The Messy Life of the Church

The local church is messy. This is one truth which is nearly undeniable. Just ask the millions of disillusioned young adults who leave the church as soon as they find their freedom on a college campus away from mom and dad. We are a generation of people who grew up in churches which were short on Spirit and long on bureaucracy. We saw the rise of the mega church, the corporate trained pastor, and perfectly polished programming. Unfortunately, growing up in the church also made our generation privy to the ugly underside of the glossy church veneer.

Personally, while I was in high school I landed the job of making and delivering the coffee for each hour of our Sunday School Classes in a major Southern Baptist mega church. Through this small job I was routinely berated by the senior adults for providing coffee which was too hot, too cold, too strong, too late (when I put it out at 7:20AM for our 8AM classes), too early (when the 11AM classes would complain that their coffee was put out at 10:30AM), too far from their class, and too cheap to be worth drinking. I once had an elderly gentleman cuss at me because his wife brought in pastries for the class but I didn’t leave enough napkins for them with my coffee; the result? He had to walk to the bathroom to get paper towels; surely that justifies the open hostility and unreasonable anger, right?

Enough reminiscing, everyone has their own horror stories about the local church which seem to show unabashed hypocrisy or habitual un-Christian behavior. I want to make a very radical assertion. I think Jesus expected these horror stories. More than that, I think they might be part of His plan.

You see, I think the church is messy for a number of reasons which we should bear in mind when discussing the failings and foibles of the sometimes faithful. The first and most important point to remember is that the local church is made up of people. People are beset by sin. Therefore, the local church is run, populated, and visited by people who bring the bad with them. No person is without sin, so the church will always be filled with hypocrites. Even the ones who have been gloriously saved are still stuck with a sin problem. Why should we expect any group of people who join together on a regular basis to do so without causing problems? It simply isn’t possible.

The second thing to bear in mind: the church is founded upon relationships, and as any family can tell you, relationships are messy. Now, the reason for this is mentioned in the previous paragraph, but I want to address the fact that this kind of messiness is expected. When we invest in the lives of other people and invite them to do the same, we make ourselves vulnerable to great offense. Because of the problem mentioned earlier (sin), great offense will inevitably happen. The messiness of personal relationship is expected. The New Testament is full of records of messed up relationships. Read Corinthians sometime and be thankful for your church filled with grumpy old folks. Relationships are the reason that Paul spends so much ink instructing the people in the church how to relate to one another. Love one another, exhort one another, accept one another, greet one another, agree with one another, submit to one another, and on and on they go. God gave us plenty of instruction on how to deal with one another because he knew it would get messy.

My final point for you to ponder is this: God intended for our relationships to get messy. He routinely works through our weaknesses, right? So the local body of believers is no different. He works through our churches in order to show how we are united by him. He works through us to show how we are united through him. He works through all of us in order to show us how he relates to each of us. We are to love one another as he first loved us. We are to forgive one another as he forgives us. We are to relate to one another as God relates to us. This provides us with an awesome opportunity to become more like God every time we experience difficulty in our messy relationships.

The Bible word for this is process is Sanctification. We are becoming more like God until the day we join Him. As frustrating as it may be, the local church will continue to provide opportunity for our sanctification until it is reunited with its bridegroom, Jesus. ‘Til that day comes, rest assured that the local church is only as messy as you and other Christians make it. Not reassuring? Well rest assured that the messes are only a result of the interpersonal relationships which will always be present in the local church from now until Jesus comes back. Still not assured? Then rest in the knowledge that God knew exactly how messy it would be, and he plans to redeem that mess through the sanctification of his children.

If that doesn’t reassure you, then you need a better understanding of the sweetness of redemption in the life of a sinner.