Why People Leave Churches

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Stephen Feith, lead pastor, and I want to start by pointing out something that I think you all know and you probably all have experience with. And that is that people, again, yourself included, myself, we leave churches for all sorts of reasons. All sorts of reasons. Sometimes a church feels too big. Other times the church feels too small. Depending on your preferences on church size, that could be a deterrent to you sticking around. Sometimes the church feels too conservative, sometimes too liberal. Sometimes it feels like the church talks too much about one issue and not enough about these other issues. Sometimes something simple like the music changes. Sometimes it's complicated like leadership changes. As friendships do, not just in the church, but outside, they shift and people get hurt. Sometimes people leave because they're restless, and other times they leave because something has gone genuinely wrong. And I want to point out and open up this way because that's exactly why John writes his first letter to this church community.

The Question That Holds Us

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These things of people leaving church communities have been happening for thousands of years. And while every departure is different and certainly nuanced, beneath those situations, there's this question that I believe we need to ask, especially as we approach 1 John, it is what actually holds Christian community together? What holds us together? Is it really shared preference? We like the music, we like the teaching style, we like that it's on the West side, and that meets at 1030. Is it something deeper? Is it a shared politics, political ideology? Is that what unites us? Perhaps it's history, shared style. This one's really common in 2026. How about a shared frustration of other churches? I like this church because they're not like all these other ones. That comes up a lot. Perhaps we like a church because it got a strong leader or strong personality, a certain vision of what church should be like. But those aren't any of the things that first John or John here is going to write about in his first letter.

A Divided Church Prompts 1 John

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He's writing to a group of followers of Christ, a very small Christian community that has been shaken by division. That's how actually prompts John to write is this conflict. People have left the community. The church is just kind of living in the aftermath, picking up the pieces. And behind the separation and the conflict, the division that John is talking about are serious disagreements about things like Jesus, sin, love, truth, and what genuine Christian life should look like. John isn't writing some sort of spiritual abstract theology essay. He is writing to stabilize a disrupted community. And for some of you in the building today, you know very much firsthand what that's like. What's it like when things break and you're left? You're like, well, I'm pretty sure Jesus' still out there and Jesus still has something for me, but what do I do now? And the first thing I want to point out is that no one is immune to this. Not Madison Church, not the other churches in Madison, not big churches, small churches, right-leaning churches, left-leaning churches. This was a church led by one of Jesus' closest friends, and they still ran into this issue. It's going to happen to everyone, everywhere, all time. So let's see what John has to offer us.

John Starts With Eyewitness Jesus

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If you want to follow along in those house Bibles, you certainly can. If you have your own, feel free to pull that out. Smartphones, whatever you want. I definitely encourage highlighting or underlining in your Bible. I do believe deeply it is a book that's meant to be written in. First thing that John does is not analyze all the personalities involved or explain every detail of conflict. I don't know about you, but that is always where I like to start. I don't like to go through the emotional processing or anything like that. I want to know who are the players, what their problem is, what the conflict is, and how exactly can we solve it? I'm going to read from the NASB today, which is a little different than your NLT, but that's because the NASB does a, I believe, a little bit better of a job at communicating what John wants to do in this very first verse. John writes, What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands. So, in the context of this letter, when he says in the beginning, he's talking about the foundational truth that he started the church with. It wasn't like this place needs a new church. It wasn't anything like that. It was the foundational truth that Jesus was here. He was a real person, he lived a real life, he died, he rose from the dead, and that literally it changes everything. It will change your life. And so that is what this church came from. John is reminding them that the faith that they received, it wasn't recently like invented, it wasn't revised, it wasn't an evolution of something else, it wasn't improved by those who had a deeper insight. He says, before all of this, it was Jesus. And he doesn't start off again with like some theological argument. He actually makes it superhuman as he's writing, and he says, You know me. They know each other. We're we're friends here. And he says, We have heard this with our own ears. We have seen this with our eyes. We have looked at it. We've touched it with our own hands. It's all of this sensory language. He's not trying to make an argument with you. He says, You already know this. You experienced this. How can you forget what you already know? This message of Jesus, it isn't all rumor, it isn't speculation, it isn't some private spiritual experience. It actually happened. And we were witness to it. You can trust what your eyes saw, you can trust what your ears heard. If there's any doubt, remember you touched this Jesus who was really human. We continue to read in verse one concerning the word of life, and the

God Reveals Life To Us

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life was revealed, and we have seen and testified and proclaimed to you the eternal life, which was the Father and was revealed to us. And for some of you like scripture nerds who love theology, you're like, well, that sounds an awful lot like the Gospel of John. And correct, it does. It's the same author of both of these, I believe the same author of both of these texts. And so there's a little bit of overlap, but still very different reasons for writing. He says, I'm talking about Jesus. Make no mistake about it. The life that was revealed. And he's telling them we did not stumble upon him. We did not accidentally find God. God came to us. The movement of the Christian faith is that God saw you first and pursued you first, and you responded. The movement of the gospel is from God to us. The community, not then, not now. We don't ascend to this life. We don't uncover this life through some sort of spiritual progress. All the mysteries that we know are revealed to us by God Himself. Then John repeats that language of witness. He brings it back to the humanness. He says, We have seen and we testify. He's not defending tradition. He's not saying, Well, this is what was passed down to me and passed down to me and passed down to me, and this is where we're at now, or this is what the council decided. He says, This is the message that I received. I walked with him for years. I saw him nap. I saw him eat. I saw him with bad hair days, and I also saw him raise the dead and walk on water. And in the divided church, what we can speculate based on what we're going to read in the following weeks and months, and based on how John is kind of, he will move to an argument here soon. But what we can speculate is that there were people in the church who claimed to have a better understanding than Jesus, of Jesus, than the leaders in place. He calls this life revealed the eternal life, which was the life with the Father and the life that was revealed to us. The phrase reaches behind Jesus' earthly life without leaving history behind. And actually, a better translation might be the fullness of life to come, not just eternal life, not just a permanency sense. And I think that in English, when we hear eternal, we just think of permanency. But the word is more loaded than that. It is the life to come. Yes, that life to come is permanent, but that life to come is full and there's wholeness. And it's all of those things that John will write about in Revelation. No more tears, no more crying, no more heartbreak, no more grief. That is what he is talking to. So John's attempt to stabilize the church isn't to do a character assassinate assassination that, oh my gosh, those guys, they they suck, they've always sucked. This just confirmed what we already knew. And it isn't like I'm gonna argue with you. John just says, hey, I knew him. You knew him. Let's stabilize around that, who Jesus is, who we know him to be. And then the final verses of the passage are three

Fellowship Comes From Proclaiming Christ

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and four. John says, What we have seen and heard, there's the sensory language again, may you not forget what we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write so that our joy, so that our joy may be complete, may be made complete. This was more than a reminder of Christian teaching. John is now transitioning, and he writes that the message being proclaimed to them is the same message that grounded in all of the witnesses and what they have also seen and also heard. It wasn't just John. And this church doesn't need a different message, a newer message, a more advanced version of the message. It doesn't need a more polished and marketable version of the message. It just needs to remain in what was already proclaimed. Just remain in Jesus. And it sounds so easy and so simple. Yeah, I'll just remain. But for those of you who have been a Christian for probably more than a week, you know that remaining is challenging. It's difficult to stay put. John says, I we have proclaimed it so you may have fellowship with us. This isn't Jesus and his 12 and some chosen apostles afterwards. John is saying this message is for you, it's for me, it's for your family, it's for every person everywhere. When John speaks of fellowship, he's not describing warm relationships or a pleasant community life. He's talking about the shared participation, shared participation and the apostolic message of life together in Jesus. The fellowship that John wants for you and me, for his original hearers, those people you sent the original letter to, is not reconnection with church leaders, a reunion with a fractured community. He's calling them to something bigger than that. He wants them to reconnect with God. There's been division, there's been brokenness. But he says, before we fix any of that, let's return. Let's return to where we started. Let's return to Christ. Now, I know we're not living 2,000 years ago with John. I mean, there's nobody here who could say, I've seen Jesus with my own eyes, I've touched him with my own hands, I've heard him. You would have had to have lived 2,000 years ago. We're not part of that very first conflict. We don't know every detail, and we won't. You can read the whole letter in probably 10 or 15 minutes, and you're not going to get any details of who left, what they claimed, how the division unfolded, the dominoes, so to speak, that started to follow fall. We're not eyewitnesses. But like John's first hears, we do live in a world with competing claims about Jesus. Like them, we know that church conflict leaves people disoriented, not just for hours or days, but weeks and months. And it's when these things happen that we can also be tempted to look for something newer, something deeper, something more impressive, something immediately satisfying, or something that just takes the pain away for a little bit right now. And like them, then our fellowship depends on the same foundation. The eternal life the Father God has revealed to us through Jesus Christ. Christianity begins with God making himself known through the person of Jesus. The life was revealed. Those witnesses saw it and heard it. The message was proclaimed, and through that proclamation, people were brought into fellowship with God, but not just with God. With one another. Fellowship then is not something the church can manufacture.

Affinity Isn’t The Same As Fellowship

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It's not something that we can create. Fellowship. It's a topic. It's like after church fellowship or the fellowshipping is great. Come out tonight and enjoy a time of fellowship, as if it's something that we can produce, and it's not. I'd make the argument with you today that we can create affinity. We can gather people with similar preferences, backgrounds, personalities, tastes, and frustrations. And those things certainly create connection and friendship. It makes us feel comfortable. But John is talking about something way deeper than affinity. He's talking about something way different than all we have the same preferences and personalities. Christian fellowship is that shared participation in the life of God through Jesus Christ. And that becomes especially important when fellowship gets strained. And it will get strained. Because anytime two or more gather, Jesus isn't the only one there. Conflict is as well. And we will experience conflict and people will disappoint us. We'll be confused at the answers given or the answers withheld. We won't understand the division. And the temptation is to usually try to rebuild fellowship on something else. We almost fell into that trap. Here are the new policies, the new procedures, here are the new bylaws, here's what we're gonna do different, so that this never ever happens again. But John reminds us. I mean, John reminds me. We're not supposed to rebuild community that way. Supposed to rebuild it on Christ to remain. We try to rebuild around agreement. If we can just get everyone back on the same page again, if we can just get the right people to lead, things will feel better. If we can create the right environment, people will come back. But John starts with Jesus and he says, What we have seen and heard and proclaimed to you so that you may have the fruit that is fellowship. Fellowship comes from the proclamation of Christ. So the deepest question that we should be asking anytime there's conflict or disappointment or confusion is not, do we prefer all the same things or how do we get united around the same preferences? It's not even do we feel close right now? Do we feel intimate with one another? Rather, the question that we ought to be asking is are we still gathered around the real Jesus Christ? Because if our fellowship is built on preferences, it will fracture when our preferences change. And preferences change. If it's built on personality, it will fracture when people disappoint us. If it's built on nostalgia, it will fracture when the past cannot be recovered. But if our fellowship, and not just at Madison Church, but Christian fellowship is built around Jesus, then the foundation is deeper than our moods and our preferences, our disappointments, our conflicts. And so I think for a challenge that I would give you and myself today, something simple, but certainly not shallow, is to not build your church life, your community on anything other than Christ. To not pursue something out of affinity, but to seek real relationship with Jesus. Remember that affinity says we belong together because we are alike. But fellowship says we belong together because we share in Christ with one another. In John 15, Jesus says, I am the vine and you are the branches. And the one who remains in me and I in him bears much fruit, but apart from me, you can do nothing. And then just a few verses later, he says, This is my commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you. That's exactly sounds so familiar with what John is writing. You could tell John was sitting there when Jesus is teaching in John 15.

Communion Brings Us Back To Center

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Eternal life. The life to come is with the Father, and it's been revealed through Jesus. And that life was witnessed, proclaimed, shared. And through that we are brought into fellowship with God. Christian community, it doesn't belong begin with us, it begins with Jesus. And this is why communion is such a fitting response to this passage. And in just a moment, we'll enter into our weekly time of communion. But at the table, we don't come to celebrate our own strength, the strength of our leaders, the strength of our community, the strength of whatever metrics you care about. When we come to the table and take communion, we remember and receive the grace that Christ gives us. The bread reminds us of the word of life who truly came to us in flesh 2,000 years ago. And the cup reminds us that fellowship with God came through only through Jesus' death and his resurrection. And so when we receive communion together, we are reminded that we are not merely individuals with private spiritual moments, that we are people gathered together in one fellowship because we share in one Christ. So as we come to the table now, let's come back to the center. Not preferences, not our past, not even the pain or disagreements, not our vision for what the church should be, not affinity, fellowship, which can only come through Jesus. The word of life has been revealed, as John says, the Son has come from the Father, and the true vine has given you life, and apart from him you can do nothing. But in him you receive life. So receive so come to the table. Remain in Christ. Remember that fellowship is not something that we can manufacture, it's just something we receive from Jesus and practice together in love. Will you guys pray with me?