Podcast: What Keeps You from Going to Church? (Jonathan Leeman)

August 16, 2021 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

The Fellowship of the Church

In this episode, Jonathan Leeman discusses the vital importance of in-person church fellowship, how we can and should prioritize involvement with the people of God in a local church—especially after a year like 2020—and shares some encouragement for pastors on the heels of an exhausting season of ministry.

Rediscover Church

Rediscover Church

Collin Hansen, Jonathan Leeman

Rediscover Church is a timely reminder that the church is more than just a livestream—it is an essential fellowship of God’s people furthering God’s mission.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:51 - Two Perspectives, One Book

Matt Tully
Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Jonathan Leeman
Thank you, Matt.

Matt Tully
It’s good to have you back on the show. You’ve been on the show a couple of times now. Today we’re going to talk about a new book that you have co-written with Collin Hansen. Many people will know Collin Hansen from The Gospel Coalition, and you work primarily with 9Marks.

Jonathan Leeman
Why isn’t Collin here? What’s Collin’s deal?

Matt Tully
Last I heard he was in some cabin somewhere trying to get away.

Jonathan Leeman
Oh yeah, something about a sabbatical.

Matt Tully
How did you and Collin get together and decide to write this book? You guys don’t live near each other, you’re not part of the same ministry, and yet, you decided to write a book together.

Jonathan Leeman
Collin and I are old friends. We’ve been hanging out and talking for a long time about lots of stuff. You know how you have different relationships with whom you’re in constant text streams? Collin is one of my text-stream friends. Stuff happens in the evangelical news and Collin and I and a few others are talking about it. He’s one of those friends for me. He’s somebody who I trust and respect quite a bit. He’s wise, he’s sharp, he’s godly, he serves as an elder of his church down in Birmingham, and he has a burden to talk about these types of things, just like I have a burden to talk about these types of things. I think coming out of the pandemic and watching what we’ve watched—with political division and strife and all of this going on in the last year or two—we thought, Let’s work on this together. I have a 9Marks perspective, he’s got a TGC perspective, and we thought we would be stronger together than apart.

Matt Tully
Unpack that a little bit. You said you have a 9Marks perspective versus a TGC perspective that Collin would bring—

Jonathan Leeman
You know, a persnickety, sectarian, really opinionated, strident perspective.

Matt Tully
What are the emphases, or the passions, that would characterize your perspective on these things that might be a little bit different than Collin’s?

Jonathan Leeman
I think, in general, 9Marks is working hard to reach the pastor and the church leader, specifically just to talk about the church. For Collin, the TGC ambit includes that, but they’re also targeting the larger Christian audience and the church member generally. So I think that yields in us slightly different sensibilities about what we want to say and how we’re trying to say it and who we’re trying to reach. I think those two things just work together really well for this particular project, which is all about—as the title says—rediscovering church.

03:40 - The Evangelical Church after COVID

Matt Tully
In addition to writing articles and books, you co-host with Mark Dever The Pastor’s Talk podcast, a 9Marks podcast. I do wonder if you could put on that pastoral lens—the lens that you use when you sit down to record one of those shows—and consider what would you say are some of the biggest questions or unknowns that you have in your own mind related to the future of the evangelical church after COVID? Maybe just after 2020.

Jonathan Leeman
In one sense, I don’t think there are any unknowns, because the church hasn’t changed. A lot of people these days talk about it like it has changed, like, Everything is different now. You’ll see articles out there with those kinds of headlines: Church Is Forever Changed. That’s clickbait. It’s trying to draw people in. The church has been through pandemics, it’s been through divisive political moments, it’s been through great depressions and world wars and bubonic plagues and revolutions before. What we’ve gone through in the last few years isn’t that dramatic when you look at the two thousand year landscape. And yet, Jesus promises his church will win. The Bible is the same; it’s teaching the same thing. So, in some sense, I wouldn’t say there are unknowns. It’s just, friends, let’s keep reading the Bible and keep doing what it says, right? I think, pastorally, some of the challenges pastors are feeling and experiencing right now that I would want to help them and encourage them with (and members as well) is questions about virtual church. Is that something that we should take seriously? What about that? Just today I was talking to a number of pastors who are mentioning the fact that there seems to be a kind of Christian political migration—folks leaving their churches and going to more conservative churches, or going to more liberal churches, or churches that care less about these sorts of pandemic requirements and more about other things. So it does seem like the board is being shuffled a little bit. I think the larger picture is that as culture secularizes, there’s going to be a winnowing out of nominal Christians. For nominal Christians, it becomes more costly to follow Jesus. For several decades a number of us have been assuming nominal Christians are going to fall off. They’ll say, It’s not socially advantageous anymore for me to call myself a Christian. Even though I’m getting clients for my insurance business, I’m done. It’s not quite that simple though. I think as culture secularizes, you’re going to see several more complicated trends, such as some people are going to feel compelled to go to a church that’s a little bit more culture-warriory—whether on the right or on the left. What that means is pastors are experiencing those kinds of migrations. One pastor said, Yeah, I had five families leave my church just in the last six months to go to this other particular church—which was known to emphasize culture-warrior elements a little bit more. So these are the things I think churches and Christians are experiencing and that pastors are observing. We could talk about not going to church at all, but I assume you’ll want to talk about that at some point.

Matt Tully
I think we’ll get into that. I think when people say they feel like church has changed or they’re worried about that, some of it has to do with some of those surveys that have been done and stats that have been taken that seem to indicate, at least within our own lifetimes and maybe not in the entire sweep of church history, that there maybe are a number of factors that are contributing together right now to perhaps cause a season of what feels like upheaval and chaos and change. Even before the pandemic started, the number of people who identify as Christians in the US far surpassed the number of people who actually attend a weekly church meeting. You guys draw that out in your book a little bit. And if you go further with that, the number of people who are actually serving and involved in a church is even smaller than that. What would you say that pre-pandemic reality—that is perhaps only going to be more at play post-pandemic—what does that say about the health of the American church, generally?

Jonathan Leeman
Let me clarify. Certainly, circumstances can change. The challenges we can face at any given moment can change. I think one of the main messages of the book—just even in that prefix “re” in rediscover—is to say the church hasn’t changed. Circumstances have changed, yes. Environment and cultural realities have changed, yes. Not the Bible. Not the church. It’s mission hasn’t changed, what Jesus calls us to hasn’t changed, and so forth. To your question—wait, what was your question?

Matt Tully
Even before the pandemic, the number of people who maybe claim the name Christian, as you already acknowledged, that nominal group is decreasing. And yet, even within that group, the number of people who claim that name and are actively participating in a local church is a fraction of that broader group. What does that say about the health of the American church, generally, even before the pandemic hit where meaningful involvement in a church was just so low?

Jonathan Leeman
To your question, I think there are many healthy bits in churches and many healthy churches out there, and I don’t want to denigrate that. I don’t want to overlook and fail to give praise to the Lord Jesus for his work in many churches doing gospel preaching, gospel evangelizing, discipling. In fact, in many respects, brother, I see more and more churches getting healthy—on the one hand. So, I think that is going on and I think we sin by failing to acknowledge it and give praise to God for it. On the other hand, I think there are a number of trends that are concerning and that are just a continuation of what we’ve been seeing for decades. In the post-1950s, 60s, 70s, Robert Schuller led attractional churches in which we go to the non-Christian—and he literally did this door to door—and ask, Hey, what keeps you from going to church? Tell us what you want, and now let me conform myself to what you are missing and what you want out of church. He literally did that, and he had a training camp where 500–800 pastors a year—including Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, interestingly—went out to his training camp to learn how to do what Robert Schuller said. That kind of spawned what we understand and describe as seeker-sensitive churches, or attractional churches, in which I’m trying to say to the non-Christian world around me, Hey, we can be like you. Let’s find common ground. When you come in, you’re going to hear not weird organ music. You’re going to hear familiar Beatles sounding music. In a nominal Christian culture, that kind of works. People will show up and say, You do have a lot in common with me, and that’s kinda cool. Okay, you want me to trust in Jesus? Alright. He’s going to give me purpose? I like that, sure. It “works.” Well, what happens is a culture increasingly secularizes. What happens when the demands are LGBT demands? Or identitarian demands of one kind? That attactional seeker sensitivity program method just gets harder and harder. You have to go farther to reach them on their terms, which inevitably leads to a kind of compromise. So I think we see more of that going on in churches. Churches are wondering, Can we accept these things in culture as we attempt to reach out? I think those general tendencies of pragmatically driven—often well-meaning tendencies—often do hurt the church, and I think they do lead to unhealth of the kind you’re describing. And, sure enough, more and more people are going to say, Yeah, this Christianity is too costly. I call myself a Christian, but this is just too costly. It worked in 2005, but the demands of LGBT and of 2021—I can’t pay those.

Matt Tully
If questions about nominal Christians and their involvement in the church might be in people’s minds right now, it seems like another issue that is definitely (it seems like) front and center in our experience of “church” over the last twelve months or so has been the deep divisions within our churches that have been exposed or created maybe. I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Were these things there before and we just didn’t know? Or are they new in some real sense? Divisions related to politics and race and social justice and the correct response to abuse and gender roles and all of that—there’s so much swirling around that feels like, at times, it’s ripping our churches apart from the inside out. Do you think those divisions were there before in the same way that they are now and we just see them differently? Or is there something new happening in the last couple of years—even one year—that is a new thing?

Jonathan Leeman
Great question. Each of the issues you just named are very different and have to be taken each in turn. Let me start with questions of abuse and sexual abuse and scandals and cover ups and so forth. That is a big problem. There is a knee-jerk instinct to just want to defend ourselves and say, No, we’re innocent. Those are just people going after God’s people. That’s terrible. And there are some false charges, so due process is required. I think people can get a little too much on the bandwagon of making unfounded accusations. That is a problem. Scripture does call for a kind of impartiality. At the same time, Scripture calls for a certain disposition towards the weak and the vulnerable and the hurting. There should be Christian instincts in us that listen and respond and say, Okay, have we failed to protect the exploited and the abused? Are there things here for us to learn? So there needs to be that posture in this moment. Absolutely. In fact, in some ways, I think 9Marks exists for this very purpose. It’s the reason we talk about things like membership and discipline and discipling and getting involved in one another’s lives and transparency. If you attend a Capitol Hill Baptist sermon, there’s a one out of two chance that you’re going to hear Mark Dever talking about the call to living transparent, open lives—correcting sin in one another’s lives. Why do we do that? Precisely because so much abuse—among other things—has gone under the radar. That should not be. Church discipline is one of the best preventative cares I know for it, aside from other things we could talk about. There is a moment of reckoning, I think, for many churches on these questions, and I pray that we would respond well in the moment. If people are just going to defend anonymous, non-accountable, non-disciplined church lives, they’re going to reap what they sow. I do think there’s a better and more biblical way. I think Scripture gives us what we need. So, that’s one whole complex of issues, and then moving to the race thing, oh goodness! Matt, I don’t have a whole lot of wisdom on this one. Certainly, division has been exposed. Is it new division? I don’t think so. I think the division has been there for a long time. It’s been there both in a lack of trust and antipathy between minorities in majority cultures. I think it’s been there in various sins that have been hidden. I think it’s been there in very different politics. What’s interesting is, in my own experience, that in the Young, Restless, and Reformed Movement, there was a 10–15 year window in which it seemed like there was a lot of new unity and reconciling going on. And honestly, a lot of Reformed hip hop was led out in that: Here we all are at the TGC conference and the T4G conference, and everybody is getting along and this is great. We all believe in a big God theology and we all believe in substitutionary atonement and in the authoritative, inerrant Scripture—praise the Lord. For about a 10-year window, I think we felt a lot of unity that was super encouraging. Then a number of things happened politically. I’m recycling what others have said; I’m not saying anything terribly new and insightful here. I’m just repeating what I’ve heard other more insightful brothers say. Then between 2012–2016, there were a number of things in culture—including police brutality situations that were caught on iPhones, the election of Donald Trump—these kinds of things happened, and I think what you found and what we’ve been seeing is that in many cases the theology hasn’t necessarily changed. I think minority and majority brothers and sisters still agree on a lot of the same theology, but their political instincts have emerged very differently. So we’ve experienced some of that division. It’s very much on the surface things, as we talk about things like the black exodus that many have remarked on. That’s been terribly sad and difficult to watch. Whatever side you come down on with that particular thing, it’s been very tough to watch. These are brothers I used to stand in the pews with and sing with, and now we have a hard time talking about these things. What are you saying? I don’t get it. Why are you responding that way? Is this a problem with me? Is this a problem with you? So there’s been a lot of surface level of division. How does this play out in the long run? The Lord knows. I pray again that we can not immediately indict the other side. We can act with charity, we can reaffirm the gospel doctrines that we hold together, even as we examine certain differences on ethical and political matters. Are these things that we should really divide over at the Lord’s table? Or are these things that we can come together over the Lord’s table and still find unity?That’s just a super difficult project that requires mature, godly, benefit-of-the-doubt-giving, charitable Christian brothers and sisters to have those kinds of conversations. And yes, I think we need to have more of them.

19:26 - Can Doctrine Unify the Body?

Matt Tully
It seems like there was a time—and it’s still emphasized in a lot of ways, maybe even in the names of two organizations we’ve already mentioned (Together for the Gospel and The Gospel Coalition)—and it almost seems quaint now, but there was a way of thinking about doctrine and its power to unify. Many of the people today within the broadly evangelical church would agree on virtually every key doctrinal issue, and yet there still seem to be these divisions that are along the lines of political inclinations or instincts or policy ideas that do divide. Putting on your pastor’s hat and thinking about people in the pew experiencing these dynamics where they might theologically be in unity with somebody, but there’s just other issues that seem like they’re dividing them, what advice would you give to Christians who wonder if the theology really has that power to unify if we’re still so divided on these other things?

Jonathan Leeman
That’s a great question, and I think that’s what a lot of people are experiencing. A few words of counsel. Number one, recognize the call to care about issues of justice. Justified people care about justice. While you’re doing that, also recognize that it’s the Bible alone which gives us the true definition of justice. We might use different resources to help us understand these things better—fine. But ultimately, we as Christians need to work together to see what the Bible says about justice. There are a number of reasons political issues can be so divisive, and one is that it’s very much an outworking of what we think our gospel requires. We understand that justified people should, as a property and outworking of their justification, care about justice. If you and I, Matt, come to differences over whether or not justice requires this particular thing, that tempts and provokes me to say, Matt, you obviously don’t see that this is a justice issue. Goodness gracious! Don’t you see that your gospel and your claim to the gospel means that you should care about this! If I’m really careless, I might even start to question your salvation. How can you call yourself a Christian, Matt, if you don’t see this clear implication? I might not say that, but at some level that accusation is implicit in me. What I’m failing to do is first, do the hard biblical study of seeing what the Bible requires of justice. Here’s the second thing: recognize the distinction between biblical judgments and our own judgments. God has revealed certain things in Scripture, then our call to make political judgments does require a measure of human wisdom. I need to recognize that God’s wisdom and God’s judgments are binding. My own judgments, they don’t rise to that level. As soon as I begin treating my judgments about what’s necessary in this or that situation as binding, there’s a sense in which I’m almost acting like an apostle who can reveal the word of God. I would just say hold on! You are not God and you are not an apostle. I’m not trying to say it’s all relative; I’m just saying do not put your own political and historical judgments at the same level of Scripture, please, lest you be a cult leader. The third thing we need to do is take care to have a strong and developed doctrine of Christian freedom, and to recognize that you and I might come to different judgments, Matt, over what justice requires. And yet, we can still come to the Lord’s table together. This need not divide us. I can feel strongly about the fact that reparations in this moment is a good idea or a bad idea; I can feel strongly at this moment or at that moment that American history is characterized by this level of this racism or not this level of racism. But do I really want my judgments over American history, or my judgments over whether or not reparations are necessary right now, to divide me from you at the Lord’s table? I think folks on both the right and the left want to say, No, you have to agree with me. I want to leave some of these issues—not all of these issues—very much in the Christian freedom bucket. But the thing is, we Americans tend to have a very anemic view of Christian freedom. Ever since 1776 we’ve kind of said, My way or the highway, King George. We’ve been that way ever since!

Matt Tully
Do you feel like you see examples of this in your church and in your relationships with Christians who do disagree on some things, and yet, nevertheless, find a way to stay unified in the gospel and stay unified even in their worship together? I think some people listening could say, That sounds great in theory, but is that actually going to happen?

Jonathan Leeman
Yes, in the context of relationships in my own local church. Trust is so broken down over these kinds of issues. I’ve been highlighting racial issues, but it’s broader than that. We could talk about complementarianism and the instincts at play there. You mentioned abuse and the instincts at play there. There are more conservative political sensibilities and more progressive political sensibilities. Trust between different sides of these issues has broken down. When there is no trust—and it’s hard to gain trust when there’s no relationship—it is very hard to make progress. Most of what I’ve been doing these days is just working within the context of my own congregation and friendships and having those kinds of quiet conversations. I’ve not been publishing a lot on these issues lately. I don’t know that Collin has either; I’m not sure. But I can sure tell you that we’ve been talking a lot about it. We do it privately in the context of trusting relationships where somebody can say, What did you mean by that? That struck me as offensive. And someone has the chance to say, No, that’s not what I meant. This is what I meant. Frankly, you just can’t do that on Twitter. You can’t do that in blog articles, and it’s even hard to do in books. So, in that sense, I want to say—as much as I make my career writing on these kinds of things—my advice to people listening is if you’re not building and forming relationships in the context of your own local church or other Christians around you, I suspect you’re not going to be much help when it comes to the publishing—whether Tweets or books—side of things. So, friends, pursue these in your own life.

26:49 - Providential Timing

Matt Tully
Let’s shift over to another related topic—moving from controversies to the importance of being together in this chaotic world that we have been living in of late. In April of 2020—right as the pandemic was really getting started in the US—you published One Assembly with Crossway.

Jonathan Leeman
Ironically timed.

Matt Tully
I want to get into that. It’s a book arguing for the importance of churches actually physically gathering together at one time, in one place, pushing back even against multi-site and multi-service live streaming. First question: Do you ever wonder what God had in mind when he was orchestrating that timing? Do you think he was trying to teach you something with that?

Jonathan Leeman
I’d like to assume he’s trying to teach everybody else something. It really was providential! Gather! Gather! Gather! says the book. The pandemic said, Sorry, nobody can gather. That’s basically what happened. It actually gave me a lot of material to have a lot of conversations, both in person and in article form. Suddenly, everybody was talking about should we gather? And here I can say, Check out this book. Here are some arguments*. And some of my own article writing at 9Marks and elsewhere was able to draw on the material produced there. By God’s strange providence, it did seem that the timing was helpful for talking about some of these things and to provide a resource. Now, the pandemic did require one of those exceptional moments, and I make room for that in the book. There are exceptional moments in the church’s life where you can’t do what Scripture would have you do when it comes to matters of church structure and gatherings. Nonetheless, as we pull out of the pandemic and the quarantine, I think these principles are more germane than ever.

Matt Tully
What impact did the experience of not just in your own church but seeing all churches around the world go to a model where we weren’t able to meet in person for a while for varying lengths of time that people probably weren’t able to be together? Maybe there were some exceptions to that, but many churches couldn’t meet. Did that cause you to perhaps soften or harden any of your views that you explained in One Assembly? Have your views changed at all through the experience of the pandemic?

Jonathan Leeman
I would say they didn’t change at all. If anything, they made me recognize and realize the value of gathering more than ever. In the ways that so many of us watched our churches—the word dissipate is too strong—we watched our churches for a few months kind of go onto life support. We watched fellowship attenuate, and the sense of shared identity and mission weakened. I feel like these things are being recovered now, but there were a few months (the first couple of months when things shut down) where those of us who are pastors and we’re trying to keep track of our congregations and see how people were doing and how sheep were faring really could feel the stretch that was going one. It was like, Where’s the flock? Where did they go? How are people doing? This wasn’t the case with anybody in my church, but other close friends of mine had sheep who abandoned the faith and people who fell into temptation in significant ways. And speaking of abuse, it was a terrible time for women in abusive marriages. Obviously, we do all we can to get them out of that, but sometimes these things are out of your hands and you watch the pandemic make it worse. I think the experience of all of that, if anything, just strengthened my conviction that churches gather. Gathering is part of what constitutes the church as a church. I think a lot of people, in general, had that same response. I’m not the only one. At the same time, I saw some people go the other direction. Some people were like, This is kinda nice. I can stay in my pajamas and I can log on. I daresay I don’t think that was a very good response. I know how common it was, but I don’t think it was a mature, healthy response.

31:50 - Advice for the Weary Pastor

Matt Tully
In the conversations you’re having, how would you say that pastors are doing right now?

Jonathan Leeman
The year 2020 (and even early 2021) was, I’ve heard again and again and again, one of the hardest years for many a pastor. It was a very difficult year. Between suddenly having to become experts on epidemiology and mask wearing, social distancing, law suits, live broadcasts, civil disobedience—the whole pandemic side of things was very difficult. And then members responding differently—We have to do this! We can’t do this! Why are you so insensitive? And then add to that all the election and political stuff. On the one hand, you have the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020 followed by the Trump protest on January 6. Not all, but many, of the pastors I know and talk to (and it’s quite a few) said it was one of their hardest years ever. In fact, a number of guys just decided to get out of the ministry. I think the last few months—here we are having a conversation in June of 2021—the last few months have been a little calmer. Things aren’t quite as hot as they were. I think a lot of the guys are so grateful for that because the previous twelve months really were difficult.

Matt Tully
What would you say to the pastor right now who is still feeling burned out and maybe is in that zone of thinking, I’m not really sure I want to do this anymore. What would you say to him?

Jonathan Leeman
It’s possible that God is calling you on to something else. I wouldn’t necessarily exclude that as a possibility. Talk to your fellow church leaders, talk to other pastors of other churches who you know and trust and ask if that’s the case; or, is the case that you need to rest ad you need a sabbatical? A close friend of mine said to his wife, Honey, I think I need a sabbatical. She just started crying, as if to say, Yes, please!. She needed the sabbatical too. So he went to his fellow leaders—his fellow elders—and said, Guys, I really need a sabbatical. They were super supportive and it was great. So maybe you just need a time of rest. Again, ask your friends, your fellow pastors, your fellow elders, other pastors of others churches who you know and trust. Ask them, Is God maybe calling me on to something else, or do I just need a break? Do I need to rest? There’s all that, but then we have to go back to solid biblical truths to remind ourselves of the truth. Brother and pastor, God is sovereign and Jesus wins. He has not threatened by divisions in your congregation. He is not threatened by the folks on the right who can’t believe you prayed those things and folks on the left who think you should pray more of these other things and talk about more of these other things. Jesus is not worried a bit. Your job has not changed. You don’t need to be an expert on everything out there. You need to be an expert on the Bible. You’ve been training to do that for years and you can do that and you keep preaching that Bible and you keep praying. That’s the most important thing you need to do. Keep preparing excellent sermons, pray for the people of God, and you’re going to be okay.

35:27 - Advice for the Lay Christian

Matt Tully
What would you say to the lay Christian who has already started to head back to in person church—or maybe they haven’t quite yet for whatever reason—and they’re feeling a level of anxiety about that, or maybe just a level of apathy. Maybe they understand that there are some divisions, or they don’t necessarily agree with everything that their pastor or elders have done over the last year, or they’ve seen social media posts from fellow members with things that they didn’t necessarily agree with. What would you say to that lay Christian who is kind of wondering if it’s really worth jumping back into that?

Jonathan Leeman
It very much depends on the person. Apathy and anxiety are very different things. General advice for anybody and everybody is number one, recognize that not gathering with God’s people is not good for you spiritually. Jesus set up Christianity—he designed it—to function around, and for you to be supplied with life and to grow in discipleship, through gathering with other Chrsitians. God, in his providence, at times hinders us from gathering. Maybe you’re sick, maybe there’s a pandemic and you can’t gather—all that is in God’s design as well. But in general, not gathering is not good for you spiritually. Think about Hebrews 10 which talks about not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together so that we may gather and stir one another up toward love and good deeds. It’s as I gather with other Christians that I am stirred up to love and good deeds. Maybe I’ve been struggling with doubt all week: Does God really love me? Well, it’s as I gather with the brothers and sisters in Christ that I am reminded that God does love me. Maybe I’m feeling cynical towards a certain sister, but then I’m there in the church service and I see her singing the same songs of praise as me and I’m reminded, Yeah, we are one in the gospel.. Maybe I think, This next election is the most important thing in the world! and I’m being distracted by all of that. But then I hear the preacher talking about the certainty of Christ’s victory no matter what and I think, Okay, maybe the election isn’t as important as I thought it was. So friend, not gathering with the church is not good for you spiritually. Insofar as you’re racked with anxiety over these things, can you find any sort of accomodations? Maybe there’s a section of the building you can sit in that feels a little more safe to you. I would also remind you that your spiritual health is, in the final analysis, more important than your physical health. I want to all I can to accommodate both—absolutely! Nonetheless, don’t underestimate or fail to recognize how crucial your discipleship is to Christ and, again, how the gathering is crucial to your discipleship. The last thing I would say is that if you have reached a point where you no longer trust your pastors, maybe it’s your fault and maybe it’s their fault. Maybe it’s immaturity in you, or maybe it’s something foolish they have done. I don’t know. I don’t need to adjudicate that right now. But what I can say is if you have reached a point where you just no longer trust your pastors, I would encourage you to find a church where you can trust the pastors. If your pastors right now are godly men, they would rather you be in a church where you can sit and hear the preaching of God’s word unhindered by that breakdown in trust. So don’t stick around and just be contentious; rather, find a church where you can trust the pastors.

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