An Imerfectly Perfect Church

Should Church be perfect?

I know that as a wife and mother, I often want to make things better (if not perfect): the house cleaner or more organized; our homelife more serene or fun depending on the circumstances; communication with my husband more (you get it).....And somehow, in my quest, I tend to make things more complicated.  Instead of enjoying where things are at, or simply maximizing what I have, I can stress everybody out trying to reach some self-imposed ideal. And often, when I simply relax and roll with grace and acceptance while doing the best I can, something miraculous happens: the imperfections become perfectly 'us'.  The process of working through life together helps shape who we are as a family. It's not always pretty, but it defintely is unique to us!

Can the same be true for the church?

In his book Practicing Resurrection, Eugune Peterson says this:

 “It is easy to dismiss the church as ineffective and irrelevant.  And many do dismiss it.  It is easy to be condescending to the church because so many of its members are unimpressive nonentities.  Condescension is widespread.  It is common to become disillusioned with the church because expectations formed in the country of death and by the lies of the devil are disappointments.  Disillusionment is, as a matter of course, common.” (p.13)

He goes on and challenges us to consider: what if God created the church to be imperfect? What if the problems we like to point out are actually designed by God to be the very thing that causes us to grow in the stature of Christ, to become mature believers?  If this is true, wouldn't that change our perspective in how we evaluate and experience Church?

I've never met a perfect family, and I've certainly never been to nor heard of a perfect church (not even in the Bible!), but we are all "imperfectly perfecting".

I love the local church, in all it's imperfections, because I know, in the end....God will complete the work He has started. In the meantime, we will continue to grow and mature in responsiveness to the calling that God has called us to.