It’s always sad for a church to say goodbye to our friends. It’s inevitable, of course, for people move house for many different reasons – work, family commitments, and so on – and very often this means leaving their church to worship elsewhere. But this doesn’t make it any easier when we suddenly realize that friends who’ve been a permanent fixture in our lives are going to be around a whole lot less often.
It’s even harder when the people moving on have been deeply involved in the church’s ministry. A church might lose an Elder, a family-full of wise listening ears, and a flock of behind-the-scenes servants who over the years have been responsible for a myriad of practical tasks from putting the coffee on before church to clearing up the mess afterwards.
This is the situation we’re going to find ourselves in at Emmanuel in the next few weeks with the departure of one of the families who have been with us from our very first service in March 2009. Frankly, apart from the fact that some other church somewhere is about to be richly blessed by some new arrivals, it’s hard to see the bright side.
But there is a bright side. There’s always a bright side. The God who disciplines us for our good so that we may share in his holiness (Heb 12:10) and who brings affliction so that we might keep his word (Ps 119:67) is perfectly capable of taking the bitter water of a friend’s departure and making it sweet (Ex 15:23-25).
So then, what are the good things that could happen as a result of our friends leaving the church?
First, gratitude. When our friends leave, it’ll suddenly dawn on us just how much they’ve been doing for the rest of us over the years, which will almost certainly turn out to have been more than any of us realized. This in turn ought to prompt us to take a good look around at the people who remain, who are still committed to serving us in all kinds of ways that we rarely acknowledge, and to thank God for them.
This is a profoundly important point, because gratitude is a deeply unnatural stance for fallen human beings. According to the Apostle Paul, the foundational sin of which all people outside of Christ are guilty is that we “did not honour [God] as God or give thanks to him” (Romans 1:21), but instead turned to false gods of our own making. Ingratitude is the instinctive stance of sinful people towards God, and we all too easily transfer that same disposition towards one another. So if the departure of our friends causes us to express a little more thanksgiving both to God and to our brothers and sisters in Christ, that will be a good thing.
Second, opportunities to serve. The sudden flood of vacancies in the “jobs that need doing around here” list might seem daunting, but it might also provide the gentle prod that the rest of us need to step up and fill some of the gaps. If you find yourself gently prompted by the Spirit of God in the coming days to seek out new ways to serve, don’t be surprised. And just as importantly, don’t stifle that Voice. Perhaps this will be your friends’ parting gift as the depart for pastures new: the precious reminder that giving is receiving, that service is freedom, that sacrifice is blessing.
