Have you ever heard fellow church members constantly describe what is wrong with your church? Maybe this is a habit you have. If so, you need to realize that if it were perfect it wouldn’t allow you to be a member, for you are not perfect. After serving for 49 years as a pastor of six churches and 15 more years as interim pastor, I have noticed that those who perpetually criticize their church are generally the most cynical and the least involved when it comes to helping it fulfill the mission Christ assigns to every church.
When the members of your church, or of any church, have as their primary goal to glorify God through genuine worship, to enjoy meaningful fellowship, and to be faithfully engaged in carrying out the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:18-20, it will be blessed with a sense of unity. When the members of a church spend energy and time focusing on what is wrong with their church, dissention and division will exist. It will not and cannot grow, and God will not be glorified.
Obviously no church is perfect, for all church members are human. There has been only one perfect person who ever lived – Jesus Christ. Every church has areas that can be improved. But, why spend needless energy and time focusing only on what is wrong with it. I propose a more important question that should be asked: What is right with the church? As a popular song suggested several years ago, accentuating the positive helps to eliminate the negative.
By focusing on what is right with the Christian church in the world you will notice the following:
First, it is the one institution, the one society primarily concerned with and dedicated to the worship of God. Worship is the submission of our entire nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of our minds with His truth and the purifying of our imagination by His beauty; the opening of our hearts to His love; and the surrender of our will to achieve His purpose. And all of this is gathered up in the spirit of adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.
Second, it is the one society around the earth that is not only supernatural, but super-national. It is found in every part of the world. In other words, whether we are black, or brown or white or any other color, we are all members of God’s family. We have all things in common. When any church, including yours, achieves this ideal it will be because it is emphasizing what is right with the church.
Third, it is the primary instrument God’s Spirit uses to transmit the good news of God’s reality, of His love and compassion and justice and truth. It is through the living church that individuals can experience the presence of the living Christ, and become members of His spiritual body.
Fourth, It accepts us as we are. However dark or numerous our sins may be, it accepts us as sinners and helps us move forward to become all that God through His grace can transform us into becoming. At its best the church says in God’s name: “Any person, however sinful, can come to the Son of God who said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’” and be brought into loving relationship with the Creator of the universe.
What is right with the church? That is the proper question for you to ask about your church. If you will do that, and give freely of your time, talent, energy, and material means, it will become in your community a living witness of God’s love. There is certainly nothing wrong with that!
Those who spend time focusing on what is wrong with their church should first go look into the mirror.
The Paper Pulpit 
Leave a Reply