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Come - What's So Bad About Church?
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What’s So Bad About the Church
Come
Luke 10:27
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself. NIV
I have to start this story by telling you my bias. I love church. When I say I love church, I’m talking about the church that is the Bride of Christ – the one that worships God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and believes in, reads, and obeys the Bible. I don’t care what flavor it is. I love the Protestants, Catholics, and Non-denominationals. I love Evangelicals, Charismatics, and Pentecostals. I love those sincere Christian churches that claim to be none of the above. I love home churches, small churches, regional churches, and mega churches. I love churches that worship 3 hours (more for you money) and churches that allow me to eat on time. When I’m on the road and ask someone for a church recommendation, they always ask what kind of church I’m looking for. My answer is always the same – I don’t care as long as they are Christians.
I also don’t care about worship styles. The prejudices and complaints about worship styles confuse me. I love singing the old and new music. I enjoy clapping, kneeling, being reverent, and dancing in the aisles. I love bowing my head and raising my hands. I love free style worship and formal litany. I enjoy dressing up and being casual. To me, it’s all good so I just try to fit in where ever I go.
I must confess to being more comfortable in some churches than others. I was quite uncomfortable in the church that let me know they thought I was going to hell because I wasn’t a member of their church. I squirmed the entire time in the church that spent the service religion bashing the particular brand of church I worship in back home. Yelling from the pulpit tends to lower my serotonin and self-esteem so I usually have to leave and spend some quiet healing time with God afterward. When a church I was visiting formed what I would call a conga line led by a woman wearing a wreath of flowers and carrying a tambourine with streamers, I was shy about joining the line so I watched and worshipped from my seat. I’m a musician and when a singer sung in a different key then the guitar he was playing, my trained ears cried foul. But my rule of thumb is not to let any discomfort keep me from worshipping my glorious and awesome God. Worship is for God and I love to come to church.
Regarding doctrinal differences, I’m always interested in the intellectual discussions and the Biblical source of the beliefs but I stay out of the fight. I know what I believe. It comes from reading my Bible with the interpretation of the Holy Spirit. Who am I to presume the Holy Spirit hasn’t interpreted it differently to someone else. My theology has a few deal breakers – like the Trinity, the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the reality of heaven and hell, and the Bible being the word of God, but I’ve found that almost all of the churches I have visited agree on those things.
Because I love the church so much, the church bashing I hear hurts me. I hear it from Christians and non-Christians alike. Amazingly, the complaints are similar. They involve things like doctrine, strong personalities, ethics, morals, hypocrisy, economics, and judgment. When people tell me that they have decided to stop going to church, I shudder over the impact their decision will have on future generations. When they tell their church horror stories, I apologize on behalf of the church. We are often guilty as charged. I wince when people church bash as a way of bragging about how good their church is. It doesn’t make their church attractive.
When I hear the church bashing, I wonder how they could be talking about the same church that I love so much and spend so much time in. When I hear the complaints, I want to scream, What’s so bad about church? The danger with asking that question is that once we ask the question, what’s so bad about church? there are plenty of answers to go around. The church has always made plenty of mistakes. When we start focusing on the negative instead of the positive, the negative grows and grows until it steals something precious from us.
America needs the church. Our children need the anchor of the church. We need the church. When we run people away from the church or leave ourselves, we destroy the future of our family and our nation. As one who travels our country and listens to what people say about the church, I beg you the following:
Go to church. I don’t care how old your children are, if you don’t go to church, your children and their children’s children probably won’t go either. I know this because your children use you as their excuse for not going to church.
Make church a safe haven filled with love. Anger, bickering, gossiping, complaining, and judgment have no place in the church. If we run people off, we are affecting the eternity of their future generations.
Prepare your heart for worship. The Sabbath is the most important day of the week because it prepares us for the rest of the week. Don’t go unprepared.
Stop all religion bashing. You should hear what non-Christians say about Christians bashing other religions. They joke about how each religion thinks they are better than the others. When we religion bash, we are not demonstrating the humility of Christ. We are giving non-Christians an excuse not to come to church.
Let go of your personal preferences and support what is good for the church. The Bible tells us not to be selfish.
Tithe. You won’t miss the money and God will bless you and your church.
Be Christ to the world. If you go to church, the world is watching and waiting on you to mess up. Don’t be their ‘excuse of the week’ for not going to church.
Develop a close personal relationship with the God of your Sabbath. The non-Christians I meet accuse us of being holy on Sunday and forgetting about God the rest of the week. If we develop a personal relationship that includes daily prayer, meditation, and Bible Study, we won’t forget God during the week.
Invite people to church. Tell them why you go. Many people tell me they have never been invited.
If you can’t say something good about church, keep your mouth closed. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to be committing the sin of gossiping about the Bride of Christ.
Focus on what is right with the church instead of what is wrong with the church. It’s Biblical to focus on the positive.
Only leave a church if God is leading you to do so. Never leave a church because they have disappointed you – that’s what forgiveness is for.
Only start a church if God is leading you to do so. It is never a good reason to start a church because you think everyone else is doing it wrong. That demonstrates a lack of humility – not a good quality for a Christ-like church leader.
Love Love Love – Love the lovable and unlovable alike. When there is a problem, stop trying to solve the problem and focus all of your energy on loving God and others. Jesus says that is the greatest commandment. What part of greatest do we not understand?
Make church so wonderful that the world will want to come. I want to weep when people tell me they don’t go to church. They can’t imagine what they are missing.
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