2.  BECAUSE WE CAN.

Your congregation may be in an evangelical-friendly presbytery, which means that if you carefully and conscientiously sought dismissal to another Reformed denomination, crossed all your legal t's and dotted all the i's, then you may be free to continue ministry under new auspices, perhaps with all your property intact and uncontested.  But just because you can go doesn't mean you should.

There are presbyteries that run rather hot, some would say hostile in dealing with evangelicals. I don't want to say any names, but one of them rhymes with Grease Liver in Florida, and another. . .[sorry, but I can't find a rhyme for Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery].  In such presbyteries, congregations will not be duly dismissed with even the best of clearly-articulated reasons. Not only will dismissals be denied, but at the first murmurs of denominational despair they will plant Administrative Commissions faster than you can remember what IED stands for. Seeing power abused raises the temperature and urgency for those nervously glancing toward the doors, and it is only natural to consider making a dash for the exit before denominational defenses undergo some kind of revival of authoritarianism, but getting out now because the getting is good is no worthy rationale for leaving.

There are churches—large and evangelical—that certainly could leave without major debilitating losses, but each that considers dismissal must also consider whether or not they might do more good for the Kingdom of God by staying, fighting, and perhaps even losing.  If we are in this for the kingdom and not just for ourselves, this option must be placed on the table with other noble courses. Even if there should be a mass exodus in the coming years, someone may have to hold the door and risk being the last one out. But leaving because you are big enough or strong enough to do so reeks of self-interest, of congregational narcissism (more on this later).

The because we can rationale stands for the worst abuses of liberty.  It is shorthand for all rationalization. It accounts for Abu Grahib, the sub-prime mess, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. It is logos of all bullying, the prime impetus for thievery, the blind arrogance of tyrants, and the ultimate justification for the Final Solution. To do something because we can is to justify power for its own sake—perhaps the most dangerous proposition in history.

As for congregations with their eyes glancing toward greener pastures, we get it—we feel your pain and may even share your intimations of urgency, but we would be less than a brother not to exhort you to act on higher principles than mere expediency—to charge you to define and articulate the most excellent and most noble reasons why you feel called to pursue the great ends of the church from a different position on the same front.

Those that seek to leave just because they can fail the test of integrity to which every gathering of Christ's Body is called—the distinction of right over might. We do well to renew our resolve to doing the right thing in the right ways regardless of outcomes.  If we feel called to leave, we should do so without conditions or expectations--doing so just because it is what God calls us to do.  We  should hope and pray as well that presbyteries, synods and other governing bodies won't prohibit congregations from dismissal just because they can—or seek to hastily depose pastors—by the same rationale.

COMING: Reason #3 “Because we are afraid.”