LET YOUR DREAM
CHURCH DIE
How Discontentment Destroys Community
By Scott Hubbard
“Lord, I just want to pray for Kevin right now. . . .” Who’s Kevin? I thought, eyes closed, head bowed. I rehearsed the names of the new small-group members in my head, wondering how I had missed Kevin. After a few more moments, I realized that Kevin’s prayer needs were much like my own. Then it registered: He was praying for me. I was Kevin. Anyone who has been part of Christian community for long can testify to such awkward moments. The moment you invest in a church, you surround yourself with people who can, at times, grate on your nerves. People who clap precisely on the offbeat. People who say, “We should get together,” and then apparently forget all about it. People who call you Kevin.
“If our church body does not regularly challenge our patience, then we may not be close enough to our church body.”
Most of us, of course, can chuckle away such trivial frustrations. The real trouble comes when the trivial turns genuinely tiresome. Remain in a Christian community long enough, and you may find yourself underappreciated and overlooked. You may receive all manner of unasked-for “counsel.” You may become tangled in the pettiest of conflicts. And much worse. If we meet with enough of these provocations, the mists of disillusionment may begin to settle upon us. We may begin to wonder if we are in the wrong community.
Life in the Body Now, to be sure, sometimes we are in the wrong community. Perhaps you joined a church that appeared healthy on the outside, only to discover advanced disease within. In such cases, your best course of action may not be to patiently endure but graciously depart. But for every ten disillusioned church members, perhaps only one should consider leaving. Meanwhile, the other nine of us need to remember that even the healthiest bodies have strange ticks and unseemly features: an unusual tapping of the foot, a frustrating tone of the voice. In fact, if our church body does not regularly try our patience and oppose our preferences, then we may not be close enough to our church body. This observation comes not mainly from experience (though experience heartily testifies) but from Scripture. Although the apostles give us a picture of the New Testament church that is exalted indeed, their descriptions of everyday life in that church are far from romantic. The head of this body may dwell in the heavens, but the feet still stand in the dust.
Chastened Expectations In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we find both the lofty vision and the everyday, earthy reality. The church is nothing less than the Father’s chosen children, the body and bride of Christ, the Spirit’s dwelling place (Ephesians 1:5; 2:22; 4:15–16; 5:25–27). But then we come to a command like the one in Ephesians 4:1–3: Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with 14
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