Almost every church has them (temporarily). Drifters. Ecclesiastical dabblers. The uncommitted fringe. Sometimes they wander from church to church quietly, unnoticed. Other times they voice their dissatisfaction and spread unrest.
How do pastors handle the spiritual migrants?
In Atlanta, a church hopper’s paradise with more than six hundred congregations, LEADERSHIP editors Dean Merrill and Marshall Shelley discussed the phenomenon with four pastors, each of whom has served his present church for more than a decade:
Sam Coker of midtown Grace United Methodist Church.
Frank Harrington of Peachtree Presbyterian Church in the Buckhead area.
Bill Self, also a Buckhead pastor, at Wieuca Road Baptist Church.
Earl Paulk, Jr., founding pastor of Chapel Hill Harvester Church in suburban Decatur.
Leadership: What are the reasons, legitimate and otherwise, that people drift from one church to another?
Bill Self: We’re a consumer society. People buy suits in one store, shoes at another, and groceries somewhere else. They transfer that thinking to churches and compare services offered. We have become the religious shopping centers and people focus on the deal they’re getting rather than the family they’re joining.
Sam Coker: Sometimes after counseling a couple, I’ll think they’re back on track, but then they go to another church because of the way I’ve had to deal with their basic personal problems. When you’ve pastored them, cried with them, pored over their problems, and gotten them into the light, it’s frustrating when they leave.
Frank Harrington: Yes, they’re grateful you’ve helped-but now you know too much. They’re uncomfortable facing you afterward.
Earl Paulk: Another group doesn’t want to be shepherded. They want to feed, so they’ll stay as long as they hear what they like. But once you start directing, they don’t want the rod and staff. They’ll wander. People who want to be shepherded, by contrast, tend to settle in one church.
Harrington: Movement between churches isn’t always negative. Sometimes in their spiritual pilgrimage, people need a different environment in which to grow.
On a given Sunday, if you’re in a large city, you preach to a passing parade. Some of these visitors are genuinely looking for God.
Paulk: That’s true if they’re going to something rather than away from something. There’s a floating congregation in this city, however, numbering in the thousands, that doesn’t settle into any local church because they don’t want the responsibility of serving. They go from place to place because it doesn’t cost them anything.
Various specialty ministries come in, rent the Omni downtown without checking with local pastors, and attract people who become part of this floating ministry.
Harrington: Weekend seminars and such can become a spiritual narcotic. People will pay $75 for a weekend event, but there’s no ongoing nurture, discipleship, or commitment.
At times, when people come in raving about the latest event, I’ll say, “Let me ask you one question. When you’re in the emergency room after an accident, is that seminar leader going to come sit with you?”
Coker: People who get their spiritual food only from these sources think they’ve been to church, but church has to do with family, roots, and relationships. Drifters miss the steady, lifelong ministry of the church.
Self: Somehow we have to make disciples instead of inspiration junkies.
I’ve been hammering my folks with the need to be “stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord”-not a popular theme in these days of rootlessness.
I recently read a book called America Two. It says America One is small town, shade trees, sidewalks, and nuclear families. America Two is condos, sports cars, and broken families.
We’re trying to homogenize America One and Two in our church, and that’s not easy. One nice, pious, nuclear family left us recently for a suburban church. When I pressed them for the reason, the very proper mother said, “I don’t want my children in a Sunday school where two-thirds of the children are from broken homes.”
Some of this church hopping is a flight from reality.
Leadership: What’s your emotional reaction when people leave? Is it ever a relief, or is it always sad?
Self: All of us have people leave because our pastoral ministry didn’t fulfill their expectations. We just don’t have time to do all we’d like.
One lady asked me, “When are you coming to see me?”
I said, “Ma’am, you don’t want to be that sick!” (Laughter)
Now she’s in Frank’s church. (Laughter)
Harrington: And I’ve visited her nine times. (Uproarious laughter)
Actually, Bill has some burdens here that I don’t. He was pastor during the growth surge in his church, and everyone sees him as THE pastor. He’s intensely identified with it all.
He’s like the farmer with a little bull calf. Every morning he’s lifted it over the fence into the pasture. But now the bull weighs 2,000 pounds, and he’s still lifting it, and he’s got double hernias and a bad back.
At least in my case, Peachtree was already a church of 2,000 when I came, and their expectations of a pastor were more realistic.
Self: Seriously, when you stand in the pulpit on Sunday and see a woman in the third pew whose husband has cancer, and your deacons and staff have been to see him but you haven’t, you feel guilty. No matter what logic you use about time management and delegation, she’s still sitting there, and you know good and well what she wants and needs.
When people leave for reasons like that, you’re miserable.
Harrington: The truth is, if we ever stop feeling that sense of guilt, something within us has died.
Paulk: When you’ve really been pastoring, it always hurts when people leave even if it’s for a good reason like relocating to another city. It hurts even more when you’ve done your best to serve, teach, and meet their needs, and then they still decide to shop around.
Leadership: How do you get over that?
Harrington: You don’t get over it. You just live with it.
Self: You have to see the serendipity along the way, those “ah-ha” moments like I had in an elevator recently when a man said, “I’ve visited your church the last three weeks, and you’ve saved my life.”
Sometimes we have an aversion to talking as religious as we really are, but maybe God sends these experiences now and then just so we can strap that church on our back and keep going.
Coker: At times, too, God will bring someone back, and that compensates for losses. You’ve got to give people freedom to come and go.
A few years ago, we had a family leave, disgruntled with the church, my preaching, everything. I met with them but finally just had to say good-by.
Three Sundays ago, they came back and slipped in the balcony. They came the next two Sundays also. So this week I made a phone call and simply said, “Welcome home.”
They said, “We never should have left.” I didn’t respond to that; I didn’t want to say, “You’re right. I told you so.” But because we had been open with one another about their reasons for leaving and I hadn’t pressured them into staying, they were free to return.
They didn’t have to ask if they would be accepted back. They knew the door was open, and I phoned just to reinforce that.
Leadership: How do you handle those who shop around but never settle down?
Paulk: The first place to attack this is with honest preaching. We need to say, “If you can’t solve your problems in this church, maybe another church can help, but go with our guidance.” Churches vary in their thrusts and appeal at different levels. We can help people move without guilt, and we’ve done that with some people.
But there’s also a place to say, “If you’re leaving because you don’t want to be shepherded, to be a disciple, to have that responsibility, then you won’t solve the problem by leaving. You’ll just be a floater the rest of your life.”
Harrington: If people tell me they’re looking the church over, I’ve gotten to the point where I say, “Fine, we’re looking you over, too. If you’re looking for a church to get lost in, Peachtree Church isn’t for you. We have certain expectations.”
Self: Our whole north Atlanta culture is laid back, uncommitted, holding on to options. Shopping around is a control mechanism on their part. I say from the pulpit, “You don’t judge this sermon or this church; God judges all of us.”
Coker: Shopping doesn’t bother me-a certain amount is inevitable. I don’t want to be defensive but to communicate that as far as I’m concerned, this is where I’m supposed to be in my preaching, my shepherd role, and in the ministry of this church.
A certain percentage will like that; others won’t.
With church hoppers, you listen for any needs you can minister to and try to meet them. But if they’re merely trying to test you, to see how you’ll react, I don’t feel obligated to change my style for them.
Leadership: Each of you is in a successful, well-established church. Would you be so unthreatened in a church of seventy-five?
Harrington: I had a church of thirty, and I used to say the same thing. My largest contributor threatened to move his letter if such-and-such wasn’t done. I told him I was sorry he felt that way, but the church wasn’t for sale.
Self: I pastored a small church, and my predecessor was controlled by people who said, “If you don’t do it my way, I’m leaving.” They tried it on me, and I’ll never forget the first Sunday I said, “Well, good-by.” It cut the ground out from under them.
Leadership: At times it seems you’re fairly aggressive with drifters, or those threatening to, and other times you’re saying shopping is unstoppable so go with the flow. How do you decide which stance to take?
Paulk: It’s not an either/or situation. You set goals and preach the way to Christian maturity, but you accept the others just as Jesus accepted the adulterous woman.
There’s a church of Jesus Christ in Atlanta just as there was in Corinth and Ephesus. As shepherds, we’re not in competition with one another, even though we may say or do things differently. If I understand Scripture correctly, the goal is the unity of the faith, not necessarily the unity of our doctrinal views.
If we show people the body of Christ is not fragmented but one, then we’ll bring about healing.
If you preach the gospel and some people leave for another church, don’t fret, as long as they know the goal.
Coker: My problem is when people join the church, become leaders, and then sour on the church and leave. Their friends start talking about “problems in the church” and raising questions in the minds of younger believers.
Paulk: Scripture describes those who make disciples unto themselves. I’m a believer in spiritual authority. Any time people recognize authorities other than the ordained pastors in the church, you are likely to find them following personalities, challenging you, the message, or the program. I think it’s a basic spiritual problem.
Harrington: I believe satisfying relationships are built on openness and honesty. If Joe Jones wants to know why Sam Smith left, I’d say, “To the best of my knowledge, here’s why.”
And if Sam Smith has been saying things about the church, I’ll confront him and say, “Listen, you have a responsibility for the consequences of what you’re saying, and some of those things aren’t based on facts.”
Self: We’re so vulnerable, though. People can spout off and leave, and you usually get it fourth-hand. Even if you can confront some of those people, it’s probably less than one in ten.
I decided years ago not to put out brush fires, because all you teach people is that if they start something, you’ll come running to stamp it out. You end up dancing all the time.
Leadership: What can pastors do about malcontents and drifters?
Paulk: My dream would be a relationship between the shepherds of this city to such a degree that we could serve like the door of the sheep fold, and the thieves, liars, and cheats could not come among us. If people knew that we shepherds, despite our denominational varieties, were brethren in our commitment to the church in Atlanta and that we interacted, floating wouldn’t be such a problem.
Leadership: Have you ever phoned other pastors to brief them on people headed their way?
Harrington: Bill Self and I have exchanged information dozens of times because we live nearby, and he’s my pastor and I’m his. But I’ve done it with other ministers in town, too. I’ll say, “Bill Jones and his wife have been attending your church, and here are some needs they have.”
Paulk: This is helpful particularly if they’ve married again. Many times a couple wants to start fresh in a new church. If they come to my church, and I don’t know any of their past, I have to start at ground level, thus losing the benefit of the previous pastor’s experience. I could pastor better if I knew something of their background.
The secret, of course, is passing along the information in a way that isn’t a threat to the people.
Harrington: This is a touchy area. Forwarding information sometimes creates a bias in the new church that might prevent these people from having a better experience there.
Self: But you don’t want the new church to be hurt either. What would you do about a man who’s made an advance toward a child in your Sunday school and then starts attending another church?
Paulk: That’s a critical issue, but we’re dealing with two separate things. At times a clean slate is necessary.
But when you’re dealing with people who are disruptive, rebellious, or sick, then you need to communicate with the new church. We’ve got to know which response is appropriate.
Self: Often we’re afraid to say too much for fear of being sued.
Paulk: That’s because we lack communication between shepherds. To be perfectly honest, there are some pastors I wouldn’t trust with information like that-they’d use it against me. But with those I know, I’d trust them to use the information for good and not for evil.
Leadership: How do you handle people who visit your church and tell you how terribly they were treated in their former church?
Harrington: That happened to me with a fellow from Bill’s church, a person Bill had told me about. This fellow started saying how inadequate his former pastor had been, and I interrupted him-“Wait a minute. You’re talking about one of my soul brother. If you want to be part of our church, that’s one thing, but let’s not begin our relationship by saying mean things about a friend.”
Self: Often people will come spouting certain code words. They’re not “being fed” or they “weren’t growing.”
Harrington: I believe different individuals will have different experiences with Christ. My greatest frustration is people who all of a sudden have an electrifying spiritual experience, and then they want everyone to have that same experience. I have a problem trying to minister to people who don’t accept the validity of another’s experience. We almost inevitably lose these people from our fellowship.
Paulk: Since mine is a charismatic church and I hear that story from the other side, let me respond. People tell me the churches say, “If you have any kind of manifestation, you don’t belong here.”
I believe if there’s renewal in your life, you shouldn’t impose it, but don’t forbid it either. If God has blessed you, then be grateful, but learn that other people can have valid experiences different from yours.
Coker: Sometimes these experiences can lead to spiritual elitism, but I believe that one of the responsibilities we pastors have is to affirm the good that’s happening in churches different from ours.
Paulk: I don’t know if you remember, Sam, a year or so ago someone from your church was diagnosed as having cancer, and when he asked if he should visit our church to receive prayer for healing, you apparently said yes. We ministered to him and sent him back. We didn’t say, “Grace Methodist failed you.” The point is there was a healing because you and I were in a good relationship.
Coker: I remember, and that family is still in our church. I affirm that other parts of the body of Christ can minister, and I’m not threatened by that.
Leadership: In an area like Atlanta, with some six hundred churches already, does planting new churches contribute to church hopping by providing more options?
Harrington: Among Presbyterian churches, we’ve found that most people in new churches come through reaffirmation of faith or profession of faith-people virtually lost to the church before. New churches don’t drain existing churches. We ought to be starting more.
Paulk: Twenty-three years ago, I left one church to start the work where I am now. One night seven of the ten board members from the former church visited me and asked to be part of the new work. I refused. My policy was that unless I’d talked to the pastor of a person’s former church, I wouldn’t receive that person into my church.
You never build a church by tearing up another church.
We wanted a clean slate. We didn’t want anyone to accuse us of disrupting any other church. So for the first several years, our people were either converts or those moving from other communities.
Leadership: Here’s a loaded term: sheep stealing. Is there such a thing? Or is that a sour-grapes accusation?
Self: Among pastors of integrity-those who are secure, with a solid background and commitment-I don’t see any conscious effort to recruit members from other churches. But on a lower level there is.
I’ve had more sheep-stealing problems with outside organizations than other churches. Atlanta seems to be the southern distributorship for every heretical group in the country. They try to make people dissatisfied with the church and recruit them to be their disciples.
And within that floating congregation we’ve talked about, the church hoppers often lure people by comparing one pastor against another.
Harrington: My practice is not to call on visitors until they’ve established some persistent pattern of attendance-usually four weeks in a row.
Self: Mine is similar. When a member of a neighboring church visits Wieuca Road and wants my attention, I usually say, “Ethics won’t allow me to visit in your home until you transfer your membership. You still belong to a neighbor church.” We don’t want to play their game.
Of course, it’s different with those coming from out of town.
Paulk: I see sheep stealing as proselytizing with destructive weapons. Certain preachers are quite articulate in pointing out how certain churches are dead, the Eucharist isn’t all that important, or a certain mode of baptism is necessary for salvation. Many of their teachings are housed in truth, but the message people hear is “My church is right; other churches are wrong.” That makes a lot of people distrust the local church. We do need healing in that area. Somehow we’ve got to maintain the right to be different without being condemning.
Those who attack other pastors ought to be dealt with strongly.
Leadership: How?
Paulk: The Word has some clear definitions about the larger fellowship of believers. When James and John wanted to call down fire on some other ministers, Jesus rebuked them. 1 Timothy 5:19 says not to receive an accusation against an elder. We must teach people you never develop Christian maturity by listening to someone who degrades another, whether a pastor or not.
Second, by pointing out how dare you let the world see your inner strife? The more we flaunt our disagreements, the more we’re like the world.
Harrington: When a church claims to have a corner on truth, it tends to attract disgruntled folk from all our churches.
Paulk: And that looks like growth and success for a while. But give it time, and the lack of maturity will finally turn on itself, and you’ll have an explosion or gradual disintegration.
Leadership: With the tendency of people to flit from one church to another, are you tempted to try to put on a better show than the other church?
Self: Sure. You don’t consciously compare, but you try to do the best you can.
Leadership: So a conscious part of your ministry is creating something with splash and flair.
Coker: I tell our people we want “excitement with depth.”
Self: We say “excitement with integrity.”
Harrington: I’ll think of something we say in a minute. (Laughter)
Self: Underneath all of this is the question: How should this church minister? A church in Ludowici, Georgia, where they have a decimal point before the Zip Code, is going to be different from a church in Atlanta, where people live in filing cabinets they call apartments.
Many people arrive in a new location and accept the new lifestyle, but they never accept the fact that churches must be different, too. So they drift from church to church looking for something that doesn’t exist. Our job is to interpret what it means to do church in our particular location and that they’re welcome to take their place with us.
Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
