0:00:08 – Barnabas

Hey, welcome to the Curious Curmudgeon Podcast. I am Barnabas Piper here with my co-curmudgeon, Adam Read. Hello and Adam, you and I have both attended church for a long time. Quite literally my entire life has been spent in and around the church. You know listeners have heard in previous conversations that we’ve both served in churches. I currently serve as a pastor at our church, and so that means that between the two of us, we have seen a significant amount of what’s awesome about the church the good and then also the bad and the ugly, the things that don’t go quite as well, the things that the church ought not to be, and then things that are often just like. 

 

They’re not necessarily sin involved, but there’s disappointment. Think about, like people, good friends who move away and leave church. So church feels diminished, even though there was no wrongdoing. They just left. But to kick off this episode, I think it makes sense for us to sort of just share a little bit about our backgrounds in church. I think we grew up very differently, different church backgrounds. There’s such a. One of the crazy things about growing up in the church is that you often miss exactly how varied the church is. 

 

There’s so many different kinds of churches, many of which are very faithful, some of which are very crazy, some of which you know. There’s just a whole spectrum, so let’s share a little bit about our backgrounds. I’ll let you go first Tell us a little bit about kind of your church upbringing, different experiences over the years and kind of how you got to where you are now. 

 

0:01:30 – Adam

Yeah, I mean, my mom and my stepdad were super faithful in wanting us to be in church and being around the body of Christ, understanding the importance of being there. 

 

It was kind of one of those grew up like if the doors of the church building were open, then you know we were there and it was just. That was the way it was and it was expected and my sister and I both understood that and it was fine, like it wasn’t an issue. We never had a question like are we going to go to church today? On Sunday, it was just known that that was a priority in our home and you know I grew up in San Diego for a good portion of my childhood and there are Christians in San Diego. 

 

There are a few, yeah. 

 

0:02:10 – Barnabas

So there are a lot of people in this country who think that everybody who lives, you know, on the left coast yeah, the left are crazy hippies and pagans. So you’re saying that that is a misrepresentation of our left coast friends. 

 

0:02:22 – Adam

I would say that, yeah, there’s a lot of great churches out there. God’s still working and moving in those communities, even though it’s a bit crazy place to live. 

 

0:02:30 – Barnabas

I can’t argue with that. As amazing as that is, God can even work in California, I know it’s true. 

 

0:02:35 – Adam

Yeah, so we went to a pretty good-sized church there for the earlier part of my life. It was a Bible missionary fellowship church and you know like they had a lot of ministries for kids and they had a Christian school and stuff. So we were engaged there and did a Juana and that sort of thing there, you know, midweek. And we left there due to some issues which maybe we’ll get into later, and we had to leave that church. And then we joined us a little fledgling church that was started and we met in somebody’s home and you know, I don’t remember a whole lot from when I was a kid Like those memories are pretty sparse, but I remember, you know, meeting in this person’s home for church and there just being a handful of families and you know, baptisms were done out in their pool in the backyard and it was just a different, a totally different environment than what I knew church as. 

 

And I think it helped define for me like the church is the redeemed people of God gathering together and not a physical location. And I think that, like, looking back on it, like I don’t I wouldn’t have been able to say that then, but looking back on it, that is one of the things that taught me and that church grew over time and we ended up meeting in a daycare center. We’d have to drive like an hour to get there one way and we’d take all the toys out and put chairs in and it’s like maybe 60 of us or so. So very different from what happened just after that, which is when we moved from San Diego, California, to Greenville, South Carolina. Okay, and you know that’s a totally different church culture as far as you know how people think. 

 

0:04:13 – Barnabas

Yeah, I mean, that’s Deep South Bible Belt. 

 

0:04:16 – Adam

Yeah, it is like the buckle of the Bible Belt, as they say. Right. 

 

0:04:19 – Barnabas

There’s a lot of cities that claim that. By the way, Nashville claims to be the buckle of the Bible Belt too, I think. 

 

0:04:23 – Adam

I’ve heard it about Lynchburg too. So we got lots of buckles. 

 

0:04:27 – Barnabas

I mean that just means there’s a lot of big belt wearing loudmouth Christians in the South. So here we go. 

 

0:04:32 – Adam

It was really weird to go from a place where we had to drive an hour to get to a solid church, to be like a church seemingly on every corner right, they’re just everywhere. And like, how do you choose a church, my dad? 

 

0:04:45 – Barnabas

grew up in Greenville, so I’ve I’ve been to there a number of times and, yeah, I mean it is a it is sort of a quintessential Southern town where, yeah, you can have on four corners you can have like the church of Christ and the Southern Baptist church, probably first Baptist and second Baptist, and then and then maybe a United Methodist church on the other corner and they’re all kind of facing off. 

 

0:05:02 – Adam

Yeah, so we got engaged with the church there and that’s where I spent a lot of time as a youth, just like being poured into and also having the opportunity to serve in different ways. And my mom and stepdad are still there today, so they’ve been there for since 1992. So quite a number of years. 

 

0:05:19 – Barnabas

That’s a long time to be at a church. That’s amazing. That’s quite a run. 

 

0:05:22 – Adam

Yeah. So it was neat and I went to college. I went to a couple of different colleges and ended up with a degree in biblical counseling because I wanted to pastor. So I had the privilege to do that at a couple of churches after that in Ohio and Virginia, and so my view on church is certainly shaped by what I believe scripture teaches is a love for the church, in spite of all the chaos and the things that happen. And no church was perfect that I’ve ever been part of or visited or attended. But just trying to look through that and see God’s purpose for the church is hard sometimes when things get difficult. 

 

0:05:56 – Barnabas

And you’ve served at two different churches, you said as a children’s minister and then as, like, an assistant pastor, associate pastor. 

 

0:06:01 – Adam

Yeah, that’s correct. 

 

0:06:02 – Barnabas

Okay, and smaller churches, bigger churches. 

 

0:06:04 – Adam

One was a church of about 150. Okay, and the other was a church of 600-ish. 

 

0:06:10 – Barnabas

So whether those are small and big really depends on where you’re from. Yeah right, you know, 150-person church in a place like Nashville is tiny. 150-person church in a place like, I don’t know, Massachusetts is pretty substantial. 

 

That’s a pretty well-established church. So that’s really interesting because just the transience between churches and the different kinds of churches you were part of, cause you know I mentioned that I grew up as a pastor’s kid and my dad was the pastor of the same church for 33 years, 30 of which I was alive, and so like I lived in the same house, went to the same church that was walking distance from the house for my first 18 years before I went away to college, and it was a Baptist church, not Southern Baptist, you know, because we lived way, way north. But you know so it was Baptist. So that was my upbringing, which means that I was very kind of unfamiliar with a lot of other denominations. If there’s one thing Baptists do well, it’s to sort of keep all of the other denominations at bay in terms of their beliefs about different sort of tangential issues. 

 

And I just was kind of unfamiliar with that stuff but was very faithfully taught the Bible, very faithfully brought up to think kind of deeply theologically. You know my parents and our church were really thorough in that that’s great and was given a love of the church. There was plenty of things about stuff that happened in the church that I look back on I don’t think that was great, but I did love the church. It was a real kind of familial context for me, and so going to college was a big transition in that. Okay, this is the first time in my life A I get to make a choice about church and B I have to find a new church. Like this I had not been new at church. 

 

0:07:40 – Adam

Now you went to College of Wheaton, so you’re talking Chicago area. 

 

0:07:43 – Barnabas

Yeah, Chicago area, west Suburbs and Wheaton is a little mini kind of Bible Belt satellite in its own right. Just the number of sort of Christian and evangelical organizations there. Christianity Today there’s multiple Christian publishers. Wheaton College is there and again, per capita at one point it was in the top, you know, county-wise it was in the top three or four in the country for churches. Per capita so again tons of options there. It wasn’t like oh, this is it, you’re going to go to this one that’s adjacent to campus. 

 

So there was the two or three churches that were kind of adjacent to campus, solid churches, but I was contrarian and so I was like I’m not doing that, I’m not going to do the easy walk across the street thing, and instead I got invited by two or three of the RAs the resident assistants in the dorm that I was in my freshman year all attended the same church and they’re like well, they preach the Bible and the college ministry is really thriving. You’re welcome to jump in a car with us. And so I jumped in with them and that became my home church for four years of college and then a little bit after that, and it was an independent church, leaned Baptistic, and it was a very faithful Bible preaching church, but also they had some legalistic tendencies and that stuff came to a head later. We might talk about some of that in a little bit later in the episode. And then from there I ended up kind of going with some friends to another church that was a congregational church, so I grew up in a church that had, you know, that was sort of elder run. Then went to a church that was a congregational church, so I grew up in a church that had, you know that was sort of elder run, then went to a church that was elder rule those are not the same thing. And then I went to a church that was congregational, which means that the congregation votes on everything. So there’s that switch. 

 

And that was another really faithful church, church called College Church, right by Wheaton, pastored by Kent Hughes at the time, although it was there during a pastoral transition, and you know he had another 20, 27 or 30 year really faithful ministry. So I was just spoiled to sit under the ministry of a man who faithfully preached the Bible and and it really there was a lot of things again about that church that I didn’t totally love. But health, wise leadership, wise love of Christ, wise. It was phenomenal. And they saw me through some of the one of the most difficult faith and life transitions for me that we talked a little bit about on the jobs episode where I lost a job and kind of a crisis of faith, and it was the elders there who shepherded me through that. That’s great that they were there. 

 

Yeah, and so then, after they sort of rebuilt me, it seemed like it was the right thing to move on from that church which was again not because they had mistreated us, it just seemed like the right move and so landed at a Presbyterian church also in the Chicago suburbs and had a really good experience there for three years before moving to Nashville where we landed at a really big Baptist church in the Nashville suburbs for a few years and it was not a good experience. There’s a number of reasons for that. Some of it was the home front. I mentioned in an earlier episode that I went through a divorce and this was that time period where things were kind of dissolving there. 

 

Um my ex was not very interested in attending church at that point, and so the church that we landed at was kind of a compromise situation not a like we’re here because this is the right place, and so we didn’t develop deep community et cetera. 

 

It was a tough spot and then from there kind of meandered through a couple of churches for over a few months and landed eventually at Emmanuel, where I am now just as a member and as a place to sort of recover and have discovered. By the time I got to Emmanuel, I was at a pretty jaded place where I had a conviction that competed with my feelings. My conviction was every Christian needs to be part of a local church because this is how this is supposed to work. My feelings were the church is probably going to be pretty disappointing. You just can’t expect too much out of a local church. You can’t expect a place of genuine honesty. You can’t expect a place of actual recovery. There’s just going to be judgmentalism. People are going to turn their back on you. 

 

The trust was not going to come easily for me and instead I found a place where all of that was. I was wrong, frankly, and there is a context in church where that sort of grace can be given and it can be built on a gospel of grace that then shapes our interaction. So, no lack of conviction, but also no lack of tenderness, and that was what the Lord used then to do a lot of restoration to me and eventually call me to ministry. Yeah, and when I look back on all of those things, I mostly see the grace of God in keeping me in church. At no point in my meandering life and various struggles over the years, crises of faith, failures in my life, marriage falling apart, different things At no point have I thought I should quit going to church. 

 

There have been some days I’ve not gone to church but not like I’ve always known that church is the right place for me to be, and I would not say that’s because I was a person of great conviction or because I had some keen insight. It was more just, the Lord kept me pointed in that direction, going. No, this is where you belong, this is where the answer lies, even if you don’t see it or don’t know how to find it With all of that. So you shared a bit of your story Again. Anytime we share these stories, it feels like we’re skipping all the important stuff to just sort of give the major plot points. Yeah. 

 

0:12:38 – Adam

There’s so much behind all of those. 

 

0:12:40 – Barnabas

And that’s okay, because otherwise this would be boring and this podcast would take forever. 

 

0:12:44 – Adam

And that’s like the world’s longest podcast. 

 

0:12:46 – Barnabas

Yeah, and the most navel-gazy thing ever where we’re just talking about ourselves which nobody would be profoundly interested in. But if there’s a theme in what both of us were talking about, it is the fact that we have switched churches a lot over the years and for a variety of reasons some cases not by choice, in some cases very much by choice, and then in some cases there was great pain associated with it. In some cases it was not very painful at all and it’s just a necessary departure. So first let me throw out a broad question for us to talk about and throw it to you first. Switching churches is not an easy thing most of the time and let me pause. If it is an easy thing for you, you are treating church wrong, not you, Adam. 

 

0:13:29 – Adam

I mean I guess it would be true for you. I mean, I’m sure I’ve treated the church wrong at some point. 

 

0:13:33 – Barnabas

No, but for listeners, if you just sort of casually move from church to church and it never feels like it costs you anything, that means you have nothing invested in the church and you are not part of the body of Christ in that way. That doesn’t mean you’re not a believer. It does mean you are not living as a believer should, and I feel pretty comfortable saying that. So if you have experienced the pain of moving churches, though, the question is what are some of the things that makes moving churches, switching churches, so difficult? 

 

0:13:59 – Adam

Hopefully, like you kind of alluded to, hopefully you have a deep enough relationship in the church that leaving the people that God’s placed you amongst is a difficult challenge. Like that’s a difficult thing for you and it’s not lighthearted. You know, and I think that’s one thing you mentioned Also, a church is so much more than a place where I go to just get fed right. Like so much of how we look at church is about us and it’s like, well, I need this and I need that and I need this ministry and I need that ministry. And as we look back over time, all these different ministries didn’t always exist and yet the church thrived at some of those times. 

 

Know, the church is not bound by our requirements to it. 

 

You know the church is obviously placed there by God, instituted by God, loved by God, and Ephesians, chapter five, tells us that Christ actually died for the church, like the church is his purchased community. You know being part of that body is part of being a believer it should be. You know being part of that body is part of being a believer it should be. And so if it’s easy to leave a church, then I would say like, yeah, you’re not bought in deep enough. Even the churches that I’ve been part of or even visited, that we’ve had to decide like that’s not where I need to go, or this is a church that I need to leave and the Lord’s going to move us on to a different place, like those are still not easy decisions, and the depth of a church in our lives should be of such a level that when we leave somewhere and or even a good reason and have to go to a new place, there is still a love for the body, even though things may not have gone the way we want it to.

 

0:15:47 – Barnabas

Yeah, absolutely, I wholeheartedly agree, and the reverence with which you spoke about God’s intent for his church, god’s design for his church, is a thing that I mean. If you take that seriously, yeah, it should be really difficult to leave a church because of what God is creating there. I think back to the conversation we had in an earlier episode about friendship and so much of that friendship conversations. A lot of it was about stages in life and things, but a lot of it really was church centric, because there is a reality of Christian community that only exists within the local church. And let me pause real quick because I’m sure that there are listeners who have either a love-hate relationship with the church or a recently hurt relationship with the church, and so they hear that and if they’re still listening at all, they’re still gracious enough to give us the ear. 

 

their posture is going to be one of skepticism or just sort of arms folded like, yeah, not my church, not the church that I just left. So when I say there is a kind of Christian community that only exists in the church, I don’t mean every church, I mean churches that are walking faithfully with Christ. 

 

0:16:55 – Adam

Yeah, yeah, I think you have to have that context. 

 

0:16:58 – Barnabas

Yeah, and I don’t want to assume it, but I do want to kind of function under that as a kind of an unspoken like what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the good of church is a work of the Lord among his people. Not every church does this so well and the organization is the answer. So the reason that that’s so true, that Christian community aspect, is because I think Romans 12, five sums it up so well. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and I’m sure all of us have heard some message about being the body of Christ and it’s like the hands and the arms, and that’s almost always referring to what we do in the church acts of service. 

 

0:17:33 – Adam

Our function as part of the church. 

 

0:17:35 – Barnabas

That is an important aspect of it. But what’s missed in that is life. If you amputate an arm, yeah, it doesn’t serve a function anymore, but it also dies and rots. 

 

0:17:45 – Adam

Yeah. 

 

0:17:46 – Barnabas

And the body suffers. So what you’re talking about here is not just function. So if everything that you’ve ever thought about body of Christ has to do with who does what you’re talking about a machine or a mechanism, not an organism designed by Christ for life. 

 

Yeah, and the reality is, in the church there are things like spleens and appendixes appendices I don’t know what it is In a book, it’s appendices which means that I’m not totally sure what those things do, but they depend on the body for life and they are part of the body, and so the first half of that verse says so we, though many, are one body in Christ. 

 

In Christ is such an important thing, because what that means is this doesn’t exist anywhere else. The only reason, in fact the only reason that Adam and I are sitting here talking is because of Christ, absolutely Because something that I wrote and said and was trying to do faithfully for Christ and through the power of Christ in one part of the country connected with somebody who Adam worked with in another part of the country, and I was invited to come talk with your team at PAR several years ago and it became a fellowship in Christ, and now we serve with one another and there’s a friendship that exists, not because of skill sets or meeting needs or checking job descriptions, but in Christ Absolutely. 

 

0:19:02 – Adam

A hundred percent. 

 

0:19:03 – Barnabas

And then the second half of that verse says so we are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. So the question was why is it so hard to leave church? It’s because, at the very least, we have gotten a taste of that reality. Yeah, members of one another. 

 

I think this side of heaven, that will always be certainly imperfect, but there are stretches of time, bodies of believers, individual churches where that is much more the case. And so when you depart a church, even if you’re departing for good reasons and we’ll talk about some of those in just a moment there is an amputation type of aspect, because you are being torn away from the membership to one another and the oneness in Christ. And that doesn’t mean that you can’t go find very healthy community and a wonderful church elsewhere, but it is an absolute loss. So even if you’ve left a church because the church has failed, you and some churches do you know there’s the sin at the leadership level or the culture of the church is hurtful. Again, there was still an aspiration to this, like there’s a sense of it was supposed to be better than this. 

 

0:20:08 – Adam

Yeah. 

 

0:20:09 – Barnabas

So even the disappointment and the hurt and the anger come back to like this is supposed to be a joining together and a membership within Christ. And when I say membership, I’m not just talking about formal church membership. That’s a formal expression of commitment at the relational and life level, and so that’s what I’m talking about. All right, so a moment ago, you know I mentioned that there are good reasons to switch churches. You know we might be opening up a Pandora’s box here, but that’s kind of what I want to spend the rest of the episode talking about is okay. 

 

You mentioned earlier that the church wasn’t always what it is now. You know it hasn’t always been so kind of certainly in the West, so sort of programmatically wealthy, if you will. Just abundance of options. You know there were times that the church in your community was your church, like it was a parish church model, so you could get in your horse and buggy and ride several miles to the church or you could not go to church. Those were your options. Now it’s we’ve got churches on every corner. We’ve got churches online. That’s a whole other discussion that we’re probably not going to get into today. 

 

We’ve got denominations, You’ve got non-denominations, You’ve got blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean this is like the Cheesecake Factory menu of churches. You just turn page after page and it’s goodness sakes, this is like Tolstoy level length here. So the question is what are good reasons to leave a church? And when I say good reasons, I don’t just mean how do I justify this, which is often the posture we take when we are having a bad attitude. How do I feel better about this? But I mean what makes it appropriate, what makes it right, how can we have a clear conscience in the moving of one church to another? 

 

0:21:41 – Adam

Yeah, I think that’s great stuff. I think the idea that you said of like there is a loss associated with leaving, even if it’s just you expected something to be more biblically based and it wasn’t Like there should always be that sense of loss. And I look back at my family and some of the stuff that we’ve gone through and we’ve had some hurt. I mean there’s been churches that have been difficult. I think of one when I was really young. This is going to sound almost like it’s made up because it’s such a surreal story here, but we are actually part of a church, highly engaged in it. You know we were involved with different ministries there. I was still a little kid and they got so politically motivated and politically involved. 

 

0:22:24 – Barnabas

Just to be clear, you’re talking about like politics of the United States, not church politics. Correct, yes. 

 

0:22:29 – Adam

Thank you for the clarification. Yeah, so the politics of the United States and working with different organizations that were so highly charged politically. Like they got to such an extent that the pastor and the deacons of the church literally. It still doesn’t sound real to say it, but they built a pipe bomb and attempted to blow up an abortion clinic. 

 

0:22:51 – Barnabas

Yeah, I mean, surreal is the nicest thing you can say about that. 

 

0:22:53 – Adam

I mean, how do you? 

 

0:22:54 – Barnabas

it’s like one of those stories you can’t make up right, right and the reason I’m laughing is not because that’s funny, but because it’s shocking that somebody who claims the name of Christ also thinks that causing mayhem and murder is a good. 

 

0:23:05 – Adam

it’s a good answer, and I mean I think I mean I didn’t talk to him obviously, but I think the thing, like they hated abortion so much and they wanted that to be, you know, done away with, and I totally understand that, but like, obviously that was not a biblical, healthy means to try and reach that goal, but they just became it wasn’t just that political, there was other things political going on that they wanted to like make a statement and and I remember when this all came down the pike and it was, you know, on the news and all this stuff, and we got to church and you know, the pastor is basically like well, you know, if you’re not with me, then leave. Yeah, and I remember leaving Like that was our last night there, that was the end of it. We never went back. And even in such a crazy story as that, like with the amount of hurt that was caused across the congregation, there was still a sense of loss and pain in departing. 

 

0:24:00 – Barnabas

That, yeah, and that’s striking because what that says is you can be 100% right in departing that, yeah, and that’s striking because what that says is you can be 100% right in departing. Like I would say, your family leaving that church was wise. Yeah, I totally agree with that decision. We could go, we could go deep on on how that church went astray when we don’t need to. But even in being absolutely right, there was genuine loss because of the community. I’m sure that was there, because even in churches that are profoundly sick, there’s often good that comes out of it. And again, the good doesn’t justify the bad. You know, you’re not trying to put these things in scales of justice. Every church should be seeking, you know, purity in Christ and getting things all the way right as much as we can. 

 

But you lose friendships, you lose relationships. There’s also a sense of aimlessness. But you lose friendships, you lose relationships. There’s also a sense of aimlessness. I was kind of anchored to this teaching, this direction, these spiritual. You know, pastors and elders are not we’re not gurus, but we are shepherds, and part of what a shepherd does is try to point people away from risky things or harmful things and towards life-giving things, sort of the Psalm 23 model, like towards greener pastures. If we can do it, let’s do that, and so you lose that when you depart, or at least the sense of that. Now I imagine y’all landed at a better place. 

 

0:25:14 – Adam

Yeah, I mean it was an interesting story to see how the Lord brought about a church plant that we were part of and that was a really neat experience in my life. 

 

0:25:21 – Barnabas

So this was the instance when you went into the home church that then met in the daycare and all that. Yeah, that’s it Gotcha. 

 

0:25:26 – Adam

So it was definitely a big change and I think the hardest thing looking back on it and I wouldn’t have been able to in any way at that age describe it is the level of hurt and the level of damage that it does. I mean a situation that well, you know across the news and everything. A situation like that especially, but even in smaller circumstances, when something major like that happens, the damage that it does to how people view the gospel and how they view the church is astounding. 

 

I have no doubt that there’s people that left there and probably never entered a church door again. 

 

0:26:03 – Barnabas

Yeah, that’s one of my greatest considerations as a pastor. 

 

that just sort of hovers at the back of my mind constantly is when a shepherd falls and in that case I would say they all fell, the sheep are vulnerable and go astray and some are wounded or killed, Like that’s just. That is what happens. And again, I’m not trying to put the pastor elder in a position that is above where God has stationed us, but there’s a reality of calling to protect and lead and care for, and the failure of a pastor leads. I know people who I’ve walked away from Christ because the pastor was found to have been a child abuser or an embezzler or, you know, cheating on a spouse or whatever the case may be, All of which I think are also good reasons to consider leaving a church. But yeah, it costs, it hurts and damages people’s faith. Right. 

 

0:26:56 – Adam

I think you know that’s why you see some of that warning given to those who desire the office of a pastor in scripture, that you know there’s a higher judged. More harshly, yeah, there’s a higher judgment because you are leading these people and you’re presenting the gospel in a way that is inaccurate if you’re living in those ways. Yes, and it’s definitely one of those things that I look back on and I’m like did that really happen? You know, like it’s such a bizarre story. 

 

0:27:22 – Barnabas

Well, I’m and frankly I’m glad you were young, because the impact on it what were you six, seven, eight years old? That’s going to be a lot less hurtful at the heart level than if you had been 16, 17 years old, where all of a sudden you’re like, oh, these Christians are phonies, these people are all lying, they’re crazy, and that which is a thought that many people have when they encounter that so maybe this is a good point to just ask you a question. 

 

0:27:48 – Adam

So I refer to politics and obviously we live in a country where we have the ability to vote and I believe we should do everything we can to place our vote and be involved in healthy ways. But this church specifically had really gone off from focusing on the gospel and they diverted to other things. They were writing, constantly writing, you know different levels of government and stuff which isn’t in and of itself sinful, yeah, but it became such a focus for them that they left the true teaching of what the gospel is about and it became this kind of a secondary issue to the primary, which should have been this kind of a secondary issue to the primary, which should have been, you know, telling people about Jesus and spreading the good news of his love. So in a church like that, I mean, I totally, a hundred percent believe, amidst all the tears and everything that were departure, that my parents did the right thing. 

 

But politics in the church is obviously a real hot topic today and I know we can’t get into all of that. There’s just not the time or the depth of discussion that we need to be able to do that in a podcast like this. But how would you say in a situation, different churches have different levels of political involvement and it’s not all bad. It’s not the primary purpose of the church. So how would you kind of break that down and say, well, when’s it a time where you would say, hey, like the church is focusing on and your messages every week are surrounding government and all that which God is still in the sovereign control of and God is still turning the hearts of people where he chooses, even those in leadership. Yeah, how do we break that down and say, okay, like this is an unhealthy level or this is understandable? 

 

0:29:29 – Barnabas

Yeah, trying to avoid an undue controversy. 

 

0:29:32 – Adam

That’s why I was like that’s kind of a tough question. No, I think there’s. 

 

0:29:35 – Barnabas

I think there’s. There’s two things that come to mind. That sort of can hopefully give listeners kind of a paradigm for how to think about this Cause. Again, all of this is under the banner of what are good reasons to leave churches. I would say if a church gets overly fixated on politics, that’s a good reason to leave. Now, not immediately, there’s probably an approaching of the elders, the pastors, expressing concerns. 

 

You want to be an invested church member, church participant first, but that falls in the paradigm or the category of when we have made secondary issues first, like when we have made secondary issues first, like when we have moved those things to matters of first importance. Paul uses the phrase matters of first importance in I want to say first Corinthians, but I could be wrong on that and that’s a category that church leadership needs to hold really dear, because those are the matters that we live and die by as a church and in our faith. So we’re talking matters of orthodox doctrine. When I say orthodox, I’m not talking about the orthodox church, I’m talking about, like, classic Christianity. We all think this is what is true. So we’re talking about, you know, we believe in the revelation of God through his word, the inerrancy and authority and sufficiency of scripture. 

 

0:30:44 – Adam

We’re talking about. 

 

0:30:44 – Barnabas

Trinitarian theology. We believe in a three in one God, we believe in the full humanity and full deity of Christ, and you just run down the line. We believe in a gospel message that says that Christ is the sole savior for sinners, those kinds of things. These are things that Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodists and we can agree on these things Right, even if the nuances of how we teach them, approach them, are going to differ. If those things are not primary in your church, if those things are not the things that people are walking away on Sundays holding dear. 

 

You have moved something else to first priority. That could be social justice, that could be politics, that could be inspiration. A lot of times, you know, we have moved humans to the top and the whole sort of living your best life. You’re the victor, like no, that’s, christ is the victor, I’m reliant on Christ. That’s what I should walk away with. I should walk away with absolute peace and joy and freedom because Christ won, not because I’m a victor, those kinds of things. So yeah, the whole paradigm of matters of first importance and then matters of lesser importance and this is not a black and white matters of importance and matters of unimportance. 

 

0:31:56 – Adam

So let’s take example. 

 

0:31:57 – Barnabas

As long as we’re, going to get mad about stuff, let’s go so something like oh, baptism Baptism is a good example on this. There are matters of first importance. We just talked about those. The mode of baptism is a matter of second importance. You can be an absolutely faithful, vibrant follower of Christ who sprinkles infants or dunks believers, and I anticipate spending eternity in heaven with both, and we’re going to find out when we get to heaven who was right or if were both wrong or if we were both right Like. 

 

0:32:33 – Adam

I don’t know. 

 

0:32:34 – Barnabas

And that’s like somebody is going to be mad at that. Especially the Baptist. Baptists hold that doctrine very dear, but when we make that a primary doctrine, we’re actually creating barriers to knowing Jesus, rather than inviting people into Christ and saying, hey, this is our understanding of this and we are going to seek to faithfully obey the Bible, because the Bible does say that baptism is obedient and right. Okay, so that’s an example of how you can keep things, hold them dear, without making them primary. So that’s one category of things. It’s just matters of first and second importance. Politics, I would say politics isn’t even second importance because of the second thing I’m about to say, which is we should give weight to things in the same way that the Bible gives weight to them. Now, there’s a matter of interpretation there. I mean, let’s just take quantity number of verses about the number of verses about government and how Christians should respond to government. Pretty slim, they’re very present, Right they? 

 

0:33:32 – Adam

are there, they’re pretty slim. 

 

0:33:35 – Barnabas

So if that’s the bulk of your preaching or if you’ve slanted everything to like building a new Christendom, you know we’re going to take the kingdom back for Christ. I’m like what you’ve done is just said. There’s a whole theology there of like kind of taking and we’re going to conquer the promised land, except that those were promises for a different people at a different time, under a different covenant, and I realized I just made all the dispensation was mad but okay. 

 

And so we need to weigh things as the Bible weighs them, and the Bible weighs them profoundly centered around Jesus Christ. So if that is not the center of our ministry, if that’s not the hub of our preaching, if that’s not the hub of our preaching, if that’s not the culture of our church, Christ reflecting, we have fallen off of one side or the other. And so back to the initial question of what are good reasons to leave churches for anything, for inspiration, for programs, for legalism, for politics, for secondary issues. Again, approach it well, and then we’re going to talk in the next episode about what does leaving well, look like that’s a whole separate thing. 

 

but like you don’t just sort of quietly slip out the door, you don’t ghost the church, you don’t Irish goodbye, but Irish goodbye. You never heard Irish goodbye. 

 

0:34:50 – Adam

I’ve never heard that. 

 

0:34:50 – Barnabas

The Irish goodbye is like the person at the party who you look up and you’re like, hey, where’d Adam go? And they’re like, oh, he left 20 minutes ago and you just sort of leave without saying goodbye. Okay, probably call it the introvert goodbye now. But if Christ is not going to be held primary and be the primary driver, there are good reasons to consider leaving. And I think that banner is valuable because you can break that down. Because if somebody says, well, what about you? Know, I was at a church and I wasn’t feeling fed, okay, yeah, I’ve heard that, yeah, that’s a very common thing I just wasn’t feeling fed. Now the first thing you want to do is self-examine. Are you in a receptive posture? Do you come in with a very narrow bullseye? The pastor needs to hit Like there’s a difference between not feeling fed and not getting what you ordered. That’s good. 

 

You know if I growing up, my mom always had the like this is what I’m making for dinner and you’re going to eat it, right, you know? Thankfully, she was a good cook, so we got fed well, but like there was no menu at our house, there was no selections, it was mom made dinner. We were thankful and we were well fed. Yeah, if you go to a gourmet restaurant, you order something and then you send it back to the kitchen If it’s not exactly what you wanted, there’s sort of a but a lot of people approach church like that and then they’ll mistake that sort of gourmet snobbery for not feeling fed. I wanted a sermon that was like this if that’s not what text we’re in, you know that kind of thing. 

 

0:36:10 – Adam

And I think people do that, that same thing, in a different way, and that’s by. You know, the whole week that they’re gone, things of Christ, things of scripture are absent from their life, and then they come in and expect that one meal a week to be able to sustain them. And so they get, they start getting down their week and they’re not in the word, they’re not in prayer, they’re not talking about spiritual things at all during the week, and then you get into a situation where you don’t feel fed, because even one meal a week, a great meal, is not enough to sustain anyone. 

 

0:36:40 – Barnabas

Yeah, or you have spent your entire week on a diet of spiritual like Twinkies and cotton candy and ice cream, all of which is delicious and all of which will make you profoundly unhealthy. 

 

0:36:51 – Adam

We got some peanut butter M&Ms here. 

 

0:36:52 – Barnabas

Right, and if that was our sole diet, we would be deeply unhealthy people. And so, you know, oftentimes we are training ourselves to be fed by trash. And so then we encounter healthy, substantive food that may not be like, frankly, every preacher not brilliant, hopefully faithful, which is really what we’re going for. So, like they might be serving up peanut butter and jelly, they might be serving up, like you know, just we’re talking like grilled chicken with minimal seasoning. So this is not spectacular, but it’s nutritious and it’s sustaining, and that’s because it’s of Christ. 

 

And so, again, the question of am I being fed is really a question of what is my appetite for Christ first. So if I know that I have an appetite for Christ and then I go but they’re not giving me Christ, that might be a reason to leave. And you know. The same is true in the music. You know musical preferences. I don’t know that we need to get into that, that’s it. That’s a whole thing. 

 

I don’t think that’s a reason to leave a church If into that, that’s it, that’s a whole thing. I don’t think that’s a reason to leave a church if you don’t like the style of music. However, if the songs that are sung say nothing about Christ, there’s not sort of a cohesive like. These things are supportive of the message, so the message was pointing to Christ, and then we are responding in worship or lifting our hearts in praise to Christ, and it’s all just sort of repetitive nonsense, which a lot of songs can be. There’s also an abundance of wonderful stuff, new and old alike. For sure. That’s a reason to consider it and, again, start with seeing if you can contribute to a solution and if you can’t, it might be time to go find a church where Christ is prioritized. 

 

0:38:25 – Adam

Yeah, and I think you know maybe another topic that’s like really close to what you’re saying, as far as you know people’s appetite and what they get fed and all that is people say, well, I don’t get fed. You know, I feel like I leave here and it’s not meeting my needs is another one that I’ve heard many times is like, well, I just don’t feel connected. Yeah, yep, yeah, yep. So what part of that is relying on the church and what part of that is relying upon, like when we’ve gone to a new church? I mean it does take time and effort, like concerted, intentional effort, and I know we’ve been to churches where people aren’t friendly. So how do you break that down? 

 

0:39:05 – Barnabas

Yeah, I think that’s another one, that it falls again under the banner of a church that is shaped by Christ, but it’s not a direct line because it’s not verbal. So if the preaching doesn’t reflect Christ, that’s pretty easy to see. He just got up there and talked about not Jesus. That’s pretty obvious. The same with the music, the community aspect, the relational aspect. It’s a little bit less obvious because what we’re talking about is a culture in church that reflects the heart of Christ. 

 

0:39:31 – Adam

Okay. 

 

0:39:32 – Barnabas

So that’s different and that is more like what you might call the aroma of Christ, which is another biblical phrase, like I’m not just pulling stuff out of my tail here that idea that you walk into a place and you kind of like it’s in the air and you go okay, there’s something going on here. People are treating one another with a kind of dignity. What kind of love? 

 

gentleness, joy, but also with the expanse, like this doesn’t mean like just upbeat, relentless, like happiness, because if there’s that kind of dignity and love, there’s also profound room for lament and grieving and for the person who needs time to heal, like one of the things that you know we talk at our church often it’s sort of a recurring theme, so that we don’t lose sight of it is we want to emphasize gospel, safety and time. Gospel being the truth of the gospel We’ve talked at length about that Absolutely. Safety being a context where people can come in bringing whatever with them and encounter the friend of sinners and not be chased off in a judgmental, legalistic way. That doesn’t mean that we’re okay with people just living in sin, but it does mean that if you are in a place where you are just beginning your journey towards healing or towards repentance, okay, and then that’s time. If the Holy Spirit has been patient with me, how can I not be patient with someone else? And people change on the Holy Spirit’s timeline, not mine. 

 

So I might be very impatient with a sinner or a hurting person who just keeps bringing back the same problem, but the Holy Spirit is profoundly patient. So you can get a sense for that at a church and so you want to look for that, you know, and it’s going to express itself differently younger church, older church, whatever but it’s going to have a similar like okay, this is it. 

 

But the other piece of it is like you have to throw yourself into it. Yeah for sure. If you approach a church waiting for it to welcome you in and we talked about this in the friendship episode, so I’m not going to go long on it are on the sidelines waiting to be invited into everything you are saying. Either they need to make me a member of them or I am not a member of them. As opposed to the Romans 12, we are members of one another in Christ. So if you walk in in the paradigm of, well, I’m in Christ and I know they’re in Christ, we just don’t know each other yet you then have the optimism of genuine relationship. 

 

If you walk in and you say, well, they need to make me feel welcome, that’s actually a pretty self-centered perspective. And so, yes, there are churches that are deeply unwelcoming. That’s that whole lack of Christ culture and again, that might be a reason to not stick around. This is not a healthy place. But again, there’s a self-evaluation aspect here that is pretty significant, of looking at your own heart and going do I see myself as a member of the body of Christ, such that there’s the potential for genuine relationship here? 

 

0:42:16 – Adam

Yeah, and I think you know, like, if Bob goes to church A and attends for a while and just never feels welcome and then goes to church B and attends for a while and never feels welcome, and goes to church C, d, e and F and attends for a while and never feels welcome, he goes to church C, d, e and F and attends for a while and never feels welcome. Then there’s this question of is Bob part of the problem, right? Like, is it Bob or is it the churches? 

 

0:42:38 – Barnabas

Yeah, and very frankly it might be both. I have a good friend who loves Jesus and has served at multiple churches. In every church he has been at in his adult life he has gotten burned, mistreated unfairly, let go unfairly power played by the church, whatever the case may be. So he has reached a point where he still loves Jesus and is profoundly skeptical of the church. 

 

And because the other thing is he’s he’s watched people be treated better at the same churches that he was at and so, like he has, he doesn’t have blinders on. So there’s a context where people can throw themselves into the church repeatedly and be spit back out, shoot up and spit out, and I’d say let’s end this section addressing that Like that’s a very real thing, that happens. You know, we’ve kind of talked about more of the preferential or the evaluative aspects of leaving church. There’s a sinful aspect too, where churches are full of sinners and often either the culture of the church or the leadership of the church and those two things go hand in hand sin against people, and I mean on the extreme ends. There’s things like abuse that exists in churches not all churches, thank God, and probably not as prevalent as the news reports would make it look, because salacious things are news, happy things are not, but it’s prevalent enough that we should pay attention to it. And I’ve talked to enough people who have experienced mistreatment and, okay, I don’t know how you define abuse, but I do know how you define sin and that was sinful. 

 

And there are churches that are religious shells. There’s a gathering of people and no vibrance in Christ, and so what you encounter there is not Christ-like at all, either in the pulpit or in the pews, and so that reality listener who has been wounded by the church. We need to acknowledge that. Those are appropriate reasons to leave a church. Sometimes churches start out healthy and become that, and it’s not just appropriate. I would encourage you to get out if the church context is that, because there is a promise elsewhere for you. There’s a promise of hope, a promise of restoration, and what I would say is don’t give up on the church because a church has failed Christ Absolutely. And again, we’ll talk in the next episode about transitioning churches a little bit more. This one is more focused on the reality of leaving and, yeah, don’t feel tied to a church morally If you are being profoundly mistreated in the church and don’t give up on Christ’s vision for his church just because somebody completely failed to live up to it. 

 

0:45:14 – Adam

Yeah, I love that. I think as a takeaway from you know all we’ve discussed. There’s a whole lot of different things we’ve looked at. Don’t give up on the church. It’s still Christ’s redeemed body that he is going to bring to meet him, you know, at the throne room. And so there is that hope that you know one day it will be all gathered together and there will be perfection. But until then there is going to be those times of hurt, and some of those are completely a hundred percent valid because we’re all sinners on this earth. And I hope that as we go to church, that when we leave and walk out, that our eyes are lifted up to God and we’re just enamored and in awe of him and the focus isn’t on us. And I think, as we can do that and we find churches that do that, it’s a great thing to rejoice in. 

 

0:45:57 – Barnabas

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it feels like a little bit of a strange pivot because you know there’s kind of a heartfelt somber moment to end on. But it is time to go to our curious question of the week. And isn’t a silly question, so don’t worry, we’re not whiplashing you here but hopefully kind of a deep breath after an intense conversation. 

 

The curious question of the week is a question we throw out there to let our minds wander, just to think about the world in a little broader and from a different perspective, a little broader way. So the question of the week is this what is one moment in history? Adam, not church history. 

 

0:46:30 – Adam

We’re not allowed to pick church history. 

 

0:46:31 – Barnabas

No church history allowed, I got it. What is one moment in history that you would have liked to be present for? 

 

0:46:37 – Adam

One moment, that’s just such a big question. 

 

0:46:40 – Barnabas

Yes, history is a long time. There are debates about how long, but you know. 

 

0:46:45 – Adam

I mean there’s lots of things in history that I wish I could have. I’m like a technically builder, like how did this get made, sort of thing. So there’s like some moments like that that just kind of pop into mind Like how did they do this? How did they build the pyramids and the Sphinx? Like to see that would have been astounding. Aliens man, it probably would have been, you know, it probably would have been some decades of sitting there and watching. 

 

0:47:11 – Barnabas

But it would have been some decades of sitting there and watching, but it would have been an amazing time to see some of these things. Yeah, when I say moment, I mean like event, so like the building of the pyramids probably took hundreds of years, but like that’s an event worth seeing, to be like oh, that’s how they did it, that’s who did it, those kinds of things, okay, I get you, so what’s your one? That was a. 

 

0:47:25 – Adam

I didn’t like my answer that was a preamble, not an answer man, I think just like being there for, like some of these, that’s such a tough. I’m having a hard time, man. I’m having a hard time landing this plane. Why don’t you go and I’ll think about it. 

 

0:47:40 – Barnabas

Here’s the thing. Notice the question said a moment in history. 

 

0:47:43 – Adam

I know there’s just so many, it’s hard to pick a good moment or pick four. 

 

0:47:45 – Barnabas

I pick a good moment, or pick four, I don’t care, like just rattle them off, I can go first Again. Like you said, there are a ton. You’re going to sense a recurring theme because you know earlier we talked about in this question people you’d want to have dinner with, and one of the people I mentioned was Jackie Robinson, April 15th 1947, Ebbets Field was the day that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball and did not have a very notable game, I think he got like one infield hit or something like that. 

 

But that moment in history at that time in our country was one that I would have loved to have been present for. And I picked that in part because of the significance of the moment and in part because it’s a moment, you know, like I have a lot of things that there’s like I would have loved to have kind of seen different aspects of major military campaigns or this or that, but that’s one that you can attach an enormous amount of significance to that day, that moment, that first at bat, the first time he stepped on the field, and so, yeah, that’s one that I would love to have been present for. 

 

0:48:44 – Adam

Yeah, I mean, for some reason my mind is kind of like goes to those military battles and stuff like that reason. My mind is kind of like goes to those military battles and stuff like that. I think being there at like Appomattox when Lee surrendered, would have been like that would have been an amazing moment to see and to kind of take in this the weight of that. Um, so that would be one thing that pops in my yeah, I mean thinking like Lincoln’s. 

 

0:49:04 – Barnabas

What is the second inaugural? The famous one, Gettysburg address some of those yeah I mean, the Gettysburg Address is like 200 words. 

 

0:49:12 – Adam

It’s not long at all. 

 

0:49:13 – Barnabas

Yeah, but even some of those where it’s like man, we have these memorized now, or at least at one point we did Back in sixth grade, back in elementary, middle school those have been amazing. All right, we’ve wandered a little bit through history. Now we’ve come to our curmudgeon moment. This is a moment where we take great delight in being grumpy and airing our grievances to pull a Festivus, and so here we go. The curmudgeon moment topic of the episode is I got this one. 

 

0:49:40 – Adam

Okay, slow drivers in the left lane. Barnabas, this is your favorite thing, right? 

 

0:49:45 – Barnabas

My favorite thing to get mad about. 

 

0:49:48 – Adam

And you always go right at the speed limit or below, I’m sure, so you’re never in the left lane. 

 

0:49:53 – Barnabas

The speed limit is to quote Captain Barbosa from Pirates of the Caribbean, more of a guideline really oh, okay. 

 

0:50:01 – Adam

Okay, that’s what the two cops on the way here thought too. 

 

0:50:04 – Barnabas

You were speeding, they didn’t pull you over. I’ve talked to cops. They don’t pull people over for going over the speed limit. They pull people over for going excessively over the speed limit or driving unsafely, which is entirely up to them to define, which means that you just need to be really good at playing the game of a where are the cops? And B what is the cop thinking? 

 

0:50:23 – Adam

Is that why you use ways when you drive? 

 

0:50:26 – Barnabas

Partly, but also it’s good at redirecting around bad traffic, which is a thing that exists often in Nashville. So slow drivers in the left lane there are two camps of thinkers on this. There are those who think that I’m going over the speed limit, ergo I can drive in the fast lane. Okay, those are the wrong people. Then the right people think I’m going faster than the cars around me, so I should go in the left lane because it is the passing lane which is actually legal. 

 

The law contradicts itself on this because it says don’t speed, but also, if you’re passing anybody and you’re going faster than them, go in the left lane. Okay, yeah, that’s true. And so those people who set their crews at like six over the speed limit and sit in the left lane, you’re wrong and you’re mistreating those around you and you don’t understand the purpose of the lane and it should just be Audubon rules all the time, which means that if I’m going faster, you get out of my way in the left lane. All the other lanes go as slow as you want. I don’t care if you go 32 in the right lane, just get over there. But in the left lane I should be free to go as fast as I want. And, to be clear, I don’t drive like 100 down the freeway, I’m like an 8 to 12 over person most of the time. 

 

0:51:34 – Adam

Well, this has been interesting legal explanations with Barnabas Piper here. 

 

Yeah, I’d say legal gymnastics, because I’m not even sure that anything I said is legal, but yeah, it does drive me crazy, I can’t tell you. Especially, then someone’s in the left lane and they’re going barely over the speed limit or at the speed limit, and it’s like they’re just more comfortable there, like they just feel like they have to deal with less traffic. So then you start to go around them and as soon as you get beside them they start to accelerate so that you can’t pass them. 

 

And they run you into the back of a semi-truck or whatever. That’s what really drives me. I’ll pass them if I’ll just change lanes to go around them, and it does aggravate me, but when they try and accelerate so that I can’t get past them, that’s what really gets on my nerves. 

 

0:52:18 – Barnabas

So I have a lot of complaints about other drivers, but we can air other grievances on other days. Um, it’s the moral high ground left lane drivers that get me. So they’re going whatever they have deemed the righteous left lane speed, the max, the righteous max speed. 

 

0:52:33 – Adam

Yeah, so they’re like. 

 

0:52:34 – Barnabas

I’m going seven over. This is fast enough. And then you pass them on the right and they, like, give you the finger, or they speed up to not let you in, or they then tailgate you. And you’re like all you had to do was move over one lane. I would have passed you. I wouldn’t have made eye contact. I’m not giving you any consideration whatsoever, positively or negatively. You’re just a vehicle on the road and then you can move back over and go as slow as you want. Not in my way. 

 

0:52:59 – Adam

So the highways would just be so much more friendlier. Here’s the thing. 

 

0:53:03 – Barnabas

I’ve discovered I don’t know how many listeners we have from Ohio. Ohioans are particularly angry about this left lane thing. 

 

I’ve driven through Ohio once or twice and each time multiple cars that I pass. So I come up on them on the left lane, they don’t move. I pass them on the right, they give me the finger. Then last week in Nashville this is not anywhere near Ohio right Quite far away, I come up on a car in the left lane going three over and I tailgate them for like a mile, they don’t move. I pass them on the right, they give me the finger. 

 

I’m like this is either the same person or like there’s something in the water in Ohio to make people get really mad about this, yeah, but anyway, those are some thoughts on slow left lane drivers in my curmudgeon moment. All right, well in. Ohio. I have thoughts on Ohio too. 

 

0:53:54 – Adam

My wife’s from Ohio, so I got to be careful there. But she’s a great driver, so does she know how to use the left lane appropriately? She’s good at it, well done. 

 

0:54:00 – Barnabas

I appreciate that. I’m glad it’s been encouraging, thought-provoking, at least a little bit entertaining touch here and there. This one was just probably a little bit more serious than some of the previous episodes, but thank you so much for listening and tune in next week.