Learning to Love the Church Again

This post is going to be hard to write.  It's hard because it's reasonably autobiographical.  The thoughts, however, apply to many.  The roots of church-dislike began outside the Christian world.  Secular humanism as a worldview naturally mixed with Christianity to produce a sort of spirituality that commonly espoused, "I am spiritual but don't like organized religion."  It's not a surprising philosophy, and many have commented that within it there may even be a kernel of something that could restore Christianity to the type of movement that Jesus founded.  Unknowingly, however, as this became the dominant American philosophy on religion, syncretism (the mixing of religious beliefs) re-appeared to allow the idea to take a strong hold within our churches.  This is where we find ourselves today with many church-hoppers and those, like me, who struggled within the churches we called home.  Our fervor for God hasn't diminished, but we are disturbed and sometimes angered by our churches.

People have many reasons for disliking their own churches.  My church mishandles money, they say.  My pastor is dishonest.  Our leaders care more about numbers than about people.  The worship music is low-quality.  I feel lost in the crowd.  The church doesn't care about mission to the community or internationally.  What makes this anger at our own churches so prevalent and challenging is that most of the assertions are probably pretty accurate.  Our churches are, by and large, massively broken places where we mistake a family for an organization and go in a different direction than where the Holy Spirit is going.  We don't get mission, and don't care for people as we ought to.  All that is to say that when I speak of learning to love the church again, I don't mean learning to ignore its problems, or learning to realize that the church actually is on the right track.  I mean learning to love it.


Perhaps the task I'm up against is really to talk about the word "love."  It's probably being confused with "like."  I make a point to tell my wife that I love her, but I also make a point of telling her that I like her, because they're different things.  You can, and probably should, love things that you don't like.  Not liking something is a feeling you have based on yourself - your own preferences or values.  Love is entirely other-focused.  Love doesn't change based on what the other person does.

That's what I mean when I talk about learning to love the church.  When I left church-work to be a businessman at a ministry nonprofit, I actually left my church too.  For about a year and a half I hopped among a variety of churches.  I came back a few years ago because I felt God calling me to (it was part of the journey that inspires the title of this post).  It's taken me a while, however, to feel like I could love the church.  Still not sure I'm there, honestly.  And it doesn't stop at my church.  In my job we work with a number of broken churches, and I see some unfortunate situations.  I can look at many of them and think, "That's not the church that Jesus founded, that isn't what He wanted it to look like."  But I have to look at them and then think, "That's exactly the church that Jesus loves."  After all, that's what Jesus said.  He calls the Church as His bride, and there's going to be a wedding.

Some speakers have made much of the wedding traditions surrounding Jesus' culture when he called the Church His bride.  The marriage is arranged, and the "betrothed" are for all intents and purposes now married.  However, the groom leaves to go prepare a home, and the bride begins to prepare herself and the affairs of the wedding.  After a time, the groom comes back to get her, there's a procession to the new home, and then there's a huge party.  If we, therefore, are the bride of Christ, our role right now is to prepare ourselves.  I'm concerned, however, that in our (read: my) efforts to criticize the church into being what we think it ought to be, we've missed Christ's own instructions of what we are to be.

A Bible concordance search of the term "one another" leads to a quick survey of what God says the church should be like.  He doesn't, unfortunately, mention things in the way we wish ("Then Christ said, 'No church shall spend more than 50% of its annual budget on a new building.'").  He just doesn't.  Instead, He says:

"Be at peace with one another." - Mark 9:50

"How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" - John 5:44

"You ought to wash one another's feet." - John 13:14

"Love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another." - John 13:34

"Outdo one another in showing honor." - Romans 12:10

"Live in harmony with one another." - Romans 12:16

"Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you." - Romans 15:7

"To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.  Why not rather suffer wrong?  Why not rather be defrauded?" - 1 Corinthians 6:7

"When they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding." - 2 Corinthians 10:12

"Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace." - 2 Corinthians 13:11

"Through love serve one another." - Galatians 5:13

"Bear one another's burdens." - Galatians 6:2

"Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." - Ephesians 4:32

"...bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other..." - Colossians 3:13

"Encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing." - 1 Thessalonians 5:11

"See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone." - 1 Thessalonians 5:15

"Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works." - Hebrews 10:24

"Do not speak evil against one another, brothers...Do not grumble against one another, brothers." - James 4:11 and 5:9

"Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another." - James 5:16

"Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.  As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another." - 1 Peter 4:9-10

"Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another." - 1 Peter 5:5

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." - 1 John 4:11

I give such a long list on purpose.  If you just read a third of them and then skipped to this paragraph, go back and read them.  I know that's what you did, because that's what I always do.  In addition to being a great list of instructions - each one that could convict each of us at different moments - together as a whole they paint a great picture.  Even with omitting the verses that repeat a call to love one another (there's a lot), we can still see a picture of great love.  It's overwhelming love, in fact.  Counter-cultural love.  And it's the love that I'm not very good at, which is why I'm writing this post.

If we are thankful that God, through Christ, accepted us as we were - as messed up, broken people - then we ought to do the same for our brothers and sisters....and for our churches.  If we accept Christ's forgiving love, but judge our churches for not measuring up, the Spirit is quenched within us.  We are not allowing It to work, and we are being bullies.  You can't be forgiven a great debt then turn around and demand payment from others.  In the same way those of us who are married know that, when we were engaged to our spouses, we knew we were marrying very imperfect people.  We loved them anyways.  Christ is engaged to the Church, and He knows it's really messed up.  If we seek to be more like Christ, we will seek to love the Church the way He does.  He doesn't give up on the church and put His energy in parachurch ministries.  It's through the Church that God reaches into the world, and I would even go so far as to de-capitalize that and say that it's through the local church that God reaches into the world.  If we minister to people but never connect them to a church, we are not ministering fully to them.

Just to be clear for us ministry folks, I do not believe that we have to connect people to megachurches, or even mid-sized churches.  I believe there is a lot of promise in home-based churches, just like they looked for much of the first century of the Church.  But we must establish churches if we won't connect new disciples to existing ones.  We cannot live and operate as Christians seeking to do ministry without engaging with the local church.

So, back to me.  I frequently don't love the church.  Disagreements over direction, actions, priorities, and more cause me to put up a wall, and sometimes when I show up on Sunday morning my heart is far from ready to worship God.  This is my sin.  My job on Sunday morning is to worship God.  Anything I've let distract me from that has become, by definition, an idol.  I need not gloss over challenges, but I must not become disgruntled, cynical, or divisive.  None of this means that we can't disagree strongly with a brother or sister at a voter's meeting.  It has to do with our attitudes, not our preferences.  This is how I'm learning to love the church, despite the challenges.

What can we do?

1. We need to reconsider our mental states on Sunday morning as we drive to church.  It's easy to focus on the things we don't like, or the people we don't like.  As we drive to church, we need to redirect our thoughts to, "I look forward to being with God this morning, and I'm thankful for the unique opportunity that my church gives me for that."  We can of course be with and worship God any time.  The music, the sermon, the sacraments, and the community, however, are unique.
2. We need to accept one another in brotherly love.  We don't have to agree or even entirely like each other.  When I read the list of instructions above, however, I see a family.  We love each other despite our disagreements and differences.  Christ accepted the ugliness that I was and am, and I ought to similarly accept others.  If I'm avoiding somebody on Sunday morning or harboring anger, the love of Christ is not in me.  A disagreement I'm having with someone should not even begin to affect the warm handshake or hug with a smile that I offer them at church (what's the modern translation of a holy kiss, anyone?).
3. We need to spend real time together.  If I'm really generous with my time and get to church 15 minutes before the service starts, and leave 10 minutes after it ends, that's only 25 minutes I've granted to the community, likely with at least a dozen people.  How much relationship, or honesty, or love, have I shared in the 2 minutes I had with each person?  Almost none.  Unity, which Christ calls us to, requires honesty, and honesty is impossible with these sorts of shallow relationships.