I shudder when I hear someone compare churches or pastors. We have preached in over four hundred churches across Europe and America and there are no two churches or pastors alike. In one church everyone stands while they sing hymns. In the next church they stay seated while they sing the first and last stanzas only. Offerings are often taken in a variety of ways from passing the plate down the row to providing a box at the back door. The list of these little differences can be lengthy.
Pastors differ in many little ways. Some roam across the platform and others stay frozen while reading from a manuscript. Some preach lengthy sermons while others preach twenty minutes and not one minute longer. This list can be lengthy as well.
If I continued to list the differences that are expressed you would probably put them in the category of “petty’. More often than not the real reason for the movement from one church to the next is “petty” or self centered.
Where has” loyalty” gone?. It used to be that there was loyalty throughout our culture. In the business place the employer was loyal to the employee and vice versa. They stuck together for thirty years working out their differences. The same was true in sports and marriage and in the church. In contrast, today I find people moving from one church to another for such unbiblical reasons as “everybody else was leaving”
Perhaps we should realize that we are not at the last church with the last pastor. We are placed in this congregation to help this pastor and this people to be an expression of His grace in this place, Leave the last church and the last pastor and move in to minister in this church and this pastor. Be loyal.