Stating the obvious, I'm part of a family. I have a mom and a dad, sisters and brothers. Now, continuing on with the obvious theme, once I have a mom and a dad, sisters and brothers, that's it; there's no swapping them out for better models. The same should be true of marriage, of course. By God's design, a spouse is a spouse for life; no swapping.
Yet, for all kinds of reasons, we believe swapping out our brothers and sisters in Christ is an option. It's as if we say to ourselves, Well, I've learned all I can learn from this family...it's time to move on. Or, we say, This family is dysfunctional, I'd better get the heck outta here...and on and on it goes.
In the same vein, we reason the community we're part of can't offer the psychological help we need. By psychological, I mean all the life-helps necessary to make it through (whatever that is). So, to compensate, we turn to self-help books, therapists, drugs, a different community of believers - all because we think the wisdom necessary to move us to the next level is somewhere outside the community in which we are presently involved.
It's a lie. God is fully capable of teaching us all we need to know in the context of our current biological family, our current spouse, our current children, and, yes, our current
church body. If God separates us from any of the above, it's not because he can't get the job done in our current context; it's for other reasons.
Can the grass be greener on the other side? I suppose so. But why go through the hassle of moving for greener grass? Why not water and care for your own? After all, grass isn't green because people keep moving to it; it's green because the mature stick with it.
Have you ever thought about leaving your fellowship because you think another fellowship might be better? It's a natural feeling, to be sure. But, it's a feeling maturing believers have to let go.
Evangelicals give surprising authority to modern psychology and its therapy. We regularly go to outside therapists for guidance. We allow the therapist to function autonomously as an avenue for emotional and spiritual healing. This is largely because evangelicals accept psychology as a scientific medical enterprise. That, for evangelicals, lends psychology an inherent authority. We may see the need for psychology to be informed by Scripture. But for evangelicals, this most often takes the form of harmonizing the truths of Scripture with the truths of psychology. We see psychology and Scripture as two different approaches to the same knowledge that lead to the same truth, the same core experiences, and the same realities. Psychology is based upon science and scriptural accounts are based upon God's revelation. And so the two should naturally harmonize. Evangelicals see no problem with this (2005:184 emphasis added).