What’s Right with the Church, Part 2

In my last blog, I made the case for the importance of the church at a time when the church is being viewed by many as weak, broken, compromised, or irrelevant. I meant what I wrote. I have a high view of the church because of what our Lord and the scriptures tell us about the church.  

But I must confess I haven’t always seen Christ in the church. I’ve struggled at times not to view the church with cynicism or contempt. As a teenager, the church looked to me like a pretend game for adults trying to pacify consciences and justify themselves before God. As a preacher’s son, I knew the church too well. I saw all the cracks and mold in the church walls. I knew too many secrets of members’ lives (some leaders). I’ve seen some horrible behavior in church. We all know about various scandals. I could not reconcile the church’s rhetoric with the reality.  Jesus was cool, the church was sick. If I was going to become a minister, I would join a movement to change church—get it right or blow it up.  

But my generation turned out as broken as any before us—especially me! We were surgeons with unwashed hands infecting as we attempted to heal. Over time, I outgrew my ungracious judgment of the church God loves without going into denial about its weaknesses.

I’ve heard it said there are three stages of development in our view of church. They are like how we view our family.   

1.     Childish: We can see no wrong. The way Momma cooks is right. Every other way is wrong.

2.     Adolescent: We can see no right. Mom and Dad are stupid and embarrassing.

3.     Mature: We can see both the good and bad in our family. We want to pass on the strengths and overcome the weaknesses.  

The same is true with our church family:  

1.     Childish Idealism: We are the one, true, perfect church. We are right and everyone else is wrong, stupid, or evil.  

2.     Adolescent Cynicism: We’re self-deluded hypocrites. How can we be so ignorant and hypocritical? 

3.     Mature view: The church has both strengths to cherish and pass on, and weaknesses to repent of and overcome.

The problem is that many of us get stuck in stage 1 or 2 and never grow up to see the church in a mature way. Many people love the idea of church but can’t handle the reality. They can’t accept that God could live in the humanity of church.  They forget that God’s son took on our humanity once before. That body had all the natural weaknesses and frailties of all human bodies. Jesus had body odor and needed to go to the bathroom. Does that offend you? Well, that is part of being human.   

People get caught up in the search for an ideal church that never makes a mess or stinks. They move from church to church in search of the perfect church, and they keep finding it, for a while. But soon enough they see their new church also has problems and they go off hunting again. The same thing happens to preachers. They get disenchanted with the church they have and go looking for a church with “real disciples.” I wonder sometimes why these people think if they found the perfect church they would be admitted into membership.

It is the imperfection of the church that makes it possible for us to be members. Many people are angry at the church because they expected it to be what it can't be. In AA, they say "Expectations are just a form of pre-meditated resentment." Our greatest failure is not our brokenness, but our pretentiousness.

The hard truth is that there is no ideal church, there are only real churches.  

2 Cor. 4:5-7 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all- surpassing power is from God and not from us.

We don’t like God putting his treasure in clay pots. We want it kept in a gold challis. We are all still searching for the Holy Grail. But real clay pot churches, filled with real people made of clay with real weaknesses, can be real places for real encounters with a real God. In a real church we find real help, real love, real forgiveness, and real life that lasts beyond the pretend life that struts around us in the marketplace.  

Ultimately no congregation is great because of anything we are in ourselves but because of who lives in us–the Spirit of God. We must be very careful that we don’t begin to worship some idealized image of what we can become if we just get our house in order. The church is good and right, not because we are good and right, but because we are the dwelling place of the only one who is good and right. The church will have a future not because of our wise vision and strategic plans but because of the vision of the One who called us into his community of faith and love.

The church will grow here and around the world not because of our wise decisions and skillful leaders, but because God gives the increase. The church will flourish not because we have learned the secrets of good marketing and management but because the Lord of Glory is transforming us into his likeness from one degree of glory to another. Our message is not ourselves; we preach Christ crucified – the love of God who saves us by his grace.

None of this excuses the failures of the church in the past or today. It is no reason to refrain from rebuking the church when it is wrong. It does not mean we can avoid deep repentance for our collective sins. But the failures of the church are not the whole story. One of the most compelling aspects of both the Old Testament and the New Testament is that they tell the truth about God’s people in all its complexity of good and evil. The good aspects of the church do not negate the evil but neither does the evil negate the good. Regardless of whether the Christians around us want to minimize the church’s weakness in some idealized denial, or mercilessly condemn the church as hopelessly compromised, I would say to both, “Grow up.” Take the larger perspective and longer view. Does the church have a host of problems to overcome? Of course. Is the church hopeless or doomed? Oh please. God has proven that nothing is hopeless when he is involved.

What is right with the church? It is the body of Christ. It is real and covered with human flesh. It smells bad at times, but it is more than it appears. Inside this clay pot is an extraordinary treasure from God. Within this fleshly, weak exterior is the Spirit of God himself living in human bodies, working to bring all creation back to himself.

Fred Craddock once told a story of a man from a small country church who became a well-known preacher. He was invited to come home and speak in his home church. He said, “I was in this church for 30 years but it wasn’t until I left that I met Jesus.” It was as if he kicked everyone in the stomach. Craddock said, “I wanted to tell him that he would never have recognized Jesus if it had not been for all those people all those years telling him, ‘When you see him, this is what he will look like.’”