Did you grow up in a family?

I’ll bet you did. And even if your family wasn’t “ideal”, you survived it. My family wasn’t perfect, and neither was yours, but I’ll tell you one thing: Barring any major dysfunction, you didn’t run away from them, and they didn’t run away from you. There may be some exceptions here and there, but you probably didn’t flee in the middle of the night & move in with a different family, and you probably didn’t secure a legal name change to ensure your safety, and you probably didn’t drop all contact with your folks so you could forget all of the terrible things that happened and begin the process of “healing”. Most likely, you stuck it out, kept the name, and still hug mom & dad when you see them, even though they weren’t perfect. And they probably hug you back, even though you weren’t the easiest kid to raise. Even if it sometimes hurt, you still love your family, and they still love you.

Being the member of a family is a necessary part of the human experience. We’ve got so much to learn from living in close relation to others that God decided to make it inescapable. By His design each of us was thrust into our respective families from the very moment of our birth, without exception or permission. God has determined that good character would be forged through our close involvement with other people in less-than-perfect environments, all beginning in the one we call “home”. Running away on account of its problems only delays maturity and fortifies irresponsibility. There are crucial lessons to be learned during our time at home as children that are intended to be carried with us into the world as adults, lessons that won’t be learned by avoiding each other. It’s obvious that people need family.

Social Loyalty

One of the lessons we were meant to learn by being a part of a household was Social Loyalty. In other words, spending the first 18 years of your life with the same people in the same space was enough time to give rise to occasional tension, but with nowhere else to go, you learned to remain steadfast in the face of adversity. Or at least one would hope. You weren’t always given the option of giving up and going “somewhere better”. Being in a family helped you learn how to ignore the fantasy that imagines an easier life elsewhere. It trained you to control your impulse to abscond from relationships when they became problematic. And it required you to come home at the end of the day and stay there. It forced you to endure with the people who sometimes hurt you and made you realize that the ones who love you the most sometimes treat you the worst. Among other things, being part of a family helped you to see how relationships actually work behind the public curtain, and to remain faithful even when they disappoint.

“If you can survive family, you can survive church”

 

To put it another way, if you survived family, you can survive church. God was training you to grow up, move out, and become unflinchingly committed to a church, your church, long before you even knew it. You and I have been more than adequately prepared by God’s sovereign design, to survive the many rigors of church life regardless of the social pains and interpersonal conflicts that go with it. You’ve already proven yourself capable of doing this long before you ever came through our doors.

Commitment (or lack of)

This being true, why then do we see such a sickeningly weak commitment to the church? We all know that families come with baggage, right? Why then are we so shocked when we realize that churches have their own baggage?  Nobody lives under the silly illusion that there’s a flawless household out there somewhere, yet more and more people seem to be searching for the perfect church. They think that if they look hard enough, they’ll eventually find it, join it, and live happily ever after. But when they’re unable to find one, they get upset about it, divorce themselves from it, and live sadly ever after instead. Christians are giving up far too easily on the church. The neighborhoods of Duluth are crowded with spiritual runaways like these. And this blight isn’t unique to the Northland. It seems to be happening everywhere.

“A church without wounds is an easy sell in a world where words are cheap” -Paul Maxwell

What’s the issue?

I’m not sure what to do about it. Maybe there are some legitimate concerns. Maybe churches are doling out way more abuse than I’m aware of. But many of the runaways I meet are revoking their enrollment for suffering no greater injustice that the average Starbucks patron does…they felt slighted once or twice. Somebody cut in line and made them feel inferior. The barista didn’t treat them like a demigod. But wait, since when is coffee so much more important than fellowship is, that we’d tolerate inter-relational insults like these for the one but not the other? Maybe the problem isn’t so much the church’s treatment of its people, but its people’s perspective of the church. The simple truth is, some are expecting their church to provide them with the impossible: Insulation from everything, including each other. They want “real community” without the reality of community. They want “real relationships”, but not the reality of what a real relationship offers. With so many of God’s children moving along to the next church before they’ve even had a chance to establish themselves at the last one, God’s Kingdom is taking on a frightening resemblance to the foster care system.

Choice

Each of us has a choice, and it’s not necessarily a choice between a church that hurts us and a church that doesn’t, because the latter doesn’t exist. Your church will hurt you from time to time just like your family did. We could lie to you and tell you it won’t, but like one writer says, “A church without wounds is an easy sell in a world where words are cheap“. The real choice you have is whether you’ll remain loyal or not when you do get hurt…and it IS your choice. Rescinding on your commitment just because you feel injured simply opens you up to further injury, only by a new group of people at a different church. And if history repeats itself, you’ll leave them just like you did the last time it happened. Do you see where this goes?

Fact Remains

At any rate, I can promise you one thing: You will eventually get hurt here at this church. Every one of us will, not because we’ve failed to create a real, intimate family dynamic, but because we’ve actually succeeded in it. Being part of a family can be a painful thing, but you already know that, so don’t be surprised when you get bruised by the ones who love you, as though some strange thing were happening to you. We offer what every family does, which includes irritation, discomfort, embarrassment, and insult. Not much different from the things you’ve been dealing with since you were a baby. But being part of this church also means that we’re committed to caring for you. It means that when life deals you a blow, we’ll be there to help you shoulder it. And it means that you’ll live in community like God intended so that you won’t have to die alone like the devil would prefer. It means you’ll have the chance to forgive the sins of others while overcoming your own so that you can discover just how rewarding deep relationships like ours can be.

We might not offer you perfection, but neither do we expect you to be perfect. We will hurt you, but… you’ll also hurt us. People leave the church all the time and for various reasons, but the church never leaves her people. She hasn’t gone anywhere in 2,000 years, and she never will. If anyone is loyal, it’s her. The least we can do is return the favor.

Enjoy your stay.