Your Church Can’t Do This For You

by Rev. Mark Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader

“Heal us from our deep disappointment with the Church, we pray.”

The words hung there in the salty air of that seaside chapel during the seminary faculty retreat. Perhaps I was the only one struck by their honesty, but I think not. I was facilitating a faculty retreat, but not leading worship this last morning. After being with them those three days, I knew this seminary president was praying from the depths of significant relationship with many faculty members present in that chapel. “Heal us from our deep disappointment with the Church, we pray.” That’s been nearly 16 years ago now, indelibly recorded in my brain, but even more, etched on my heart.

If you’ve been involved in church life or especially church leadership for any length of time, you know what it’s like to be disappointed. We imagined church life would be fuller, richer, and so much more satisfying. Certainly the Church as we know it has failed over the span of our brief earthly journeys, not to mention over the course of its 2000 year history.

Yes, and….

Yes, and right alongside that truth is another truth deserving the light of day. Our expectations of church are what lead to disappointment. Frankly, our expectations are a mix of faithful, biblically-shaped expectations right alongside personal projections and idolization. Some portion of our disappointment with church experience is due to unrealistic expectations, elevating church so high that it can only topple and fall. This is idolization, elevating an institution or organization, even the body of Christ, beyond its rightful place under God.

In other words, we ourselves are a significant portion of our own problem with God’s Church. We form expectations, those expectations are not met, influencing us to blame the church for its insufficiency, leaving to find a better church who will meet our expectations (we believe). This pattern is as old as the church itself. I’ve done it, others have, too, and we all recognize it.

Given this, there are three common expectations which are often unfulfilled by churches, leading to disappointment followed by some kind of (often unhelpful) response.

Your church cannot fill the hole in your soul.

This is the work of sanctification, working out our salvation, so to speak. God redeems and renews us, setting us on the path of transformation, trusting us to apply ourselves to the work of discipleship. Sometimes though, we expect church participation will bring us to a place of perfect peace. We believe that when we participate faithfully and consistently with our church, then we will automatically become whole and complete creatures. I myself sometimes wish life and this faith journey worked that way. But we human beings, in order to mature, must let go of the idea that our parents will become exactly the parents we want or need. Similarly, we too must take responsibility for our own spiritual maturity, rather than projecting parental-like expectations onto our churches. God calls us to the work of discipleship, the journey of developing personal peace and wholeness over a lifetime (transformation). Our churches cannot do that for us. Help us, yes. Do it for us, no.

Your church cannot give you heaven on earth.

For better or worse, when we are the church gathered, we bring ourselves with us. This means those unredeemed, raw, broken, irritating parts of ourselves become a part of our church experience. Gather any group of people, previously unrelated and disconnected from each other, into a spiritual family… and watch the dysfunction take shape. This is part of what happens in communities of human beings, including church communities. Knowing this, recognizing this, and accepting this, we are not surprised when dysfunction and conflict arise… fleeing to another idealized church situation. There is a heaven, there is a time coming when God’s commonwealth will take shape and be realized… but we aren’t there yet. Our churches, as long as they are populated with people, cannot give us heaven on earth.

Your church cannot always please you.

Transformation. That’s the purpose of our churches… to transform us into more loving expressions of ourselves, people who reflect and embody the Way of Jesus in real life. So, how do we move in that direction? We are refined, laying aside the debris and baggage collected up over time (sin), embracing new ways of being, thinking, and doing. When the process of sanctification is viewed this way, we quickly understand some level of discomfort, and perhaps even pain, is inherent in this transformational process. Thus, we don’t expect our churches, the community commissioned to help us be transformed, will always make us happy. Growth is ultimately celebratory, but getting there is often uncomfortable. So, when our churches challenge our assumptions, our political ideologies, our materialism, and our perspectives about people different than we are… people on the discipleship journey are not surprised. Their expectations are aligned with the transformational journey of discipleship.

I’m hopeful this look at what our churches cannot do will help us clear some of the debris, the unrealistic and unfaithful expectations we project onto our churches, lightening our loads and freeing us to engage our churches well. This may be worth sharing and discussing in your particular church, opening the doors of communication regarding what you are really about in your church. May we constantly align our expectations with the transformational Way of Jesus.