Church Thoughts

Just a thought: I highly encourage you to find a church and stick with it through thick and thin. Like any community or institution or whatever you deem fit to call it, a church goes through the best of times and the worst of times. For everything there is a season, if you will. I know many choose to throw their hands up and walk away when the going gets tough, and why not? It’s a buyer’s market as far as churchgoing is concerned--why not exchange for a better one?

Now, I don’t mean to belittle those forced to leave a church for matters of conscience or orthodoxy. Such situations occur, and after all else fails, there may be no other recourse. But don’t church hop. Don’t choose a church based on the color of the carpet. Don’t come and go with the pastor or with your best friend. Don’t leave because you’re bored and feel the need for a change of stained glass. These things are trivial. They miss the point.

A church community endures for more than mere entertainment, more than social hours, coffee carts, and pep talks. It’s for the pursuit of life and godliness, the spurring on towards love and good deeds, the unified adoration of our Father and Bridegroom. Such things do not come in isolated units Sunday to Sunday. Growth comes not in abandoning ship when you see a puddle of water on the floor. A body that frequently dismembers itself and trades limbs cannot be healthy.

No, growth and unity is allowing kids to pass from VBS attendees to group leaders. It’s watching the youth evolve from the uncertainty of life beyond graduation to the young families running through the narthex. It’s puzzling at how the little old ladies remain little old ladies all your life.

It’s become cliché to say it, but life in a church involves knowing the people and knowing their stories, and it requires dedication and sacrifice beyond two year stints at a dozen congregations. Our society likes impersonal fast food, fast internet, fast cures, but let’s not give in to fast church.

I’ve been blessed to know one church throughout my life. I faced my irrational fear of abandonment to Sunday school, met my first best friend, sat through hours-long congregational meetings while precious snow melted outside, celebrated the church’s centennial, mourned the passing of pastors, and welcomed new chapters of its history. The grit, grace, and not-glamor has been laid before me as a lesson in the Christian life, demonstrating what it means to live together as fellow sinners saved by an incomprehensibly good God.

What does this look like? Lingering conversations after the service. Knowing where to find forks in the kitchen. Cleaning the flooded basement. Clearing the brush in the back lot. Restoring order to the windows left broken by vandals. Such intimacy with a church body does not come by running at the first sign of trouble or at the first spark of disagreement. It is not gained by jumping from ‘in’ church to ‘in’ church. Rather, it requires the long neglected virtues of faithfulness, dedication, commitment, perseverance, and hope. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it hurts. But in the end, the joys and fruits of long-term intimacy with a Christ-centered community are oh so worth it and ever so beautiful.