Switching From One Church to Another within the same community

I am sorry it took this long to answer the original question, but wow, there was a lot of foundational thought that was needed!

I want to intentionally avoid many of the words we use in this conversation that trigger emotions, at least so far.  I will get to Preferences later for that.

For now, I am going to start with the word “Priority.”

By priority, I mean something that is externally important to you but is not merely preference.  It may or may not be an objective deal breaker.

Let me give you an example of a priority in order to explain what I mean.  In this caser, it is a “Family Priority” from my own life.

We were part of a very good church.  The teaching was solid.  The doctrine was sound.  The Basics– potential deal breakers – were all in place.

Also, virtually all of our preferences were also there – the style of worship was within the bounds of what we liked… the pastor was a shepherd type (we prefer shepherd types or teacher types, typically) … the small groups classes were fun.

All good.

But there was a problem that developed over time.  Our eldest son began to grow up and was no longer a toddler.

In the church, there were a number of little girls near his age, but not a single little boy.  Not kidding.  In a church of 250 people, there was a four-year age gap on either side of our son.  We prayed from the time he was 3 until he was 7 for a family with a son near his age to start attending.  We invited people with boys his age.

Nothing seemed to work.

It is a family priority for us that our children are able to make good friends at church.  Especially since we are a home-school base family, it is even more imperative that they find friends their age at church.

I took this concern to our pastor.  As the shepherd that he is, he encouraged me to make the decision to begin to pray for God to guide us to a church that had all of the kinds of Basics that this one did, plus had friends for our kids. He reminded me that my wife and I could learn anywhere and get involved almost anywhere with the Basics, but our kids would be most encouraged by certain things and in his opinion, we needed to look for that.

He is still a good friend and I consider him a pastor and have appreciated his gracious attitude with us.

A few weeks later, after we visited a couple of churches, kind of half-heartedly… and then we received a request to start doing to interim preaching for one of them.  Soon the new pastor moved in.  He had a son the same age as ours and for years, they were friends.  Many of Mark’s (my eldest son) life-long friendships were made at that church.

Notice, this was more than a mere preference.  This was a priority.  The first kind that I think is an appropriate time to change local churches, other than the Basics changing, are Family Priorities.

Part VII takes it to the next level