Disillusionment with the Church

I’ve just started reading Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation by Sarah Cunningham. The disillusioned generation - twenty-somethings. The author presents some compelling and accurate points, but others are very naïve. I’m just in the first few chapters so I’m sure I’ll have many opinions about its contents as I go… but it sparked this initial reaction:

The author observes that “disillusionment” occurs when real life

does not live up to our expectations.

Christ is our only true expectation. He was without sin. In reality, we should not put any expectations on the “Church” – it’s made up of sinful people in need of Christ. However, the Church IS His representative until He returns. And it tends to get things wrong more often than it gets things right.

Even still the Church is in a no win situation… It’s damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. We expect it to be “everything to everyone.” How is that even possible? How would that even look?

Like the de-clutter movement that has roared on the scene from those home shows like “Clean Sweep” – the Church needs us to help it get back to the basics. We need to help it get back to the living organism of re-born believers who exhibit Christ the way He asked us to in His Word. We need to get it back to how it looked in Acts 2:42-47... so we can breathe, grow and draw people in.

We all sit amazed and we condemn those messy “sick” homeowners who hoard and clutter and bury their families alive in “junk.” But as the Good Book says, we need to take the log out of our own eye before we go for the spec in someone else’s. The Church has accumulated and hoarded junk in every nook and cranny. So much so that it’s lost the credibility and honor it once held.

The Church has gathered its misinterpretations of Scripture, added its own rules & regulations, coated itself in its own need for control & power and topped it off with a thick dose of pride in thinking it is the “only way.” It has smothered us in "christianese" and trite platitudes; in programs and committees and events and shows… it’s even let the enemy in some rooms and allowed him to set up camp! If not for Christ, it would no longer exist.

In reality, the Church will never be perfect. The Church will always be a target of controversy. It will always make some uncomfortable and anger others. But that’s what Christ did. He was the biggest radical to ever live. If the Church doesn’t get the same reaction, then it truly is extinct. We, and therefore, the Church are to be salt and light.

Christ will not give up on us – we cannot give up on the Church. So let’s work together to de-clutter… renew… and restore!!