“Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love” (Ephesians 4.2 NLT).
What is a perfect church?
A perfect church relies on the grace and truth of God to sincerely worship, serve, and love Jesus without reservations. I have been a Pastor by God’s grace for few years, and I have met many people from many nations and with different opinions on what a perfect church is or should look like. Some will describe a perfect church based on how the service is conducted, the music/worship, the fellowship after church service, the way they’re welcomed into the church. To others, it is because of the teaching/doctrine, the pastor or leadership of the church, to others it is because of the unity in the church.
Many people bring unrealistic expectations to church; to expect any church to always do everything right and to minister perfectly to everyone all the time is just fantasy. Personally, I believe a church can be healthy, but it will never be perfect’. This is because a group of imperfect people will never be able to create a perfect community. We understand that we live in a broken and imperfect world, everything on this planet is broken, the weather, the economy, our bodies, our relationships, our minds. Nothing here works perfectly except God’s Word (Psalm 119:96 TLB). So, to expect perfection in your local church is to set yourself up for massive disappointment. When people read books about the ideal church, they become cynical, looking for something that doesn’t exist. When you discover what God intends real fellowship to be, it’s easy to get discouraged by the gap between the ideal and reality.
As a Pastor, I have seen people come and go and that is okay, but when people leave the church because it is not the ‘perfect’ church, it bothers me, and it makes me wonder how perfect they are too. Some of these people have self-interest and too much like I said unrealistic expectations on the Pastor, the leadership, the other imperfect people like them they deal with etc. Jesus passionately loves His church, even with all its faults and failures, and He wants you and I to do the same. If you’re going to be Christlike, you must love the church despite its imperfections.
This is why people moves from one church to another, looking for a ‘perfect’ church that don’t
exist. I look at Jesus’ Church, the first person that comes to mind is Judas yet, Jesus loved him
and lived with him, eat with him and he was even the treasurer of that church. Do you want us to talk about the two brothers John and James, who were discriminative of those people not in their circle, what about Peter, the so-called ‘head of the Apostles’, lied and denied Jesus three times and even after Jesus had gone to heaven, his act of compromise was addressed by Paul the apostle.
Longing for the ideal church while criticizing the real church is evidence of spiritual immaturity.
On the other hand, we cannot settle for the real without striving for the ideal church because
that will mean we are complacent. Maturity is living with the understanding of what you know
the ideal could be and what reality is. For those of us who are parents, you don’t wait for your
kids to grow up before you start loving them; you love them at every stage of their maturity. In
the same way, you need to learn to love people at every stage of their growth, and you need to learn to love the church as a whole in every stage of its growth. Many people will be offended by you and offend you and disappoint you, but that’s no reason to stop loving and fellowshipping with them or even leave the church to look for another imperfect church where you will be hurt or offended by another imperfect person/people. They are everywhere and, in every church, and especially in a multicultural church like ours, with people from at least twenty-one nations worshipping under one roof together. You’re going to live with them until we get to new heaven and new earth. This is why we are called to “Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love” (Ephesians 4.2 NLT).