I just read this article, 7 Things I Wish the Church Knew About Me. I am still pondering whether or not it hurts, offends, or angers me… because you see I am the Church. Something changed when I actually committed my life to Christ and committed it to Shiloh Baptist Church… and then when I accepted the call as Children’s Ministry Director a whole new level of commitment came with it… as well as a whole new way of seeing things.
Also, something that is quite important… just because a bunch of people meet in a building together on a specified day does not mean they are the church. The church is the body of Christ. The church is an assembly of people who have received the gospel and been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and now live to serve Him and serve others and share the gospel with the world.
As the church, one thing I have learned is that I will never be able to make you happy.
I will sing too loud or not loud enough.
I will welcome you and make you uncomfortable or I will not welcome you and offend you.
I will ask you to join a class or group and be too pushy or I will wait for you to ask to join and I will be stuck up snobs who ignore you.
I will expect you to serve and you will leave because I will be putting too much on you or I will not expect you to serve and you will leave because I am not challenging you.
I will teach you the truths and the doctrines of the faith and give you tools for future growth and study and I will be shoving memorized cliches down your throat giving you answers to questions you haven’t even asked or I will teach you little and then you will accuse me of being the reason you didn’t know truth and it will be my fault that your life is a mess because you didn’t know the right answers.
If I see the obvious darkness around you and ask you if I can help, you don’t want my pity but if I smile and nod and act as though I don’t see the obvious pain in your eyes, I am heartless and inconsiderate.
If I call you out on your behavior or question your faith I am accused of being self-righteous and judging others, but when I stay silent and the youth minister is discovered to be a sexual predator you accuse me of negligence and hypocrisy.
So here are 7 things that I wish you knew about the church.
1) I love Jesus and I love people. I am here for Him and for you. Everything that I am about is trying to serve Him and trying to serve you. All my committees, groups, fellowships, and events are simple me trying to serve you and reach out to those around me in the best way we know how with what our resources allow.
2) I am not perfect either. I am made up of redeemed people in all different stages of sanctification who are all just trying to learn to love Jesus and to learn to love people the best they know how according to where they are in their own walk with Christ. Not only that, I am also the enemy of the very gates of hell. I am constantly under attack by the prince of the power of the air and his demons of darkness… and on top of this I am also being attacked by those who are supposed to be parts of my own body.
3) I will never work right as long those who belong to me refuse to be a part of me. If my hand refuses to show up or my leg refuses to come or my eyes refuse to open… I am broken, weak, hurting, and limping along doing the best I can with the parts of me that are giving all they got and doing all they can to make up for the parts who are not there. I am tired and I need your prayers, not your condemnation.
4) I am a body too… which means I am growing and changing and developing and maturing right along with you. I also have scars, many that are the result of trying to help those who instead took advantage of me and cursed me too others when what they experienced or heard about me might or might not have been true.
5) I am eat up with a cancer of sorts. Within this body grows tares right along with the wheat, but because I am unable to always tell the difference and because sometimes to remove the tare would be to remove a vital part of me that it grows in, I have to let the tares grow right along with the wheat, because that’s what Jesus told me to do.
6) Sometimes even I wish I could stay home because when I open myself up to you, no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I will never be enough… and you will always judge me by the worst of me. Rarely will you choose to love me in spite of the things within me that I cannot always control.
7) Maybe I am where I am because you are not here growing and doing within me what I so desperately need you to do because God uniquely purposed and designed you to do it.
for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:18-22
But that’s okay… go ahead in your season of forsaking the assembly… Enjoy your times of worship at the beach, on a hiking trail, hanging in a tree, sitting in the midst of the river, or simply laying in your bed. I will continue to try and figure out whether you want noticed or ignored when you do stop by.
However, please know that I am made up of humanity too… I didn’t check my humanity at the door either… it walked in with me as well. I also can’t read your mind or see into your heart. I am not omniscient… I am in the process of being sanctified just like you… except I am trying to do it along side many other justified folk who are in all different places in this being made perfect and conforming into the image of the Son. Imagine trying to live in a body with an 80 year old hand, 20 year old arms, 2 month old legs, 6 year old eyes, and 35 year old ears… It would be quite difficult right.
But, I will be just fine. I will survive.
I might be battered, betrayed, and belittled, but I will continue to fight evils outside and evils within. I understand your hurt… I have been hurt too. I actually am being hurt on a daily basis around this entire world. Parts of my body die trying to get to me while other parts of my body die because they choose to detach from me, while at the same time I have other parts of the body that are doing all they can to suck dry what life I have without investing back into me at all.
Yet, I will live because Christ lives. I am His body.
I will toil, working with the hands that I have; when I am reviled, I will still bless; when I am persecuted, I will endure; when I am slandered, I will try to conciliate; though I have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now… I will continue to try and serve you every time you choose to walk in my doors.
I am the church. I am the body of Christ. Please don’t give up on me. If you look for me… you can find me in the midst of the congregation…