leaving a bad church?

pastor ying recently suggested that perhaps we often regard a church as bad (and thus want to leave) because/when "we expect more of our churches than we would of churches in missionary field", ie "we expect the church to grow up faster than what it really can".

or maybe we've got a naive understanding of what it means to serve the gospel:

Just as it’s crazy to think that going to war is like a walk in park and then are surprised that someone is shooting at you, why are we surprised when people shoot at us [in a gospel work context]?

so that's probably all the more reason we should actually strive to stay to fight for and defend the gospel in a bad church, helping to "move things from worse to better, from bad to good, from corruption to honesty, from error to truth."

nevertheless, there are some good reasons for leaving a church. read the whole series here: part1, part2, part3, part4, and part5.