Do You Love the Church?
This time of year is always a busy time for most youth pastors. Graduation parties and summer camp planning consume the majority of our time That being said last week I was at a high school graduation, and while everyone was waiting for the ceremony to begin I bumped into a college student I hadn’t seen or really even talked to for a almost a year. After the initial small talk, I asked him what church he was attending (he had been a Christian the entire time I knew him). He told me that himself and a friend were going around for the next 8-9 months and trying to attend every single church in the area. My next question was what have you learned from this… He then began to tell me everything he liked and disliked about each church… And to be honest most of his comments were probably accurate. But the longer we spoke and the more time I spent with him I noticed a growing sentiment with every sentence… This Bible College student really didn’t like the church. And I’m well aware that we (as the church) really haven’t done a great job in every area. But this resentment that he was feeling seems to be the norm with college students. And there are more and more people making the claim that “I love Jesus, I just don’t like the church” And then using that reasoning to leave the church. Not only does that line of thought put the individual in danger through lack of accountability; but is it even possible to love Jesus without loving the church? Jesus came to the earth to establish His church. The church is the bride of Christ, so how can we say that we love Jesus just not his bride. I know the church isn’t perfect and we have more flaws than we like to admit, but the solution isn’t pulling away from the church and leaving it the way that it is… The way to “fix” the church isn’t by running away from it, maybe the church isn’t what it is supposed to be because too many parts of the body are “absent”. No body would be able to function at full capacity if an eye or nose were missing. But we constantly expect the church to be perfect at all times when there is much more than that missing from it.
The way to fix the church is by embracing it, becoming a part of it. This is the only way for the church to become better. To authentically embrace it and love it. The church is never going to be perfect until the return of Christ, so we can’t expect perfection. But the entire body will be better off if we lose our resentment and bitterness and start working together to ensure the church the pure bride that Jesus is returning to.
