing of the people who we were leaving behind. So that's just a short word of testimony.

Brother Kevin has got some more practical considerations because I'll just leave you with this. There's a season that churches go through. If you leave a church that is doctrinally really different than you believe they should be, That may not be the last church you ever leave. Sometimes there's a honeymoon period of coming together, even with folks who believe in family integration, a lot of the things, you know, who look like your family and sound like your family, and you know, there may be a season there of sort of a honeymoon period. And then there may be sort of maturing process where you get to know each other.

And then you may discover that your doctrine is way apart. And you may find yourself having to make these transitions again. Or different things can happen. These are not just applications for churches that are really hostile to a single issue that we may be talking about at this conference. But these are applications, and I think Kevin will really build on this, that just have beautiful application to our church covenant life.

And so that being said, I'll just invite Kevin to come up and give us some more details on this issue. Let's see, what was the question Don is ever right to leave a church? The answer is, I need church but mine. I feel like I've got energy now. The first of which is this, When you leave and you appear to be angry or upset with others as you leave, you leave them with the impression that you're holding something against them.

That there's something happening between you. And when brothers and sisters have this impression, these funny doubts that it's maybe something that they said or something that they did that you took and began to hold against them to the point where you had to leave, now you've got a schism in your own relationship with that brother or sister. It's so important again to strive for the unity of the body in the bond of peace. That's what Paul says in Ephesians 4, and that word strive is to struggle like a gladiator. And think about how the gladiators would struggle for their own life.

Acting as a gladiator was something more than what we're used to when we see the men tossing the ball around the stadiums today. These men were out there for their lives. When they wrestle, when they struggle, would they strive? Yes, they would. They would strive for their lives.

And this same word Paul uses in Ephesians 4. Strive for the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Instead of leaving a brother or a sister where there's this sense that there's something wrong between you and the other person. And you begin to create this pseudo-civil, hyper-superficial, fakie relationship. That's what God does not want.

When you leave a brother in peace, what you're saying is, you know, things are okay with us. That's what peace means. That's all it means. Things are okay with us. It's alright.

We're okay. We're fine. I'm okay with you. You're okay with me. As the brother leaves, he needs to know he's at peace with you.

Oh, he knows he's leaving a bunch of sinners. They're sins. Yeah, They still have them. Yeah, even His own presence didn't cleanse them all of their sins. He knows there's still sin there.

Yeah, I know that. But it's okay. It's okay. Things are okay with us. Now if there's unfinished business in this parting, that is, there are roots of bitterness that have grown up.

You've got to deal with that. You've got to deal with that. You've got to do the business. Take care of the business. Go to each brother and take care of these things.

We just had a situation where someone left the church and we realized, we knew a month or two before they announced they were planning to leave, that there was a problem between them and somebody else. We have said, you cannot leave. You cannot leave this church until you have called that brother and you're okay with him. And it's okay with him that you leave. So if there are issues, take care of them.

Take care of them. Then you can leave. If there are sins that should be overlooked, just overlook them and move on. Now sometimes you can't overlook them. You've got to do it.

But as best as you can, you need to overlook those things. And just move on. Now, the exceptions. There are exceptions to the rule. Sometimes there are those who leave the church under a church discipline situation.

And those situations, the elders have hopefully met together. And they have obeyed 1 Thessalonians 5, which says, separate yourself from men who are disorderly divisive Gossipers etc. So separate yourselves from these guys. Look occasionally. There's a church discipline situation Also, there are situations where you would leave a church where you're seeing the church has developed a 2 Timothy 3 situation where they do have a form of godliness, but have denied the power thereof.

Paul says there, separate yourselves from such people. So indeed there are situations where people have denied the principle. People have asked me before, what are the situations where I might leave a church? Where they begin to ordain women? Where they ordain homosexuals?

You see, at what point when the clergy show up in skirts and they're still women? Or when they show up in skirts and now they're men? See. Now again, the church is in all these various situations of rebellion against God, so at what point do you look at your church and say, there's something wrong, I'm out of here. I think it's at the point at which, reverse what I had up on the screen.

It's at the point at which they have so badly incarnated the wickedness that they have denied the principle. You follow me there? In other words, they have so badly represented an applied Scripture, it's obvious they have rejected the sufficiency and authority of Scripture. So the principle itself has been denied and you need to understand at what point that takes place. So that's another situation in which you might leave a church.

Another situation is a difference in ministry strategy, which I think is pretty much where the family integrated model fits in. And this is the situation Paul and Barnabas find themselves in in the book of Acts. Paul and Barnabas have a disagreement on John Mark is what happens. And Paul decides that he's going to Asia Minor and Barnabas is going up to Cyprus. That's ok.

They left each other. And I'm going to say they left in peace. Some of you may say, well, how do you know they left in peace? Because in 2 Timothy 4 verse 11, Paul's dying words, he turns and says, take Mark and bring him with you, for he is profitable for the ministry. It is plain, as plain, as plain as can be to me, brothers never say goodbye finally.

Brothers never say bad goodbyes. We say goodbye, but we don't say bad goodbyes. Oh, this is so important to the way that we live together with each other. Because see, if you leave with something between you and somebody else, you'll have to live with that something between you and that person for the rest of your life. Especially if you never see them again.

And these sorts of things form the fleshy bitterness that seems to want to coat our hearts and form roots of bitterness later on in our lives. Bad goodbyes also signal the beginning of apostasy. And this, I believe, is something we all have to take into consideration. It's so easy as we look back to our lives and remember Some of the people that we knew, some brothers and sisters, where we did not handle that goodbye quite as well as we might have, there may have been some seeds planted that We need to go back and root up. Because brothers and sisters, the Christian life itself is a life of forgiveness.

This is the life. If you were to come to me and say how does a Christian live his life? Give me one word that really encapsulates it. I'd go right to the Lord's Prayer. I say there it is.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Jesus summarizes a prayer down to what? Six seconds? Or five or six lines? And he includes forgiving our debtors right there.

The Christian lifestyle is one of constantly forgiving. Forgiving and forgiving. Bus drivers drive buses, don't they? Bus drivers drive buses. If you had a bus driver come up to you and say, I don't drive buses.

You say, yeah, but you're a bus driver. I thought bus drivers drive buses. You're nuts, man. Somebody comes up to me and says, I'm a Christian, I just don't forgive. I'd say, now wait a minute, That doesn't make any sense.

A Christian by definition is one who forgives. Brothers and sisters, this applies very much in the context of partings with our brothers and sisters. This is where we apply it, as well as other contexts, but certainly here in this context. And if people begin to pattern bad goodbyes in their separation, it's like stretching a rubber band too many times. Or something like one of my pair of PJs, they've been stretched out so many times, maybe in my fact I've been growing as much as I am, every time I put them on I'm stretching out the last, and after a while you stretch it out and stretch it out, and you just kind of fall off now.

I don't really function very well. That's what happens when we begin to establish this pattern of bad goodbyes. The more church relationships are torn away, the increasingly reticent people become to establish relationships. They're afraid to be vulnerable again and again because they've been hurt in the past. And see, brothers, this is why I as a pastor in my church have had to really work in this area.

In fact, we have come in the last year to understand what good goodbyes look like. When we have a brother or sister or a family that's about ready to leave the congregation, for some reason they transfer out. We have a big to-do about it. Today we're going to lose our brother and sister. They're moving to Austin.

Praise God they're taking His Kingdom somewhere else. That's ok. But then we bring everybody around them and we lay our hands upon them and we pray over them. We weep. Oh, I've never seen so much weeping in the church as I've had the last three months.

We've had to part with some sweet brothers and sisters we've known for four, five, six, seven years. It is amazing. Then we always sing, God be with you till we meet again. And oh man, every time we sing that hymn, people start to cry automatically now. It's just programmed.

You know, you just do the first three notes and everybody's weeping. Because that's what we do in our congregation. We hold them, We weep, we get them wet with our tears. Sometimes just soaking wet. Their faces are soaking wet.

The back of their shirts soaking wet because we're weeping over these brothers and sisters. And as we pray over them, we put God's grace and God's peace on them. And our peace on them. Now I'm going to refer to that in just a moment because brothers and sisters, if this doesn't happen, people begin to develop scar tissue. Scar tissue begins to cover their hearts.

And then it's impossible to establish a relational church anymore because they've been hurt as many times as they have. And they begin to migrate away from relationship. And the churches give up on relationships and loving the brethren. All that sort of rot. And it becomes an institution, not a living, warm organism.

Bad goodbyes undermine love and the very gospel itself. And for that reason, man, we're out of this bad goodbye junk. We just don't say bad goodbyes. Now, we realize there's reason for people to say goodbye. And it's hard.

We had some brothers and sisters over from Japan, actually the first homeschool family that graduated, their first graduates, beautiful, three children. And they did a sheer faith and courage against all the persecution of the stain and all these different prefectures around Japan. They were moved all over the place trying to escape. Anyway, they came out and visited us for two to three weeks a year ago and we had a beautiful time with them. When they were ready to say goodbye, It was hard to say goodbye.

I mean, we were holding these guys. We don't want you to go. We love you guys. It had to go. Their visa was up.

Okay? This is brothers and sisters together. We learn to love each other and appreciate each other being there. But there are reasons why people have to move. The diaspora is one reason.

God takes us away from each other for his own reasons. Typically it's persecution. Sometimes It's the economy, and the economy affects us very negatively. Please understand, the economic system right now that breaks up community as much as it does in the modern world, in education and economics, is very damaging. The corporate structure that's undermined, the unity of the household business, very destructive.

And it moves people all over the place. Being involved in the military is another reason. Now again, these are sometimes things that have to be. But if you read the Psalms, you find that it's not a good thing for a man to be away from his house fighting battles. Much better, much more beautiful, much more productive, much more edifying, much more of a blessing if that man is with his family.

You follow me here? So there are reasons. We have military families in our church, and there are reasons why these guys have to up and go to Iraq for six months or a year or two. It's hard, it's hard. They're not good situations, but they are things we have to deal with.

Now The diaspora is one way God gets the gospel out too. Let's keep that in mind. That if there's people leaving your church to plant another church, praise God. Praise God. Because it's not about us, it's about His kingdom.

One day we always say this to each other, one day we're coming back together and we're going to be over on the other side of the river. We're going to spend the first 500 years together, OK? We're going to catch up on everything that happened, between when you left us and when you made it to the gates. And then We're going to have a good time together. We're going to sit down and have a really big cup of coffee.

It's going to last a few hundred years. That's for me. I can't drink much coffee because my stomach was blown out because of the fall of man. Kingdom growth, another reason. Acts 11, 19, now they, which were scattered abroad upon the persecution, traveled about preaching the word of God to the Jews only.

And some of them spake to the Greeks. And the hand of God was with them in a great number of beliefs. So you see, God scatters. It's part of his modus operandi to get the yeast around the loaf a little bit, and that's okay. That's okay.

What does the Bible say about goodbye? 2 Corinthians 13 and 11. And you know what? Just look up goodbye, or look up peace in the Word of God. You're going to find lots of references to it.

One example here. Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect. Be of good comfort. Be of one mind.

Live in peace. And the God of love and peace shall be with you. Ah, that's beautiful. And brothers, I really desire that all of us here understand the fine art of saying goodbye. Not just referring to the goodbyes that are sort of final, but even the goodbyes on a Sunday evening when you've had eight hours of wonderful fellowship.

You know, we get together, we're hospitality pigs. We call ourselves hospitality pigs at our church. Just oink, oink. We love it. But it's eight, nine, ten, eleven o'clock at night.

Some families, one in the morning. Monday, one in the morning. It's time to say goodbye. Okay? Half the family is asleep on the carpet, in the living room carpet.

It's time to say goodbye, all right? It's hard to say goodbye, but Paul tells us how to say goodbye here with some great examples. Enumerated blessings, farewell, Cairo, joy. That's what the word Cairo means, joy. Hey, joy, rejoice, brother, rejoice, amen, hallelujah.

Rejoice, We have reason to rejoice. Remind them of that as you part. Parting should have joy, although mixed with a bit of sadness. And then last exhortations. Be perfect.

Be perfect. That's a use for mending the nets, mending your nets. You've got work to do. There's a hole there. There's something you got to deal with over here.

Just be aware. You've got issues. You've got to stay on top of brothers. Stay on top of these issues. Think the same thing.

Another expectation here. Be of the same mind, one with another. So again, just some last minute exhortations, and then finally a blessing of peace. Peace. Now we don't say this much.

I rarely hear a brother or sister say, peace be unto you as they leave. But it's biblical. Why is this? You need to assure them that your peace is with them. Isaiah 55 and verse 12, you shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace.

Leaving must be clothed in joy and peace. They need to know that things are okay. Things are okay. Jesus says to the woman, thy faith has saved thee. Go in peace.

Jethro says to Moses, go in peace. Many examples. David arose out in a place toward the south, fell on his face on the ground, and bowed himself three times. They kissed one another. Jonathan and David, they're kissing each other.

They wept on each other until David exceeded and Jonathan said to David, go in peace. We're okay. One last handshake, one last hug, one last grab both hands. Things are okay. We're okay.

I love you, brother. I feel peaceful. I feel good about you right now. I feel really good about you. You're my brother.

And I'm saying goodbye to you right now. The wicked are like the troubled sea. They're not like us. See, we're peaceful people. And people that have a hard time with this have issues between each other.

They don't have peace. They don't have peace. They don't have peace. The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest. His waters cast up my iron dirt.

There is no peace, saith my God to the wicked. There's agitation of heart. There's trouble within their heart. There's trouble between them and other people's hearts. Trouble all the time.

Trouble. Trouble everywhere. But not with us. There's peace with us. Why is there peace with us?

Because there's peace with God, ultimately. OK. Well, Acts chapter 15, 31 to 33, great example of peace, leaving in peace. This is Judas and Silas were dismissed. They came to Antioch when they had gathered the multitude together.

They delivered the epistle which when they had read they rejoiced. And after they had tarried their space they were let go in peace from the brethren unto the apostles. Jesus also in Matthew 10 11 through 13 says you go into a city and if that city doesn't doesn't receive you then you take your peace and you walk out of there. Now if they receive you, you leave your peace with them. So what the Bible speaks of is this idea of giving your peace or taking your peace.

In other words, you've got peace. Imagine peace as being something you've got in your hand. At the parting, there you are face to face. You've got your peace. You can do one of two things with your peace.

Either you give your peace to the person, here, here's my peace, or you take your peace and you leave. And as brothers and sisters, our responsibility is to leave in peace because we are called to peace. Be very careful that you don't leave with ambiguity. You're never called to ambiguity, never, ever, ever, ever, ever. In fact, it's a supreme lack of courage, a lack of faith to leave without a clear message to those that you're leaving.

The Bible says where envying and strife is, there is confusion in every evil work. God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. So you should always be very, very clear with the people that you're leaving. If you're leaving with peace, You're leaving with peace. Peace is important because God is a God of love and peace.

And because God has established peace with us. And if God has reconciled Himself to us, then Why can't we reconcile ourselves to others? Isn't this the very heart of forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors? Isn't that what Jesus is saying here? Hey, if God himself has resolved things and reconciled to these brothers and sisters, why can't you?

You ought to be able to do the same thing. Peace. So important. Let me close with an application. 1 John only makes sense in a context where the Church actually exists and where brotherhood and relationships actually exist.

You just simply can't read 1 John without understanding the concept of relationships. But you know, there have been a lot of bad goodbyes in the history of the Church. Sadly, that is the case. In fact, you know what? A seminary professor on the West Coast, is a reformed seminary on the West Coast, he was teaching practical theology, got up in front of all these pastors-to-be, and he said, these people you're going to pastor, they're not your friends.

They will despise you. They will leave you. They will cast aspersions upon you. They will be negative towards you. These people aren't your friends.

If you want a friend, get a dog. Well, you know what? Jesus called His disciples friends. You are my friends. And they abandoned Him.

Be dead. They abandoned Him at the worst moment in His life, at the point that He was going to go and die for them. And I've never seen this before until I did this study. In John chapter 20, if you have the red letter edition, you're going to see exactly what happens when Jesus comes back. After dying for His friends who had denied Him and abandoned Him.

Jesus comes to them in John 20 and verse 19. The doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood in the midst and saith unto them, Peace be unto you! Peace! I know you broke relationship, but that's why I died.

And you are my friends, and I'm back! And there is peace! Amen! There's peace! There is peace!

He reconciled relationship. And then he says it again, v. 20, He showed to them his hands and his side. He said again, just in case they missed it, the first time he said, Peace, oh peace be unto you. And then verse 26, eight days later, again, Thomas wasn't there the first time.

He comes up to Thomas and says, peace be unto you. Three times, Jesus says peace. Brothers and sisters, if Jesus knows how to say goodbye, I think we have something to learn from Him. Amen? Amen.

Peace be unto you. We can say this, can't we? To our brothers and sisters. Even the ones that deny us three times on the day that we go and die for them, think we can. Because Jesus did it for us.

Amen. Hallelujah. Let's take a moment and take some questions. Alright brother, you want to come on up here? Are we completely out of time?

Do we have a few minutes, brother? Scott, what do you say? Like give it a four, five? Oh, we got 50. Okay, we're doing fine.

I could have kept going. I'm sorry. Kind of cut that thing. Oh, you know what? I lost a button on that one.

My wife, she's got to sew all these things for me. Can't you take it easy in that coat? Sorry. Sorry, sweetie. She's great.

My wife's such a sweetheart, she takes care of me. She's great. Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go on that. Any questions on leaving churches, saying goodbye, joining churches?

Yes, go ahead, Brown. You know, you talked about avoiding controversy. When is there a time when controversy is correct? Because I guess the thing that I look at when I see that is I see Jesus constantly having controversy with the religious leaders. You know, when he was dealing with them, he didn't just walk away and say, okay, well the Pharisees believe this.

He confronted them. So when do you do that, especially when you're dealing with, let's be honest, brother, I mean, there's some pastors that just, they don't want to listen. And what do you do in that situation? Well, two things. One is if we got a problem with our brother, Matthew 18, we go to that brother and we deal with it.

We do it in a loving manner, but we confront the issue. And by the way, I recommend Peacemaker. Absolutely essential if you're doing relational churches. Absolutely essential. The leadership especially has got to go through that.

Jason, I don't know if you know about that resource. We have found that to be very good. We even went through reconciler training, through peacemakers. We just take the biblical principles of peacemaking very, very seriously in our church. I would really recommend peacemakers.

But yeah, loving confrontation, you've got to walk through that with them. Now, if it comes to the point where you've got a part, like Paul and Barnabas, it's got to be, okay, we're leaving in peace, right? Everything's in peace, right? Okay, let's go, Ready, go. And I think there's legitimate situations where that happens.

There are also legitimate situations where you've got Ichabod written on that community church's name. The glory has departed. That's what that means. The glory has departed, and whatever is supposed to be in the heart isn't there. They've got a form of godliness and a denied the power thereof.

And I think there are churches out there where that's the case. Probably even evangelical churches out there where that's the case. If that be the case, I would do it on a little bit more counsel too. See, sometimes people act a little too quickly. When I started our own church, I had the opportunity to start the church earlier.

It would have been out of sort of a church split, around time of a church split, I talked to the godliest man I knew, about 80 years old, called him up, said, here's the deal, what should I do? The guy said, hold off, at least six months. So that's what I did. Praise God that happened because I could have been taken by some some horrific things So I asked for counsel I eventually started the church with again the unity of the session the elders and the church that we left And praise God it worked out fine But I just I felt like you know that that thing that could have chopped off my head, I could feel the air of that thing going over my head as those circumstances unfolded. You know, when you're handling issues like this, especially when you're starting new churches, out of churches where there could be controversy, etc., etc.

Potential for division, schism, get godly counsel. Absolutely, very important. But you're right, brother, there are situations where the glory has departed and you just have to take off. Okay. Yes, young man over here.

Where do you draw the line between, you know, as you say, there are relational churches, and there are churches where people definitely do not want a relationship, where do you kind of draw the line between, as you say here, how you have to say a good goodbye, and when people do not want a good goodbye? Well there are some people that they take their peace with them, and you know what? That's their responsibility before the Lord. They've got to deal with that before the Lord. You can't deal with everybody.

Now, you could leave your peace on them. You could be at peace with them. But if they don't want to do it. Now, one thing I would encourage is that if there are relationships broken in the past, we continue to keep an eye on relationships. And I always say is we as Christians have got to be concrete truck drivers, where we're constantly rebuilding bridges that have been torpedoed in our past.

And you know, bridges can be torpedoed within, you know, ten minutes. Boom, that whole bridge is up in the air, and you've got a broken relationship that's going to take you two, five, ten years to repair. And there are some relationships in our lives sometimes that are going to take a long time to repair. But we are peacemakers. We drive concrete trucks.

And every day we go and we get more concrete and we dump them. We try to repair relationships that have been broken. That's what we do for a living. Not to say we're going to repair every relationship perfectly by the time we die, but by God's grace we're in this business. We're going to see lots of relationships repaired over time.

So that's what we do. We repair relationships. So that's what I say to that. Right over here, Brother Jason. What do you share with the congregation with those who don't want to reconcile or just they will leave and they will not go through any conflict resolution with you, they just leave.

And that's what they want to do and they're clear with that I mean you pursue them, and they what would you what would you do in that situation? What would you share with the congregation? You know Boy we're not perfect with this. This is really hard. And Dawn, maybe you have some wisdom to share on this.

But typically, they'll give us shallow reasons why they're leaving. We know there's something deeper, but boy, we don't know what they are. And so all we can communicate to the congregation are the shallow reasons they gave us. We know there's something deeper there, and more often than not we continue working with them. This is another thing, we don't just say good riddance, see you later.

We're the kind of church that wants to transfer memberships anyway. And a lot of times, they just want to just fade into the nothingness of the megachurch or whatever. But we still follow them up. And sometimes, I think we generally go 1 and 1 and 1 to 2 years. And after 1 and 1 to 2 years, We erase them from our roles, which is an effective excommunication Unfortunate that it's usually after a lot of work But but we've seen this happen where people just fade away.

They found out they didn't like the body of Christ. They ran into an example of the body of Christ. They decided they really didn't like it. They just wanted to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They just hated his body.

Well, 1 John says, you love Jesus, you love his body. You follow me? I mean, there's a connection there. And what happens, and unfortunately, is the situation. That's a sad situation.

But they take their family next to a megachurch, then to some flaky home church, and then to nothing. And then 10 years later, it's just nothingness, pure nothingness. So they basically merged out of the Church of Christ. And that's unfortunate, but that happens. So, now, not to say we're not trying to chase them down a little bit without being obnoxious.

Just, we have breakfast with them, you know, we say, how's it going, are you looking at any other body, how's it looking, you know, so forth. So, we don't just let people go. And if people have moved away to other cities, we have one person moved away to Oklahoma City, another family has moved away to Kauai, there wasn't a good church on Kauai. Now there's one Assembly of God church that was kinda good, It was probably about the best thing happening. But a lot of ladies leading the thing.

That was like the best thing happening in Kauai. So it's been two to three years where this family's been out there. We have flown out there a couple of times. We're monitoring situation. We bring it up all the time.

We pray for them. You see, we're a body. We don't just drop people. We don't live in the city of anonymity. This is not us.

We're relational. And so we're staying on top of these folks. We want to know how things are going. And by God's grace, There's going to be a great church formed on Kauai here in the next six months. It's fantastic.

Some 50 people are coming together now. We're going to have a good solid work there. I'm planning to fly out there and march and hopefully preach for them. So I'm going to praise the Lord. But Anyway.

Maybe just one other suggestion. Some of these things are things you can address by really being self-consciously covenantal in your relationships in your church and even some of these things are maybe wisely described in a church covenant. And so how you leave and how you won't leave and what you commit to do as a covenant member of that church. And if someone flatly breaks that, then they can't deny being a covenant breaker. And that is extremely serious in God's economy.

I want to ask about this courtship process that you described or hinted at. And maybe Don, you have something similar. What are your solutions for the practical issue of people not understanding the covenant relationship? What happens at the end of the courtship, I guess is my question. A lot of it's the preaching of the Word of God.

You know, we're always bringing in the body, the church into the preaching of God's Word. We emphasize the covenant. We talk about it as being an oath. We see the covenant of the body as what the reconstructed body of Israel did in Nehemiah. When they came together, they joined together in the oath and the covenant and said, we will walk in God's ways.

And it was anybody who was old enough to know, right? So we actually have an opportunity for all of the young people at some point to covenant together. It's the one example in scripture where You have those who are old enough to know, make that commitment, that they love Christ and they are willing to walk with Christ and they will submit to this particular body and be accountable to this body as long as they're with us. And So we have these covenant promises that we do, these four promises. We also, I think the key thing is they've got to know who we are because a lot of people don't have problems with the first three questions.

Do you love Jesus? Do you want to walk with Him? And is the bible the word of God? The sufficiency of scripture is there too. So we have three basic questions we ask.

The fourth question is are you willing to be accountable to these elders and should you be found lacking in practice or life to heed its discipline? So there's a submission question, accountability question. People get a little nervous on the submission question now all you mean I You're now going to be my elders accountable to God for me Yes, and what I tell them is you've got to get to know these elders So we don't have membership classes we open up living rooms we open up living rooms and our elders need to be apt to hospitality and And and they get to know us in those hospitality times. Go ahead. What Kevin said is spot on.

Don't go too quickly in covenanting processes. We at least six months to a year in our fellowship is very unusual. I think we've had one example where maybe it was shorter than that in our church. And we, Our approach, we have the Father publicly affirm the covenant in front of the entire church congregation, representing His family, and after having carefully consulted with His family, and after we've met with His family and spent time and gone through both our doctrinal positions, given them opportunities to ask any questions, them read our confession of faith, done all those things. But there's an important thing that happens there that really makes what we do pretty similar to what Kevin is describing.

And that is that the whole family is there in the presence of their father when he affirms this and they would have opportunity to disavow that if they did not wish to be in covenant with Him. So the Father speaks for and represents the family in their presence and makes that commitment on behalf of the family, but with them there, with their affirmation and with no disavowment of that covenant, sort of at the end of that courtship process you described. We also refer to there being two aspects to this covenant. Just like in the marriage, you got the ring, the promises, the vows before God in the ring, okay, that's one thing, but the relationship is the other part. You can't just come and say, I'm married because I got a ring and I did four promises 20 years ago, haven't done a cotton-picking thing for my wife since then.

Okay, I've never nurtured a relationship in all these twenty years, but I got the ring, baby! I'm sorry, that doesn't make a marriage. So what we tell them is, there's a promise, there's a commitment, but there's also relationships so let's cultivate the relationship course that's the body's all about okay this is something I've been thinking about for quite a while is there Is there ever a situation when it's pretty obvious that the elders have departed from faithful exposition of the Scriptures? Does that body have a right, or Maybe that's the wrong word in this culture. But does that body have an obligation before the Lord to say to those men or to that man, you know you've departed from Scripture.

You no longer can pastor us and we want you to resign. Well, I mean there's different forms of church polity by which this sort of thing happens and what I would say is that before it gets too out of hand the elders themselves need to deal with the situation. Our approach is always elder run. So actually we do very little with the congregation. The Word of God, we think, has something to say about the showing of hands and the selection of the deacons and elders in Acts chapter 6.

So I think we do have evidence where the congregation's involved there. But most of the ruling of the church, including the budget and the church, we actually put almost nothing in front. We inform them, we invite everybody to the meetings so they have opportunity. But still, we're the guys ruling. We're the presbyteros that are doing the episcopas stuff, right?

The episcopo-ing. Is that the verb form? The episcopo-ing, which is the ruling, the bishoping of the church. That's what we do. So we try to take care of those.

If there's an elder out of control, we got to make sure he's he is in that body of elders, committed to that body of elders, and those elders are really willing to look him in the eye and say, brother you got to back down, we're going to give you a six-month here okay he's got to commit to that that's one of the reasons we don't have this idea of hierarchy on the eldership the pastor that is me the guy does most of the work you know paid paid doing the double honor etc uh... I'm not I only have one vote on that eldership. Okay, now the other aspect to this is I think it's good to have connection with other churches. Now what that connection looks like, I'm not sure. Now right now I'm Presbyterian.

I'm here to tell you it's not necessarily a lot better than whatever the Baptist, the average Baptist churches are doing. In terms of its functionality. Because there's not as much submission to other brothers like there ought to be. The heart isn't quite there. The structure is there for Presbyterians.

They've got lots of structure. But the heart, for the most part, isn't really there. You don't have submission, humility in those hearts, it ain't going to do you any good. So I still think there ought to be some level of connection. So if you've got an elder that's got a problem, say in the Phoenix area, in a family integrated church, I think it'd be appropriate to have a few other pastors come in and enjoy some of that wisdom.

The congregation, the sheep shouldn't be out there running the pastors off without maybe another shepherd or two Checking it out a little bit. So that would be my wisdom for that situation Don. Did you want to add to that? I agree with with what you said I just would also add I mean it is you could contemplate a situation where where all the elders were really out of control out of line and not holding one another accountable and Elders in a covenant relationship in a church are still accountable. There are scriptural means by which accusations against elders can be brought.

Just like a member of the church could conceivably be excommunicated and disciplined by the church. The same thing could conceivably happen with an elder. Now I would subject everything Kevin just said, the eldership team working as it should and handling things as they should. We take a similar approach. We seek counsel from our men and have men's meetings about important issues on a pretty regular basis but it's our understanding as well that really the decisions were responsibility in Scripture clearly in the elders hands that we don't need to shirk that.

The buck does stop with us in many areas, but that doesn't mean we don't seek wisdom and we don't pray and we don't take our time because we certainly do. But elders are accountable just like the other members of the covenant body of the church. I would apply that carefully as Kevin just described. And just to add a couple more things. First of all, the Bible says that anybody in the body can come to an elder or anyone else in the body to talk about their sin.

And then there are qualifications for how you bring a charge against an elder. Here's one way that one church I am aware of handles that. Bethlehem Baptist Church where John Piper is. Here's what they do. If the charge is brought against an elder, the other elders, in order to bring the charge forward to the church, those elders have to have unity.

They have to have, I believe it's perfect unity to bring it to bring it forward that keeps every nut case out of the mix and at least Give some sanity and some collaboration among the other elders And That's kind of what you were saying in terms of getting some other, if there aren't any, bring some other godly men in to help. One other quick point. It's not hard to get two people to make an accusation against an elder. And we need to be really careful. And I've even seen situations where one person became two people to make an accusation against an elder.

And it's with the life of the internet, I mean, it sounds far-fetched, but here's what they do. They go and create a website and use five false names to say something derogatory about an elder. And then they create website number two and they footnote website number one and say, look what they're saying about this guy over there. And then they create website number three and say, we've got two websites that accuse this man of this. Of course, it's the same person with ten different false names on the Internet.

And now they've footnoted it three times and they've got fifteen accusations against an elder, so it must be true. And this man is slandered and his reputation is hopefully harmed because of out of control believers on the internet being vindictive. You talk about one of the real challenges for church life of our day and for tomorrow. Boy, there's one of them. Good stuff.

Do we have time for one more, Scott? There's one more guy over here. One more quick one over here. I heard both Kevin and Don, you speaking about having a courtship time to join a church or become a member of your congregation. What scripture do you base that on to put such a requirement on joining your church?

You know, what I would say is that I'm only responding to the atmosphere of what we're working with today. And I would say that this is probably not normative. That is, if we've got an unbeliever who's coming to know Jesus, and boom, they come to know Jesus, want to be baptized, be a member of our church, pretty quick, as in within a few weeks, I just go for it. Why is that? Because scriptural, scripture's normative pattern is to just bring them in.

They didn't, they didn't go through a lot of hoopla for the philippine jailer far as I know there was water there pretty quick and for three thousand people on day one in Acts chapter two. It wasn't as if we're waiting for a credible confession and it's going to take us six months to make sure we've got a credible profession of faith here. They didn't have it. But why am I doing this today? Because people aren't taking church membership seriously.

That's the reason. They're not taking church membership seriously in this country. And for that reason, I have to explain to them what it is, and it takes time for them to understand what it is. And we're bringing people in from churches that have no concept what church membership looks like and for that reason. In other words, they fooled themselves.

They think church membership is one thing, it turns out it's not. I understand your concern for your flock, but don't you think that God is sovereign over that? Yes, I think he is sovereign, but he also holds me responsible to take care of the sheep of Christ. And we've had way too many situations where we've had devices of people. By the way, what I would say is a lot of people are effectively excommunicated from the church because they haven't been part of a godly church for X number of years out of their lives.

And not only that, that's not the only problem we have. We have problems with some people who come in with their marriages in terrible situations, and they need to go through a period of counseling as well. And what we want them to understand is what kind of church we are. We are a repenting church. We are a church that is relational.

We confess our sins one to another, we want to start hearing some confession of sins, we want to start seeing some repentance or at least an acknowledgement that the repenting lifestyle is the way to live. And We've actually found some situations where if we had not been careful in counseling, we would have had a really serious excommunication case probably two weeks or a month or two months after receiving them into membership. You see, So the problem we're dealing with in America is I think we're in a covenant-breaking period of time, where people, I mean, this is a dangerous time. This is effectively Jeremiah. We're living in the time of Jeremiah.

The church has fallen apart. It's very much corrupted. And we are standing at the gates crying out for repentance. And we're waiting for some people who really like to repent. And so again, I draw a little distinction between the time of Jeremiah and where we have all this false faith and this unwillingness to live the life of Christ and kind of this fake faith going on and And and those that are saved out of pagan atheist lifestyle.

So by the way, we just we just had one of these It's a beautiful god saved an atheist jew and we're baptize them in two weeks so you praise god you know he's coming right in no membership class nothing we said when when when can you come in and be baptized as a two weeks that's not good okay that's good so you see again worked for treating the two stu situations differently don is you wanna maybe just one other thought that if this is a mutual obligation something that the church is agreeing to, something that the family or the father or the individual, whatever it may be, coming in is agreeing to. I think number one, it is a wisdom application as Kevin has just described. But I think we can make a case biblically that people are not bound by oaths when they lacked understanding, when they made those oaths. And you see in Exodus we could talk about the biblical patterns of oaths and we could talk about a husband being able to disavow the oath of his wife once he found out about it and once he knew about it and once he understood it.

And so some of our purpose in going slow and being careful that we know each other is that we know whoever would like to be a part of our church and whoever would like to be a part of our church knows us. And we don't have people entering into a covenant relationship with bad information about each other Whether it's the history of whoever may be coming in, or whether it's the situation with the family, or whether on the part of the church it's our doctrine, or it's how we'll lead, or it's how we'll preach, or it's how we'll teach. So we take our time in order to get to know each other as well so that those oaths that we make to each other will be informed. And it's a very good question, but I think you could make a pretty strong biblical case for informed agreement when you enter into an oath or when you sign a contract or whatever the case may be. And those are biblical.

I understand now differently that it's case-by-case situation yes and I can understand that the black they also for watching out for the walls that are dressed and she clothing that are coming into the flock. And I thought in the beginning that was across the board. It's a great question. Thank you. And I think it's more clear because you asked it so thanks for the question.

Yes, big time. Thank you very much. And thank you all. These have been great questions. Amazing how this illuminates so many different issues.

Thank you all. God bless.