Gospel.com Blog

How does your church react when a member of the congregation leaves?

Gordon Atkinson, longtime pastor (and blogger) has written a thoughtful essay describing the importance of gracefully listening to the “parting shots” of departing church members… even when what they say isn’t what you want to hear:

Most of the time when people leave our church, however, they just disappear. We notice their repeated absence after some weeks have passed. If I can track them down, they’ll often give me their parting shot, a short, abbreviated explanation of why they are leaving. These parting shots can be difficult to understand. Sometimes people are angry over a real or imagined slight. Some people cannot honestly address why they are leaving the church, so they convince themselves that they’re “just not being fed,” or they need a place with more music or better music or different preaching. Sometimes people just lie—they don’t want to admit that they’d rather attend a large church where no one notices when they sleep in on Sunday morning, so they point a finger at a theologically wayward Sunday school teacher, or at my sermons…

Being in the ministry requires us to develop a thick skin. We need to learn to spot the bull and let it go without wasting too much emotional energy on it. But we also need to cultivate the ability to hear what people are really saying by listening to what is behind their words. However painful it may be, we must listen to the parting shots of those who leave, because there is truth buried there—below the anger and the scapegoating and the general dishonesty. My advice is to ignore one person’s opinion of you or your ministry, and to watch for trends and patterns.

I imagine that’s much easier to say than to put into practice; it can’t be fun listening to people tell you that they dislike your preaching so much that they’re leaving the church. If you’re a pastor, I’d be interested to hear how you handle these “parting shots,” and if you’ve learned to dig beneath the words to discern what’s really being communicated.

But since I’m not a pastor, my interest in this topic is more in how I, as a typical churchgoer, should act when I feel called to leave a church. I’ve never left a church out of anger or theological dispute; it’s always been something more mundane, such as moving to a different city. But reading Atkinson’s article makes me regret that I have rarely sat down with the pastor or leadership of a church to explain what I’m doing and offer a (friendly and positive) parting shot. Many employers conduct exit interviews with employees who are leaving the company; surely there’s valuable information to be gained from an informal interview with a departing churchgoer.

Pastors, how do you respond when you learn that a church member is leaving the church? And fellow churchgoers, have you ever delivered a “parting shot” upon leaving a church, and how did it go?

Are you a pastor or church leader looking for a bit of inspiration to start off your Monday? The Online Pulpit is a semi-regular column that shares thoughts from working pastors, covering a wide range of topics relevant to church leaders.

The most recent column is about a serious topic, but one that pastors are called to address frequently in the course of their ministry: death and mortality. Gerry Koning uses an unusual metaphor to paint the human journey through life and death in a new light, casting the process of life not just as a morbid approach to death, but as a unique journey back toward our true spiritual home with God. If you’re a pastor who deals with this issue often, it might help you to comfort people grieving the loss of a loved one, or facing death themselves.

If that’s too heavy a topic for a Monday morning, there are plenty more columns to explore in the Online Pulpit archives, which go all the way back to 1995. For starters, you might take a look at The iPodization of Our Culture, about our increasing tendency to focus inward on ourselves; Ministry or Management?, which addresses the delicate balance between “running a church” and shepherding a congregation; or The Church in Exile, about how to address the church’s slide into cultural and intellectual exile from the world.

The latest Online Pulpit essay is up, and asks an unusual question: if you’re in a leadership position in your church, do you have a mentor?

Most of us might assume that our pastors and leaders “have it together” and don’t need spiritual guidance—but the pressures of leadership mean that your pastor might need a trustworthy mentor or accountability partner even more than the rest of us do:

As pastors and Christ followers…. we know we never outgrow the need for mentors. In every stage of life mentors are vital. Children, young adults, parents, married couples—individuals in literally every stage of life benefit from having a guide along the way. As I have been focusing on this important aspect of ministry the last few months, I have been asking myself the question, How are we ministers and the church doing?

If you’re a pastor who doesn’t have a trustworthy mentor to turn to, read this latest essay by Joan E. Tyvoll and consider the ways such a person might strengthen your ministry.

Does the idea of standing in front of an audience—or congregation—scare you to death? You’re not alone; public speaking ranks high on most people’s lists of scary situations. But if you’ve been called to speak in front of an audience (perhaps as a reader or worship leader at your church), a recent post at the Andy Unedited blog can help, with six practical tips to help you survive your public speaking experience. Great advice for anyone called unexpectedly to speak in front of others—and even the most eloquent pastor could probably stand to brush up on his sermon delivery skills every now and then.