Disillusioned with Church

The first part of this week was crammed with some of the very best and worst of what the local church can be like. If you have been involved with church family life anywhere you will probably know how wonderful it can be and how much it reeks sometimes. Sometimes God feels powerfully present, and sometimes completely absent.

I read a short article from LeadershipJournal.net which was an interview with Sarah Cunningham, author of Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation. I really liked this quote from the interview: "I think disillusionment is a timeless issue just like suffering. Disillusionment is a response to suffering: "This is not matching up to what I expected, so what do I do?" The word disillusionment comes from "dis" which means "away from" and "illusionment" which means a "false impression of reality." We need to move away from our false impressions of religion, and move toward the ideals of the faith and true followership, which involves day-to-day community and life-on-life witness."

Sometimes the stuff we get caught up in as local churches are a false impression of what church should actually be all about. We have false impressions about one another and even about God. The church is not what it ought to be.

A local church is a community of people who are drawing closer to God and to each other in ways that produce transformed lives and vibrant witness. This sounds simple, but the truth is that relationships are messy! It's easier to run a church than to pastor people (for people like me anyway - see Haphazardly Intent by Eugene Peterson). It's easier to judge someone than to go talk to them with an open heart and mind. It's easier to withdraw than communicate. It's easier to do something than to pray. It seems that people like me find functional things easier than relational things, and from my experience it seems that the Church is full of people like me!

The heart of the gospel though is that it is all about relationships. It's about where we stand in relationship to God and what He has done to restore us to loving, eternal community with Himself and His people.

All this is a major reason why we are focussing a lot of our energies on our small groups this year. More on that some other time!