Stop Hating on the Church

I recently noticed a blog entry making the rounds on FB, "I Hate Church..."

I am not specifically condemning the article, as he explicitly admits later on that the title is simply a stunt to get views and that he actually loves church (A little too 'bait-and-switch' for my taste, but I suppose it does bring in the audience to discover his point), but he believes it is in error in various ways. Read his article if you wish, in my opinion among his various assertions/accusations there are a few valid ones. However, his writing is in a similar vein to many other articles and blogs I've noticed over the past few years, and the trend troubles me.

What I want to respond to is the idea that it's alright to take cheap shots at the Church in general based on your own ideas of what local church culture should look like, especially when some investigation reveals that the complaints are often grounded in either whatever secular take on virtue is currently in vogue and how the church isn't doing enough to meet the world's expectations on that front, or the complainer is suggesting all churches should parallel their own particular subculture/background.

In this post, I want to look at the claims that the local church is beset with unloving people who only care about appearance, based on a perceived unfriendliness or intolerance for people who are "different." "If the church started really being the church," the argument typically goes, "then no one, of any appearance or background, should feel uncomfortable or unwelcome there." Usually they proceed to claim that the church would then necessarily look much more diverse than our churches do today, filled with people of all walks of life.

1. Diversity: The church/Church Confusion

Notice one immediate problem with that line of attack. "The Church," the Body of Christ, is already incredibly diverse. Compared to the adherents of other religions, diversity could be said to be a notable trait of Christianity. It is indeed comprised of desperately poor and astonishingly rich, people of every walk of life and nearly every ethnicity on the planet (Check out the Joshua Project for info on those people groups not yet reached!). Where the intentions of men would fail due to sinful prejudice, the Spirit has succeeded, and the Church is truly being formed from every nation, tribe, language, and people.

Now this glorious, global Church is made up of a vast number of local churches. The church/Church difference is usually glossed over in these complaints, as they're transferring their problem with the practices of some local churches to 'the church' because it sounds more urgent. After making the distinction, we can easily see that the implied claim that each individual local church ought to reflect the same diversity we see in the global church is simply invalid; to be "local," it stands to reason that the members of a local church ought to more or less reflect the people of its locale, whether varied or homogenous.

But what is true in America (and pretty much any other place, I believe, but I prefer not to speak where I do not have experience), which is where most of this dialogue is taking place, is that the real divides are not just between different locations, but between socioeconomic levels and subcultures. Which leads to my next point...

2. A Christian Welcome?

Let me ask a very direct question here. Is it evidence that your local church is failing to love people as they should, if people from significantly different subcultures or economic classes feel uncomfortable or unwelcome there? Quite possibly, but not necessarily.

It turns out that churches are full of actual people, not demographic data points. And real people all spend their time and go through life within some kind of economic class and subculture. And people in the same class tend to live near each other, and go to the same churches (and schools, and shops, etc). Certain subcultures often frequent the same places as well. An ordinary church in America therefore has a high chance of its members being from the same or adjacent economic classes and subcultures. This may not be the ideal or most God-glorifying situation, but it needs to be recognized as the default. It's not a contrived situation created by unfaithful churches, it's the starting point from which we can do better.

In the article I mentioned, the example is used of a group of bikers, some of whom said they wouldn't be comfortable or welcomed in church. Let's turn the example around. If in a hypothetical area all the churches were biker churches, with the congregation looking more or less the same as they would at the biker bar, and you came in on Sunday with a 3-piece suit and Italian leather shoes, talking into your bluetooth earpiece, would you be surprised if you got a few "what are you doing here?" looks? I wouldn't be.

The young lady from the article was stared at for her tattoos, piercings, and the way she was dressed, not because churchgoers are bigots or intolerant or unloving, but because in the subculture/s to which those church members belonged, she presented an unusual spectacle. If they are not taught otherwise, people stare at things which are unusual or out of place. (If she had fit the subcultural appearance code but been nine feet tall, she would have been stared at even more.) But, if she had kept attending, regardless of the tattoos and piercings, she would become at least a familiar face, and most likely come to feel accepted. (Not exactly the same, but similar to my experience being one of the only white people in a Chinese church in Dallas.)


Consider this question. If a homeless person had attended church as a guest of a couple who'd been loving and witnessing to her over the course of a few weeks, and had been asking others in their church to pray for her, do you think the scenario would play out the same?

So the problem here is not necessarily that local churches are failing to love, but sometimes the inevitable frictions which result from the collision of subcultures. And I've argued against some of what the author of the linked article says, but on this point he's absolutely right; Christians in America can be hesitant to step outside the bounds of their own subculture to walk with and witness to those who are different, because they're never interacting with those people in the first place. If Christians were more actively reaching across subcultures with the gospel, our churches might be more used to the odd-looking guest now and again.

But although anyone randomly showing up on Sunday morning should be witnessed to by seeing Christ and the love we have in Him (otherwise that church really is failing), if we're relying on Sunday mornings to save people and therefore focusing on church being a building and event where the random guest of any subculture would not feel out of place, we're not obeying the Great Commission. Christ said to speak the truth in love, not that every church needs to tailor itself to the specific needs of inner city ministry (what the article writer seems to be alleging), or any other ministry.

3. The Answer: (As Always...) Do What Jesus Already Told Us to Do

So if we really love "those people," the ones who wouldn't feel comfortable in our church, and who maybe we're not 100% comfortable even having in our church, then while we're working on changing those attitudes inside our church, we should be GOING TO THEM.

The missional church movement takes this a step further; its proponents are convinced that by implicitly changing Christ's command from "make disciples of all nations" to "get as many people as possible to come to this building on Sunday morning," we have lost track. On this particular point, I totally agree with them. Once a local church is aware of the needs of a particular community or culture within their ministry reach, rather than focusing on trying to change things at that church to work for that subculture too (and yes, the practical side of "doing" church is affected by who the members are), they should be doing outreach and eventually planting new churches among them.

Therefore, rather than the focus being trying to prepare churches to be "ready for the day the prostitute walks into church after she just finished her night shift... or the back of the church smells like weed because broken people are coming in through the doors... or the day when they can’t leave their purse on their seat during worship because that visitor might just steal their wallet," (Honestly to me this sounds more like a desire to "shake up the system" and "scare some stuffy old people" than a plan to develop a more God-glorifying church...) it would be vastly more in accordance with the Great Commission to make church a place where some seats were empty because people were out doing church with those people, in their own communities.

Churches are already full of broken people. They're just mostly full of broken people who feel less broken around people who are similar to them. And just because some of them don't know they're broken, that doesn't make them any less in need of healing.

4. So Please...

Don't say you hate the Church because some local churches have issues. 
Don't say you hate local churches because they are full of sinful people (like you, like me).
Don't think that because your eyes are opened to love the have-nots, it's ok to despise the haves.
Go to the harvest where it's planted; a new field might need a new church focused on it, not for each church to change to accommodate every kind of grain.