On Loving Real People in the True Church

The church Christ loves is a blemished, flawed, broken, often-confused, misshapen and malformed bride. She is "Quasimodo" -- "Half-formed." For this reason, Christ "cleanses here by the washing of the water with the word that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing" (Eph. 5:26-27). But even in her blemished state, Christ loves her -- that means you -- passionately. He cherishes her and patiently but purposefully transforms her, removing the "spots" and "wrinkles" in order that her true glory -- your true glory -- may be seen by all.

Christ loves the church as she is!

Do you love the church as she is? Or do you love a church of your fantasies? Until you've experienced complete disillusionment with others in the church, you probably still love a fantasy. And to the extent that you do this, you haven't truly loved anything (or anyone) at all except a figment of your own imagination -- an ideal rather than the real.

Most of us do not learn to love as we ought, because we "jump ship" when the going gets tough. When the all-too-human elements of the church rear their ugly hydra-heads, our first response is flight. Our disillusionment causes us to leave rather than to cleave with greater resolve to love real people with real problems but with real potential for real change!

In a recent article in Christianity Today entitled "Suburban Spirituality," David Goetz comments on the raw reality of the all-too-real humanity of the church and our need to face it, rather than run from it. Check it out and allow God to challenge, correct, convict, and encourage your heart through it:

For all of its foibles — which at its worst include lousy preaching, political infighting, self-centeredness, stagnation, a gaggle of special-interest groups — the poky local church in suburbia is still the most fertile environment for spiritual development there. Genuine spiritual progress doesn't happen without a long-term attachment to a poky local church. I'm all for improving the organization of a local church to make it more biblically effective, but the maddening frustration that prompts someone to leave one church for another may be the precise thing that holds great potential for spiritual progress—if one stays. "Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves," Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote. "Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it."

Disillusionment with one's church, then, is not a reason to leave but a reason to stay and see what God will create in one's life and in the local church. What I perceive to be my needs — "I need a church with a more biblical preacher who uses specific examples from real life" — may not correspond to my true spiritual needs. Often I am not attuned to my true spiritual needs. Thinking that I know my true needs is arrogant and narcissistic. Staying put as a life practice allows God's grace to work on the unsanded surfaces of my inner life. Seventeenth-century French Catholic mystic François Fénelon wrote, "Slowly you will learn that all the troubles in your life — your job, your health, your inward failings—are really cures to the poison of your old nature."

I would add "your church" to his list; that is, all the troubles in one's church are really cures to the poison of one's old nature, or, as the Apostle Paul put it in Romans 7, the "sinful nature." The biggest problem in any church I attend is myself — and my love of self and my penchant to roam when I sense my needs aren't being met.

Staying put and immersing oneself in the life of a gathered community forces one into eventual conflict with other church members, with church leadership, or with both. Frustration and conflict are the raw materials of spiritual development. All the popular reasons given for shopping for another church are actually spiritual reasons for staying put. They are a means of grace, preventing talk of spirituality from becoming sentimental or philosophical. Biblical spirituality is earthy, face-to-face, and often messy.

Excerpt from “Suburban Spirituality” by David Goetz.