It Might Be Tempting, but I’m Not Quitting Church Anytime Soon
I am not quitting the Church anytime soon, and it is not due to a shortage of plausible reasons.
In my 44 years of life as a Church insider, I have often been dismayed and horrified by the Church’s behavior: the leadership failures, sex scandals, clergy abuse of children, authoritarianism, blatant hypocrisy, judgmental attitudes, idolatrous alignment with American politics, consumerism, discomfort with science, poor treatment of women, flirtation with conspiracy theories, unwillingness to confront racism, lack of compassion for the poor, etc.
This dysfunctional institution is the one God entrusted with delivering the Good News to the world? Heaven help us.
The Church has been my spiritual Mother since I was an infant. I have known her nursery, Sunday School classes, baptismal font, Sunday worship services, communion table, low-budget dinner banquets, revival services, Christian schools, universities, and seminaries. For 13 years, I have been ordained to the office of ministry on Her behalf.
As a member and pastor, I have had more than my share of first hand opportunities to witness her flaws. Why then, would I refuse to quit the Church?
Let me be clear: I am in no way dismissing immoral or criminal behavior in the ranks of the Church. These must be dealt with far more seriously than I have seen in the past.
Had I not been raised by Christian parents, I am not sure if I would have been drawn to the Christian faith by observing Christians alone.
The charges of Christian hypocrisy, and of not always being the “nicest” people are serious. I commend to you CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity, specifically the chapter titled “Nice People or New Men.” There he says,
“When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. The wartime posters told us that Careless Talk costs Lives. It is equally true that Careless Lives cost Talk. Our careless lives set the outer world talking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself.”
In spite of my own normal struggles with doubts about the Church, there are four reasons why I will not be quitting the Church anytime soon.
1. Every other organized human institution shares similar problems to the Church.
CrossFit boxes, schools, places of employment, Rotary clubs, PTA associations, sports teams, nonprofit boards, and local knitting groups are more like the Church than you might want to admit.
These all have members that meet to accomplish a mission, collect dues, have leadership hierarchies, and standards of orthodoxy. Reject those standards, and you will be branded a heretic and ejected from membership.
Members excitedly join and also abruptly quit. Leaders get accused of being too authoritarian or inadequate to the task. Quiet abuse and financial scandals are common. Cliques form that make it hard for outsiders to break in.
Some might protest that these groups do not impose a deity to enforce righteous behavior. I would dispute this, based on the fact that humans turn all kinds of things into false gods (beauty, sex, power, romantic love) that promise benefits to their followers. There is a reason we say things like, “She religiously exercises.” It is not just that she is diligent in her workouts, there may be faith-like elements behind the reasons she diligently exercises controlling her heart.
All of these organizations have one thing in common: human beings. When humans organize, beautiful things can result, but ugliness also happens. This is due to human selfishness and sin.
If I were to quit the Church because of bad behavior and dysfunction, I would probably need to also cancel my membership in every other human organization.
The truth is that there are good churches and bad churches. I have visited multiple CrossFit boxes, and I can attest the same there. The same goes for Rotary clubs.
In my years of visiting churches across multiple denominations, I can tell you that churches have a variety of members who are in different stages of faith. The Christian message is not that God saves people to make them nice, however desirable a goal this might be. God saves nasty, broken, rebellious humans to make them new people.
Do not be surprised when you meet a nasty Christian. The key question is not whether they are nasty or not, but whether they are becoming less nasty, albeit a new person. What were they like before they met Jesus? Give them time. We don’t expect out of shape gym members to become advanced athletes overnight either.
Some of the most beautiful, tender Christians I know are elderly saints who have walked with God for years. They will tell you battle stories of the ways God knocked off their rough edges over time.
The fact that the Church shares similar problems to other human organizations does not minimize the need to address those issues. If the Church desires to be a “city set on a hill” to give light to the world, she must shine more brightly than she is in the current moment.
2. Jesus gave His life for the Church
Jesus is not ambivalent about the Church, nor can I be. The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter the Ephesians,
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:29 NIV)
Paul notes that the Church is considered: unholy, unclean, dull, stained, wrinkled, full of blemishes, and blameworthy. Does your gripe about the Church match that heavy list?
The nasty, filthy, brokenness of the Church is why Jesus “gave himself up for her” on the Cross. Jesus chose to make an unworthy people His bride through death.
She is also a work in process. The Church has been “already” declared the bride of Christ, but is “not yet” fully radiant, without stain, wrinkle, or blemish. For now, we live in the tension of this “already and not yet” communion.
We should not be surprised to find that the Church is stained and wrinkled. Her presentation Day has not arrived, but on that Day, she will be transformed and presented as a breath-taking beauty.
3. The Church is the arena of God’s transforming work
My father-in-law was a pastor who passionately loved the Church and his denomination, but boy, could he get ticked off at her stupidity. As frustrating as she could be, he would always say, “The Church is where the action is at.” My own love of the Church is due in part to Terry Traylor’s influence.
He used to quote Ephesians 3:10,
“His (God’s) intent was that now, through the Church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.”
God is doing His transforming work through the Church. I have witnessed countless changed lives and beautiful stories of hope and redemption as people came to know Jesus in the Church.
My own Mom and Dad became Christians as adults and had not grown up in the Church or in Christian homes. They both have tremendous stories of how Jesus changed their lives. Their Christian faith set an entirely different trajectory for our entire family tree.
God keeps popping up in my own life through the Church. It was in that little, Baptist church, at five years old, that a Sunday School teacher reinforced the message my Mom and Dad were telling me about Jesus. A youth pastor named Rick Powell played basketball with me, and took time to show me how to winsomely share my faith in Jesus. A traveling evangelist moved my heart as a teen to consider if God might be calling me to use my life in Christian ministry.
I could speak further of Terry’s influence on me, of other pastors, church members who showed great love, kindness, and generosity to my own family in time of need.
When there was need, hurt, and any number of human voids, God kept showing up, not just in some mystical way, but with human hands and faces.
These surprising appearances have never been through just one denomination either. I have seen God work in my own life through Anglicans, Baptists, historically Black churches, Presbyterians, Catholics, evangelicals, Mainline Protestant denominations, the Orthodox, and Pentecostals. Space does not permit to tell all I have experienced or learned from this international collection of godly men and women from these diverse traditions.
The Church is the body of Christ, the literal hands, feet, and face of His ministry to the world.
It is in this arena that God introduced Himself to me and continues to transform and renew me. I would never want to cut myself off from what God is doing in the Church.
4. The Church needs to be shepherded
Before ascending into heaven, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Each time, Peter replied, “Yes, Lord,” to which Jesus replied, “Feed my sheep.”
The Church is one, big massive flock that easily gets scattered and into trouble. She needs to be shepherded and cared for. The minute the shepherd abandons the flock, disaster is waiting: wolves, false teaching, selfish behavior, etc.
Jesus, that Great Shepherd of the sheep, will not abandon His Church, nor can I.
“Do you love me? Feed my sheep.”
I know that the shepherds and pastors of the Church are weary right now. This season has been one of the worst and most divisive. I pray that these great men and women find new refreshment, renewal, and encouragement to lead and shepherd the body of Christ, so that she might continue to be that great arena of God’s transformation of the world.
In the Apostle’s Creed, we declare, “I believe in the holy, catholic Church.” She too, is an article of faith. In the midst of the ugliness I see in the Church, I have to believe that Jesus is mysteriously at work to make her new. Entertain a nuance for a moment: There may be just occasion to leave a church (small c) who fails to address abuse, heresy, or leadership failures. This decision should be done prayerfully and with godly counsel with the goal of finding a healthier congregation. Leaving a “small c church” is not the same thing as abandoning the “big C Church.”
The news cycle might continue to give me tempting reasons to jump ship on the “big C Church”, but I am not quitting her anytime soon. She is too precious to Jesus. I am waiting this one out until she is presented flawless.
