Most issues that we face day to day within the church stem from a faulty understanding of who the church is and what it is called to do. When people leave the church – sometimes legitimately, often less so – their issues typically stem from a difference in ecclesiology. The people leaving may not recognise it that way, but it is almost always the case.

I recently wrote about getting your polity and ecclesiology right before problems arise in your church. In it, I made the claim, ‘the overwhelming majority of issues in our churches stem from a lack of thinking on ecclesiology.’ You can read the whole article here.

Most issues that we face day to day within the church stem from a faulty understanding of who the church is and what it is called to do. When people leave the church – sometimes legitimately, often less so – their issues typically stem from a difference in ecclesiology. The people leaving may not recognise it that way, but it is almost always the case.

Let me share some recent examples of this phenomena. First, let me share some examples of people leaving their church over obvious ecclesiological matters. I have seen people leave because they objected to people becoming members without being baptised and others who didn’t like their church’s position that one should be baptised to join the church. Those are ecclesiological positions. I have seen people leave because they did not like open communion and I’ve similarly seen people leave because they didn’t like closed communion. Those are ecclesiological matters. I’ve seen folks leave because they didn’t like the way church discipline was practised (whether it wasn’t applied at all, it was applied to heavily or they objected to its application in any scenario whatsoever). All these clearly and obvious stem from views on ecclesiology and polity.

But I said the overwhelming majority of issues in the church stem from ecclesiology. So what about the less obvious examples? One minister told me of a couple leaving his church because they disagreed over the his use of contraception. No doubt the couple leaving would insist this is a matter of sin on the part of the minister (NB: he wasn’t advocating abortion or abortifacients.) This emanates from a view that the minister’s role is to determine the choices of the church (or, it is members’ role to determine the choices of the minister) in respect to the minutiae of their lives. I have no intention of going into the rights and wrongs of that position. However, while there may be discussions about such things in the church, to insist that matters of adiaphoraought to be determined and enforced by the minister or the church members is an ecclesiological position. The view essentially insists this is what the church, its leaders and members ought to be doing.

I know of folks who have left churches because of the mode of preaching. Specifically, a minister who typically preached systematic, expository sermons through books of the Bible decided to preach a series that was topical. So, off a couple went because this was (in their view) an entirely inappropriate approach to scripture and the teaching programme of the church. Again, without getting into the rights and wrongs of that, it is an ecclesiological view of what the church ought to be doing; namely, teaching its people in a particular, prescribed manner.

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