The Imperfect Church
8 05 2008Call me I’m strange, but I honestly love the church. I hear excuses from people all the time as to why they don’t go to church. If I believed even half of these excuses were really a legitimate excuse to not go to church, I would have been out the door a long time ago. Allow me to go off on a Pauline rant for a moment.
- As a grade-school kid, my “best friend” at church threw my bible in a puddle because he got mad at me for something.
- As a teenager, after sharing feelings of loneliness with a friend, he blatantly laughed at me when I was left out of a group of guys at a church function.
- In college, a ministry leader told me he didn’t think I really fit in and asked me why I didn’t just leave.
- In seminary, I was known as the “black sheep” because I wasn’t like the other guys around me.
- After seminary, a pastor flat out lied to me when he told me he was going to hire me for a position and then hired someone else a few weeks later.
- I’ve known pastors who poured 20+ years of their lives into incredibly fruitful ministry at a single church only to have it burn them out and they walk away.
- I walked a personal friend through the pain of losing his ministry to a moral failure, and going through a long process of restoration to a slightly less dynamic ministry.
- I’ve had mentors get so enamoured with a theological idea that they chase the single idea until it totally dries up their spiritual walk with God.
- I’ve had friends who hold a theological position that allows them to blame God for a moral failure and completely walk away from ministry, God, and the church.
- I’ve been spit on for my faith.
- I’ve had my faith questioned by supposed church leaders.
- I’ve dealt with people content with a Sunday Morning faith.
- I’ve had dry times when I wondered if God even existed.
- I’ve been frustrated when I sense a direction for my life that just doesn’t seem to ever pan out.
- I’ve had friends molested by church leaders, and had to help them deal with the pain years later.
In spite of all this I LOVE THE CHURCH. There has only been 1 time in my life that I honestly wanted to leave the church. I wanted to give up and just walk away. That lasted for a total of about 30 minutes. As I got thinking about all the things I could do just because I wasn’t going to be a Christian anymore, I realized I had no desire to do any of them . . . Which made me realize that God has really totally reshaped me to be in His church and to love His church.
You may think I’m crazy . . . But the Bible never tells us that the church would be perfect. Nor does it tell us that we should expect God’s people to act perfectly all the time. In fact, the Bible tells us that God is still working on the church and each of us. The Bible teaches us that God is “sanctifying” the church to become a “pure spotless bride.” But we’re not there yet. We shouldn’t expect to be.
Besides, as much as the church has “done to me” over the years . . . If I’m humble enough to admit it . . . I’ve been the one to hurt other peoples’ feelings off an on. I’ve also been guilty of making someone feel out-of-place. I’ve stretched or hidden the truth a couple of times to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. I’m not any more perfect than anyone else. That’s why I still need the church! I need the church to help me continue to become a part of the pure spotless bride.
So, are you letting some other imperfect person from your past keep you from fully experiencing life in Christ through His Body, the Church?
Tags : Christian, Church, disconnected, failure, feelings, God, guilty, hate church, hipocrite, hurt, imperfect, Jesus, pain, relationship
Categories : God, Life, Personal, Random
