I hear many excuses as to why people leave congregations. Citing from the way people are, to perceived use of politics, to the styles of music, to “that minister is just a glorified youth pastor!” and many others besides, I’ve come to a conclusion: unless the church is teaching heresy, that is, preaching explicitly unbiblical teachings, most people are looking for an exit because they’re uncomfortable. People will fail you. Preachers and Elders will fail you. Jesus and His perfect word will not, and if you’re making excuses to leave, you’re doing so because of how you’re feeling and not because of Jesus.
Loved ones, you will never find a perfect church. If you find a perfect church, don’t attend; you’ll ruin their average! If you’re a perfect person (apart from Jesus), don’t attend church with us: we’ll ruin yours. Don’t look for perfection. Don’t look for acceptance or tolerance. Don’t look for something that makes you feel comfortable. Attend Church for Jesus. Go to where Jesus is preached faithfully through the Scriptures. Look for the Gospel through the Scriptures to be held in high esteem. Don’t attend for persons, personalities, or politics. Seek Christ, and His Saving Grace. Seek unity and fellowship with His Body, the Church. He lived, died and rose again that you may be reconciled to God and others, live and walk in that unity.
1 Corinthians 2
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
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