At the present time we are not in same position as the early church and their need for widows to serve in this way, but the teaching for all of us is that loyalty and faithfulness is very precious to the Lord. It is a fruit of the Spirit. If there is a work of God going on in your life, you will be faithful in all your undertakings for the Lord. You will have to have a very strong and very good reason to lay anything down. That is the teaching of the word of God. On the other hand, disloyalty, the absence of stickability, the spirit which readily just abandons Christian responsibilities and leaves the rest of the Lord's people to pick up the pieces: that is actually a sin. We are free as Christians to walk out of a church for no good reason. It is actually a very serious sin against the Lord, unless you have very good reason, unless the Lord is calling you elsewhere, and that is made very clear; unless perhaps the church is in serious error and you have actually a duty to leave it. Other than in those circumstances, it is a sin. We sin against the Lord. We incur guilt.
The Lord calls us all to cultivate loyalty and faithfulness to the things we pledge ourselves to. It is God who desires this loyalty of his people; it is God who says these things. That loyalty is not just an optional virtue; it is something we are all to exhibit: to God first of all, to Christ our Saviour, to the commandments of his word, to the people of God among whom he has set us. In all the duties that we solemnly pledge ourselves to before him, we are to be loyal.
Pastors complain of such disloyalty all around the country. They report of people coming and going, and defecting and abandoning ship so easily. Some of these are people who imagine themselves to be good and earnest Christians. They wouldn't steal and there are all sorts of things they wouldn't do, and yet they just have shut their minds to the fact that to have no loyalty to their local church.