Roasted When You Order
Get 10% off and FREE shipping on your first coffee subscription order.
Use code “BREW” at checkout.
Shop Now
Get 10% off and FREE shipping on your first coffee subscription order.
0
Photo: ©instaphotos via Canva.com
You may want to read:
First, I would reframe the discussion from a church problem to a people problem. Relabeling the questions makes it more personal and less abstract. To frame the discussion as a church issue can be vague enough to squirm away from personal responsibility, or unwisely condemn all churches when we know there are more good ones than bad ones. Of course, when you frame the discussion as a people problem, the first person you want to address is yourself.
Sometimes, we talk about the church like it is out there somewhere, as though we are not part of the problem we are discussing. What you do not want to do is to begin talking about them, those, and they as though we are not part of the problem. Personal ownership is where we want to evoke Matthew 7:3-5 into our frame of reference, so we do not self-righteously position ourselves above the problem while looking down on some vague entity as though it’s all about them.
The second thing to do is bring a more effective biblical contour to the words church discipline. This label was added to the Christian worldview by non-inspired people to highlight the church’s responsibility toward those in need of corrective care. While I agree with the concept of discipline, I sometimes cringe at the process. Discipline—in the sense that some individuals use this word—is needed, but the goal of church discipline is always restoration. Therefore, a better term is church restoration or church discipline and restoration. Matthew 18:15-17 and Galatians 6:1-2 aim at the heart of this concept. The Matthew text tells you what to do–confront, and the Galatians text shows you how to do it–in a spirit of gentleness, hoping to restore an erring or hurting brother or sister.
The Galatian’s text brings a spirit of governance to the directive in Matthew. Too often, people hang out in Matthew while ignoring the wisdom of Galatians. Christian discipleship without tears of compassion is neither Christian nor discipleship. You want your brothers and sisters to love you enough to bring corrective care, but you want them to do this in a spirit of gentleness. The word restore in Galatians 6:1 is mending in Mark 1:19 and created in Hebrews 11:3. Church discipline will straighten you out, but church restoration will put you back together again. You want both of these things from your friends. All corrective care must be restorative in nature and goal.
The church should be a significant player in sanctifying the body of Christ. Outside of personal responsibility and an individual’s family, the church is the most considerable context the New Testament gives us to change, grow, and mature in Christ. Many of the New Testament letters were for local churches; they were written to assemblies or groups of people rather than to individuals. Paul, the chief writer of the New Testament, had a high view of the local church. He wrote to local communities with the expectation of the communities participating in the mutual sanctification of the individuals who made up each local assembly. Reciprocal soul care is assumed and expected. When it is not happening, what you have is an anomaly. It is a malignant body that cannot take care of itself. An inability to do soul care well drives at the heart of the question: what do you do when a local assembly has become malignant and is unwilling or unable to heal itself by taking care of its parts–its individual members? Is there a way to help these members?
Yes, there is. Most definitely. This problem is, in part, why our ministry exists. I am a para-church organization designed to come alongside—para—the church while not seeking to replace the church. Though you do not have to become a para-church organization like ours, you can still choose to equip the body of Christ as the Lord brings hurting people across your path. You can do one-to-one discipleship with any individual regardless of the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of a local church. The church should not control, hinder, or stop you from doing soul care. However, there is a downside: the more soul care you do, the more you will see the enormity of the problem, and the more you might complain. Helping others has several unintended consequences that can cause adverse outcomes:
I appeal not to perceive your growing awareness of church inefficiency as a negative but as a mercy from the Lord. He is allowing you to come in contact with more hurting people and permitting you to care enough about them to try to figure out how you can position yourself to where you can be most active in your local body.
As you become more engaged with your church, you will want to motivate the church to become more intentional in its care of souls. This initiative has many more layers, and you must tread carefully. Thus, your starting point in this discussion must be the sovereignty of God. The Lord God Almighty is not sweating about this problem, even though it is real. No one can thwart His plans. He is in complete control of this issue in your church, and nothing will prevail against His plans for you and the rest of His body.
He is calm, cool, and collected (whatever that means), and you should be, too. If you are fretting, grumbling, or unwisely and uncharitably weighing in on this local church problem, you have jumped out on the wrong foot. You must bring your thoughts (and your feet) back under the care of our Sovereign Lord. God is in control. You must think about this problem from a position of faith in God, not fear of the perceived issues or ineffectiveness of a local church. God is at work, though He usually moves slower than you prefer.
The second thing to think about is not whether the local church will change but whether we will change. Are you doing all you can to make the church a better hospital for the wounded? Nobody has a right to complain about the church if they are not modeling what they want it to become. You have to decide what you want the church to become. If you do this, list what you want your church to become. After you make your list, please step back and look at it. Are you doing the things on the list? That is where you should begin. When I thought about this list, seven things popped into my mind. I want the church to be:
I only listed a few things necessary for authentic soul care to occur rather than listing everything I think a church should be doing to become a discipleship community. Though this is not an exhaustive list, you get the idea. If you are not willing to be the things you want the church to become, you change first.
You hear people repeatedly say that there is no perfect church. You nod in the affirmative. Then you are disappointed by someone in the church. You are offended, or maybe the situation is direr: someone sins against you in the worst way imaginable. One of the most significant errors a person could make when sinned against is to disengage from the local church. Perhaps you should leave a specific local church, but you should not leave all local churches. You should find, join, and engage a local church. When hurt, permanent disengagement reflects more poorly on the person who rejects God’s local church than on the local church.
I am not surprised when I hear about a local church doing bad things because local churches comprise evil people. While I do not condone bad people practices, and my heart breaks for the name of Christ and the souls left in the shambles of a poor church people experience, it is biblically illogical for a person to withdraw from the local church altogether. I do not think I need to make an argument for this because of the high view God places on the local church in the New Testament. The logic is akin to never revisiting a hospital because you had a bad experience in a hospital.
My desire is not to be callous or unsympathetic. I do believe I understand the problems, especially since my ministry is–more or less–a satellite station set up on the periphery of local church-ness to help hurting people. I engage many Christians who have wandered from, are in between, or are disenchanted with their local churches. Still, I am not leaving the local church because they do not do things well or according to my expectations or maybe even the way the Bible says they should. The local church is a God-ordained context for His children to do life together, and it will be that way until Jesus returns.
Some will argue, and it is a good argument, that I live in the southern part of the United States, where there is a church building on every street corner. We are probably more “church-i-fied” than any place outside Rome or Jerusalem. There are other regions in our world where finding solid believers is few and far between. A lack of local churches is a problem but not a show-stopper. A local church is not a white-frame building with a steeple on top of it. A local church is a body of believers.
You do not need a building to make a church. What you need are two or three believers. If that is all you have, that is where you should begin. But the main thing is you must guard your heart regarding your attitude and words when thinking about your local church. God’s plan is working. It may not work according to how you want it to work, but He is writing the script, and you must make yourself comfortable with what He is writing.
Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.
In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).
