The Local Church

     I love and believe in the local church more than most people I've talked to. I believe that it's biblical to be faithful to a local body, to use your gifts there, to love, disciple, be discipled, tithe, live out community, and worship there. But I don't love and believe in the local church primarily because of my experience in one. I am thankful to have loving, faithful pastors. I am thankful to have heard God's words preached and not man's. I am thankful for faithful people who have loved me and led me towards holy living by example. I have never known "church hurt" in the popular use of the phrase. I cannot overemphasize the positive effect these things have had in shaping me.

     But I have experienced profound loneliness at church, too. I have been hurt by people there - and I've hurt people. I have been ignored. I have felt a great deal of disappointment.     

     Someone asked the other day: "do you feel at home where you live?" I realized that I do feel at home geographically and culturally. They are comfortable and comforting. But I do not always feel at home in community. Being known and loved feels like a far-off concept sometimes, even at church. 

     The world would tell me (and many Christians would, too) to go somewhere where I'm most comfortable; where the people and music and vibe suite me. That is not what God says. In fact, a lot of the time when Paul writes to churches, he's addressing their issues among each other. If they lived during Cancel Culture time, he surely would have rebuked them, I think. 

     We don't get to cancel people when we're disappointed with them. We don't get up and leave when things just haven't turned out the way we saw them going. That's true for marriages, friendships, and church family. I'm convicted just writing these words, because when you've labored for years to see good fruit and yet the seeds have barely sprouted, it is tempting to want to do just that and to feel completely justified.

     Different areas of life have all pointed me towards the same reminder lately: God's word has the answers. If I ask for wisdom, He'll give it - and it begins in His word. If I want to know what the church should be and look like, I need to go to His word. If I am hurt, disappointed, lonely for the hundredth Sunday, I will find comfort in His word. 

     Today as I sat in church, hurt by an insensitive comment or two, sad about relationships gone cold, and feeling alone despite my best efforts to Put Myself Out There, I thought about God's patience. He is so patient with us. He works in us individually over entire lifetimes and works in His church over centuries. He doesn't give up or call it quits when we've blown it for the thousandth time. That is what we are called to be like towards each other. That is our calling. That is the Gospel lived out. That is evidence of HIM in us - patience and love when they are extremely difficult.

     I write this because I need these words today and will need them again, I'm sure. I give Him the hurts of the week and even the moments before service as I try to worship with my whole heart and mind at church. He is worthy. Worshipping Him reorients me and gives me the strength to go to battle against the Devil and my flesh, which both want to take over on Sunday mornings. As I worship, the inescapable truth looms over my head that He is bigger than my pain, my problems, and all the humanity stuffed into the room. That reason - among many others - is more than enough to keep meeting week after week with a church family to worship. Unity does not mean uniformity, and it doesn't mean that our hearts won't bump against and bruise each other again and again. It means that we are united by Someone who holds us all in the palm of His hand. We are stuck with each other because He will not let any of us go. There is more patience and love available for me and for everyone else there than our weak little minds can comprehend.  And so I know what I have to do, and in moments of stronger faith what I want to do: love people. Pursue them. Smile and say good morning. Care about their lives and show it - ask them questions. Say that I'd love to get together and then actually do it. Love when there is not love in return. Be patient with them as God is with me. 

     I have so many more thoughts on this subject: the seasonal aspect of long-term membership at a church, being the change you want to see, eyes that see the bad and not the good, biblical expectations balanced with the reality of sin, etc. I just might write more on the subject later.