And by “church people,” I mean those folks who regularly go to church, are committed and involved in the congregation, speak the insider “Christianese” language, and generally act like they always know what is best and have a certain air of self-righteousness to them.
They complain about insignificant points and often make the most inane comments.
“Whose bright idea was it to schedule all of these events on the same night? Don’t they know this puts a lot of competing things in one evening?”
“Why do we need a fog machine for worship? It’s so distracting and such a waste of money.”
“This is too many transitions for these 4-year olds, moving from one group to the next. Why couldn’t the children’s minister have designed the schedule differently?”
“I really think they should have handled that missions trip differently.”
“Why wasn’t I asked to be a part of the conversation before they just up and moved my small group’s location?”
“Why haven’t I ever been invited to join the Advisory Team?”
“I would hardly call that a sermon."
“Is it really necessary to spend that much money on a new building?”
“These people drive me crazy.”
You can picture people from your own church saying these things, can’t you?
But you know what is even more annoying, painful and embarrassing?
I am the one who said all of these things.
I am that church person.
I am that church person who walks through the doors every week and acts like I’ve got a monopoly on how to run a church. I act like I know how my pastor should preach his sermons, and that I know better than he does as to what the needs of the church body are. I act like I know how to lead a small group better than anyone else, and I act like I know how to teach the Bible better than anyone else.
I am that church person who walks through the doors every week and expects the people walking through the doors next to me to be less broken than what they are.
But you want to know the real reason why church people are a pain?
Because people are in pain.
The people filling the rows in my church don’t pass through the doors every Sunday, sit down and suddenly become perfect people. They walk through the doors and they bring with them their past circumstances, their current hurts, their future fears, their jumbled schedules, their beeping cell phones, their crying children, their disgruntled spouses, and the general brokenness of their lives. Jon Bloom said in a recent post titled "Love the One You're With," referring to the church, "This mess rarely looks glorious to us up close. It looks like a lot of sin and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears invested into a lot of futility. It often looks like something we’d rather escape than join."
They complain about insignificant points and often make the most inane comments.
“Whose bright idea was it to schedule all of these events on the same night? Don’t they know this puts a lot of competing things in one evening?”
“Why do we need a fog machine for worship? It’s so distracting and such a waste of money.”
“This is too many transitions for these 4-year olds, moving from one group to the next. Why couldn’t the children’s minister have designed the schedule differently?”
“I really think they should have handled that missions trip differently.”
“Why wasn’t I asked to be a part of the conversation before they just up and moved my small group’s location?”
“Why haven’t I ever been invited to join the Advisory Team?”
“I would hardly call that a sermon."
“Is it really necessary to spend that much money on a new building?”
“These people drive me crazy.”
You can picture people from your own church saying these things, can’t you?
But you know what is even more annoying, painful and embarrassing?
I am the one who said all of these things.
I am that church person.
I am that church person who walks through the doors every week and acts like I’ve got a monopoly on how to run a church. I act like I know how my pastor should preach his sermons, and that I know better than he does as to what the needs of the church body are. I act like I know how to lead a small group better than anyone else, and I act like I know how to teach the Bible better than anyone else.
I am that church person who walks through the doors every week and expects the people walking through the doors next to me to be less broken than what they are.
But you want to know the real reason why church people are a pain?
Because people are in pain.
The people filling the rows in my church don’t pass through the doors every Sunday, sit down and suddenly become perfect people. They walk through the doors and they bring with them their past circumstances, their current hurts, their future fears, their jumbled schedules, their beeping cell phones, their crying children, their disgruntled spouses, and the general brokenness of their lives. Jon Bloom said in a recent post titled "Love the One You're With," referring to the church, "This mess rarely looks glorious to us up close. It looks like a lot of sin and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears invested into a lot of futility. It often looks like something we’d rather escape than join."
And I somehow – to my shame and dismay – expect them to leave all of that behind and be the kind of people who make perfect decisions every time, while simultaneously exempting myself from that expectation.
There is no distinction between the people outside the walls of the church and the people inside the walls of the church. Yes, I should expect a different level of behavior and lifestyle of those who know Christ. For those who have been exposed to the Word of God and have made a conscious decision to commit their hearts to Christ, yes, it is reasonable for me to expect differently of them.
But it is not reasonable of me to forget they are sinners nonetheless. They were sinners before they walked into church, and they are sinners after they walk into church.
And I am chief among them.
Yet somehow I forget that fact every.single.Sunday it seems (and most days in between). In my pride and my self-righteousness, I keep expecting the Bride of Christ to be perfect this side of heaven, with perfect people, a perfect pastor, perfect small group, and perfect worship.
But this is the very reason why Christ died for His Bride - because she is imperfect and fallen and completely hopeless without Him.
And in my foolishness I keep expecting it to get easier.
I have gone to church since I came out of the womb, and now thirty-plus years into this thing, I am discovering that belonging to a church may, in fact, be one of the hardest things I have ever done in life.
Church people are messy because people are messy, period. We spend our days wishing the people we call our “church family” would be different than what they are, wishing they looked more like what we want them to, instead of praying they would look more like God wants them to, and that is primarily his Son. Somewhere along the way we got this whole church thing backwards, making it more about ourselves than about Jesus.
This Bride - this Bride is what I have been both called to be a part of and called to love. We must not walk away from the church when it gets difficult or complicated or messy. Bloom goes on to say, "Jesus did not design the church to be a place where our dreams come true. Actually, it’s where many of our dreams are disappointed and die. And this is more of a grace to us than we likely realize, because our dreams are often much more selfish than we discern."
My dreams for my church are much more selfish than I discern. Just re-reading all of the opening comments reminds me of this truth.
Eugene Peterson gives the necessary kick in the pants in his book The Wisdom of Each Other: a Conversation Between Spiritual Friends:
The church is not a natural community composed of people with common interests; it is a supernatural community. And the super in that word does not mean that it exceeds your expectations; it is other than your expectations, and much of the other is invisible to you as yet. I'm sorry if I'm sounding a bit sharp-tongued on this, but I don't want you getting off on the wrong foot in this church business. Trust me, there's a lot more going on than you will ever have in common with anyone there. Go back to the company of those seventy or eighty people on Sunday, listen believingly to Scriptures read and preached, offer your prayers, receive Jesus in the sacrament, and bless your neighbors. And wait for the Kingdom. It's the Holy Spirit's style to fashion holy lives among the inept.Holy lives from the inept. That's God's aim for the church.
And we would do well to remember that we are among the inept. But by the grace of God, he's making all of us "church people" holy.
________
Note: Bloom's article truly is worth the read if you have ever remotely struggled with being part of a church. Be sure to read it in its entirety. Keith Welton also has an excellent article titled "Every Good Church is Messy," which is also worth the read.
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