Peter Witkowski Ecclesiology

Sometimes You Should Leave a Church

Christians have the freedom in Christ to leave churches that have rejected biblical orthodoxy. At first glance, such a statement seemingly contradicts the teaching of the apostle John, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2:19). The apostle asserts that, those who forsake their church pews have ceased to fellowship with Jesus. In other words, they have left the physical manifestation of church because they were never truly part of the spiritual or universal church that consists of all believers across eternity.

2 Marks of a True Church

But for such a statement to be true, the local church in view must be a true church—a church composed of members who are part of that spiritual or universal church. Though John does not provide the readers of 1 John with a full blueprint of a healthy church, he does note two important marks that define all local expression of the spiritual or universal church.

First, John argues that the majority of a true church’s members will be those who fellowship with the Father and the Son, having trusted in Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection for the salvation. John tells his readers, “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake” (1 John 2:12). The natural outworking and demonstration of such faith-driven fellowship is obedience to the Savior. To quote John again, “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3).

Second, John argues that a true church consists of those who affirm the integrity and truth of the apostolic message. In other words, a true church is composed of those who believe that the Scriptures are the inerrant, inspired, and authoritative word of God. John encourages such trust in his writings (and the Bible as a whole), declaring that his epistles and the Gospel of John contain “that which we have seen and heard…so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). He believed his words to be the inspired words of God—free of error— in part because Jesus had promised that Holy Spirit would help John remember all that Jesus taught and said (John 14:26). Thus, John expected those who fellowshipped with the Father and the Son to share John’s assessment of the New Testament canon. To quote John, “You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge…you know it [the truth], and you know that no lie is of the truth.” For a church to be a true church, it must be composed of those who accept the Scriptures as the word of God and of those who embrace the fellowship of the Son that comes through the Scriptures.

Anti-Christ Should Leave

Those who forsake these local manifestations of the universal or spiritual church should feel the full weight of John’s condemnation in 1 John 2:19. Their leaving does evidence a lack of saving faith. For example, Joseph Smith and Charles Taze Russell left the true church and created the Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness cults because they rejected the biblical teaching on the divinity of Jesus. These cult leaders replaced the gospel of grace with gospels of works. Similarly, when Muhammad founded Islam, he too left the true church because his belief that Jesus was nothing more than a human prophet placed him at odds with the clear teaching of Scripture and its offer of salvation through grace. These and countless others went out from their local expressions of the spiritual or universal church because they had exchanged the righteousness of the cross for that which could be won through special underwear, prayers toward Mecca, or the avoidance of caffeine.

Others walk out of the true church to worship the god of self. They reject the biblical teaching of sin and declare themselves to be generally good. Salvation no longer consists in denying oneself and following Jesus but in exploring oneself through introspective actions that range from meditation to picking up litter to exploring sexual expressions that violate the commands of Jesus. Such men and women leave their local expressions of the true church because they were never part of the spiritual or universal church.

When Antichrists Stay

While most Antichrists will leave the church, some will stay and seek to convert their local church to their errors and heresies. The apostle Peter warns of this phenomenon in his second letter, declaring that false teachers would “secretly bring in destructive heresies” into the local churches and that “many would follow their sensuality” (2 Peter 2:1–2).

Few enter the church proclaiming themselves to be false teachers. Only slowly do they demonstrate their lack of faith, teaching against the integrity of Scripture and denying elements of the faith. For example, they may proclaim their love for the Bible and then explain why they take issue with the Bible’s sexual ethic, viewing it as culturally bound and oppressive. If the church’s elders and leaders refuse to correct the new teacher, she will not graciously fade into the background. She will double down on her teaching and in time call the church to affirm the homosexual marriage of her cousin as good and proper. Having abandoned the authority of Scripture, the congregation and its leaders will have little reason to object and will eventually acquiesce to the Sunday school teacher’s request. After all, no local church wants to be culturally irrelevant or unkind.

What is true of one sector of the church will quickly become true of the whole body. If its leadership board requests the pastor to jettison the church’s doctrine of substitutionary atonement because they see it as “divine child abuse,” he will once again defer to their proposal. After all, he has no Scriptural authority upon which to challenge such claims, and no one wants to support child abuse, divine or otherwise.

Those who do speak out against the doctrinal shift will often be labeled as unloving and antiquated. With each passing Sunday, their resistance will fade more into the background of the church’s consciences. The church’s inclinations toward goodness, truth, and love will slowly atrophy and then die. The gospel of the Antichrist will supplant the gospel of Christ. As J. Gresham Machen noted, “What the liberal theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely different from Christianity as to belong in a distinct category.” The spiritual or universal members of the local church will be supplanted with earthly members who have never fellowshipped with either the Father os the Son.

When To Leave

When believers find themselves in a Christless church, they should leave. As the refomer Martin Luther notes in such cases, “Not he who flees the darkness, but he who remains in it, is the Antichrist.”

Prior to leaving, Christians should confront the error in their church as best they can. They should schedule a meeting with their pastors, reach out to the Sunday school teacher, or talk to their church’s deacons. But if their conversations prove fruitless and fail to effect change, then the Christian must leave. As the Puritan John Owen notes, “Where the fundamentals of religious worship are corrupted or overthrown, it is absolutely unlawful to join unto or abide in any church.”

To leave such a church does not go against the teachings of the apostle John and the broader teaching of Scripture. The believer is not forsaking truth for error but error for truth. To quote Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “To leave a church which has become apostate is not schism. That’s one’s Christian duty and nothing else.” In other words, if a local church ceases to commune with Christ and his spiritual or universal church, Christians should cease to commune with that local church. In such circumstances, they should not be vilified but praised. They have traded that which is false for that which is true.

Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Ecclesiology

The Case for Strategic Church Membership Reduction  

In addition to valuing membership retention, evangelical churches should also value membership reduction. They should expect that those who abandon the gospel to stop attending their Sunday morning services. The apostle John tells his audience in 1 John 2:19 that some church members “went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they have been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” In other words, churches can become healthy through subtraction.  

Not All Leaving is Bad

This verse does not imply that everyone who leaves their local church has left turned their back on the apostolic gospel. Membership transfers between congregations are good and proper.

Local churches should encourage their members to to transfer to a new church when the said church is closer to the member’s home or to the member’s convictions over secondary doctrines. For example, if a member of a Baptist church find himself embracing infant baptism, the Baptist church he attends now should happily grant his request to become a Presbyterian. He has not left the faith.

Moreover, some members will leave their church because their church’s leaders rebuff the members’ call for biblical reform and repentance. In such cases, the members leaving prove more spiritual than the local church left behind. In other words, Christians can and often do leave a local church without turning their back on Jesus.

Don’t Keep the Heretics

Rather, John’s letter addresses those who abandon their local church because they have abandoned the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. The apostle writes in 1 John 2:22: “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.” The antichrist is not the one who prefers expository preaching over topical preaching or old hymns as opposed to more modern worship, or red carpets as opposed to green. The antichrist is the one who undermines the gospel through their denial of Jesus’ personhood and his resulting work on the cross.

Antichrists are those who deny either the divinity or the humanity of Jesus and thereby deny the doctrine of justification through faith alone. If Jesus was a created being and not God, he could not satisfy God’s wrath for our sins. He could perhaps exchange his life for another life, but Jesus could not atone for the sin of all his people. If he was not fully God, he also could not raise himself from the dead much less us. We would have to save ourselves through good works or some other scheme.

Similarly, if Jesus was not fully man but rather some half-man and half-god hybrid or just a spirit, he could not be the perfect substitute for humanity. When an orange replaces an apple, you do not get a better apple. You get an orange. If Jesus was not fully a man, he could not fully die and atone for our sins. Once again, we would have to find some other means to pay for our sins. Only a Messiah who was both fully God and fully man could be the propitiation, the perfect sacrifice for sin of God’s elect. Defective Christology, as John Stott notes, “is not just defective; it is diabolical.” They who corrupt the doctrine of Christ are the liars…the antichrist…the messengers of Satan.  

As such, they should feel unwelcomed in God’s house.  When a church member embraces the Arian heresy of Mormonism and declares that Jesus is the product of the Father’s one night stand with the not-so-virgin Mary, she should feel disconnected from her ladies’ book club at church. The man who begins to argue on Tik Tok that Jesus was specially indwelt by the Father until his accidental death on the cross and was not fully God should feel out of place when singing “Are you washed in the blood?” And the Sunday school teacher who teachers that Jesus never had a human body should squirm in his seat when his pastor unpacks Matthew’s Christmas narrative. Those who promote theological lies should feel uncomfortable in the halls of truth and flee them for the refuge of other heretical movements. To quote John, they “went out from us, but they were not of us.”  

When They Stay  

At times, false teachers will do not leave and will try to burrow under the church’s skin. They will start a sending emails, posting videos, or start up Bible studies in an effort to win the church to their heretical ideas.  

When they do so, the local congregation will have to use the tool of church discipline to force them out. If left unchecked, false teachers will destroy the spiritual health of their local church. Paul warns 1 Corinthians 5:6-7: “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.”

The church’s elders should lead the discipline prosses. They should show the confused member the error of his ways and call him to repentance. Hopefully, the elders’ loving correction will guide the person back to spiritual health and truth. But if the false teacher continues unabated, the elders must inform the church of the situation in accordance with Matthew 18. If the person still refuses to repent, then the congregation must vote the person out of membership. For the church to survive, it must be willing to remove its heretical members from the role.

The True Cost

Still, the removal hurts. Just as surgery often leaves a scar on our body, removing those who once visited us in the hospital, sang hymns with us, and prayed with us because they have rejected Jesus will prove hard. We should grieve over their lost friendship and their error. But if we allow them to stay in fellowship, they will bring even greater sorrow and harm to our souls and the souls of our church family. As Martin Luther notes, “it is better to rescue some from the jaws of the devil than for all to perish.” For the church to remain healthy and vibrant we must allow and encourage our heretical members to leave.  

May the Lord give us the grace always needed to prefer truth over friendship and faithfulness of expediency. May we be willing to glorify God through reducing our membership.  

Peter Witkowski Ecclesiology

Beyond the Numbers: A Biblical, Baptist Framework for Evaluating SBC Presidential Candidates

The conversation around what qualifies a man to lead the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) needs to expand beyond the pragmatic consideration of church growth metrics. To discern whether a man is qualified to lead the SBC, messengers should evaluate his faithfulness in pastoring his local church well, looking at the four elder responsibilities outlines in Dr. John Hammett’s book Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches: preaching, pastoral ministry, oversight/leadership, and character. In other words, those who aspire to lead the convention well should show the messengers that they pastor well.

Where the Discussion Has Been

For the last few decades, the messengers to the SBC have placed great value on how much a candidate’s church gives to the cooperative program (CP) and on how many people his church baptized. Consequently, the candidate who led his church to give $500,000 to CP and to baptize 300 people is deemed more faithful than the pastor who led his church to give $5,000 to CP and baptize 3 people. Though messengers will at times judge men on percentages instead of gross numbers, allowing for variation in congregational size, the basic principle remains. Faithfulness has been measured numerically.

A Better Way

Such measurements arise from the convention’s rightful focus on missions. Giving and growth stats do reveal something about a man’s ability to exercise oversight as an elder and pastor. But they do not reflect the full scope of a pastor’s leadership or reveal how he will respond to the theological challenges that the convention and its president will face. To gain that insight, messengers must look beyond the giving and baptism stats and burrow into their Baptist roots. They must examine the man’s preaching, pastoral ministry, oversight/leadership, and character.

Preaching

Since the well being of every local church and the convention depends on its obedience to the Scriptures, messengers should acquaint themselves with a candidate’s preaching ministry. Dr. Hammett writes, “It is primarily by the means of his preaching and teaching that the elder exerts the influence of his leadership in the congregation.” If messengers want to know how a man will lead the convention, they should listen to some of the president’s sermons. Podcasters and the members of the evangelical press, and pastors at round tables should ask questions that draw out the candidate’s view of preaching. Is he an expository preacher? Why or why not? How does he go about preparing sermons? Does he see men and women responding to the preaching of the gospel in his church? How many people are being baptized?

And since the ordinances or sacraments support the proclamation of the gospel acting as a visual, corporate sermon, messengers should be curious about the man’s practice of the sacraments. Does he believe in spontaneous baptism? Why or why not? Does he practice open communion? Why or why not? Moreover, if podcasters, members of the evangelical press, or messengers find questionable teaching in his sermons, they should share their findings with the candidate and give him opportunities to clarify. The messengers should familiarize themselves with a presidential candidate’s preaching ministry.

Pastoral Ministry

Messengers should try to understand the man’s pastoral ministry. As Hammett notes, pastors are called, “to protect the sheep (163).” Through public teaching and private counsel, they should show their congregations how to identify sin, repent of sin, and how to counsel and help those trapped in sin. They also must guard their local congregation from theological error. As Dr. Albert Mohler notes, “Error must be confronted, heresy must be opposed, and false teaching must be corrected.

To discern the candidate’s practice of pastoral ministry, podcasters, the evangelical press, and messengers should ask the candidate about his counseling practices and about how they have gone about confronting theological error in their churches. Do they believe in biblical counseling or more integrated approaches, and why? How do you facilitate discipleship of your members?

This category also leads into questions about the candidate’s practice of church discipline. As Southern Baptist church father, J.L. Dagg noted, “When discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it.” Does the pastor seeking to lead the SBC lead his church to discipline men and women who refuse to repent of their sins or their theological error? And if so, what sins and errors and how? Does the Baptist Faith and Message shape his pastoral ministry? What theological and practically errors does the SBC face and how would you address them?

Oversight and Leadership

The pastor is called to give “overall administrative oversight and leadership to the church (164).” Or to quote the Baptist Church Father Edward T. Hiscox on pastors, “Their duties and services have mainly reference to the spiritual interests of the body, though they properly have the oversight of all its concerns.” At this point, questions about a candidate’s church budget become relevant. How much does his church give to the cooperative program and why? How does he lead his church to maximize its budget for kingdom expansion?

Questions about his church’s worship services and leadership structure also prove relevant at this juncture. Does his church have multiple services? Why or why not? What does his church’s leadership look like? Does he have elders, a deacon board, or a leadership council and why? How does his church go about selecting leaders? Does he believe that women can be elders or pastors or functionally serve in that role?

Character

Hammett notes that the pastor is called to “serve as an example to the flock (1 Peter 5:3).” As Benjamin Keach noted in 1697, a pastor was to show himself “a good Example in Conversation, Charity, Faith, and Purity.” Any man who desires to lead the SBC should possess a character that is above reproach. Those who do not should not be leading their local church much less the convention.

Podcasters, the evangelical press, and the messengers should ask the candidates if their lives are above reproach. They should work through the lists of pastoral qualification found in Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3. Do you manage your family well? How do you go about caring for your wife and children? Are you self-controlled?

These questions should not be asked from a heart of accusation but from a heart of affirmation. Questions that dig into a candidate’s life should reveal diamonds of faithfulness that encourage the messengers regardless of their tribal affiliations. If such questions uncover coal, the fault lies not so much with the one asking the questions as with the one answering them.

Final Thoughts

I am calling for an expansion of the dialogue around those nominated to be the next president of the SBC because I long to shift the debate over the SBC’s leadership from the squishy edges of pragmatic, convention politics to the hard edges of the biblical truth. I suspect questions about preaching, pastoral care, oversight, and character will reveal far more about how someone will lead the convention than giving metrics, or one’s SBC tenure, and thoughts renewal strategies. I long to see men elected to SBC office not because they have the right pedigree or politics but because their churchmanship proves they are competent to lead the SBC. In short, I want to see men elected because they faithfully preach the gospel, practice biblical pastoral ministry, give godly oversight, and display righteous character.