“Stoning of St. Stephen” by Jacobus Buy (Dutch, 1795)

If the Church shoots its wounded, I am pretty sure many of the wounded fire back. One common way is with a good old fashioned “the Church Sucks” diatribe. I have heard and delivered plenty of them. However, like it or not, Christianity intrinsically is not a call or way of life that can be done faithfully alone; it requires the Church (Pope Francis recently made this point well). By its very makeup, claims, and story, it requires worshipping and living life with other believers; Christianity is not a “Lone Ranger” faith. Understandably, this can be a difficult reality for many people, given some of the awful things different church communities have done and continue to do. Perhaps, though, a broader recognition of what actually constitutes “church” might make it easier to both recognize the positives of the Church as well as make entering worship together more possible among the frailty and failings of ourselves and others.

The Church Has Got 99 Problems and Scandals are One
If you think people do not have legitimate reasons to be angry with the Church, you have not been paying attention. Over the past decade the Roman Catholic Church has been forced to own up to decades of cases of child molestations by priests around the world whom the system protected. And Protestants seem to subconsciously relish trying to out do Catholic bishops who are corrupt.  Consider the natural disasters that come along followed by public statements from prominent pastors suggesting the massive death scales were part of God’s punishment of sinful people. Flip on a Christian television station and you are likely to find a “prosperity gospel” preacher suggesting that God wants you to be materially rich, but to get this process going, you need to give a huge chunk of change to the church (how else will the prosperity gospel come true for these leaders preaching it, if you do not hand off a “blessing” of tens and twenties to them. BMWs do not pay for themselves, after all). Add to these the stories nearly every Christian has about being guilted, shamed, and intimidated by some faith group and you end up with a lot of anger and hurt.

But here is the thing. In God’s economy, the Church may be a part of the problem of a warped and imperfect world, but it is also a part of God’s solution for healing and repairing what is broken and hurts. Consider Scripture. Nearly every letter in the New Testament exists as some kind of damage control for followers of Jesus that seem to be missing the point and hurting each other (1 Thessalonians is perhaps the exception). However, within these letters exists a logic that through Christ, God is remaking the entire universe (Romans 8), and part of that process involves those who are in Christ–AKA the Church–being part of the newness that is coming (1 Cor 15.20-28).

Dealing with a Dysfunctional Church
If you do not want to end up hating the Church wholesale, maybe it would help to recognize that the Church is not just its institutional structures and its officially appointed leadership, though these are undeniable aspects of it (and these are hardly all bad, but more on that later). It is made up of the entire body of baptized believers and their children. In Greek, the word for “church,” ekklesia, means assembly. Those who are assembling are not just bishops, pastors, or other authority figures, but rather all of the believers. And they are not only assembling for formal worship gatherings, but also for the most mundane moments to share the gifts that God has given them in life itself and in each other. 1 Corinthians 12 argues that a body is not just made up of a foot or a hand, but of many different parts. In particular Paul notes, “(T)he members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable (v. 22).” The Church is not just those in it who teach or are in official leadership roles. The Church is everybody who is baptized into Christ and follows him. The great value is not in the different areas or positions we do or do not occupy, but rather it is in God. “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” (12.4-7)

Is that hard to believe that the Church is more than just how it organizes in locales? Stop and think about it. When you are talking to other Christians about how bad the Church sucks and they are there comforting and affirming you, trying to help heal your wounds, ironically the “who” and “what” of that situation is still the Church helping and taking care of you. In these cases, the notion of “Church” should not be surrendered to those who are harming it. To paraphrase one of my musical heroes, Ian MacKaye, if the NFL does not own all sports and major record labels do not own all music–kids still play football in parks and guitars in garages–then certainly institutional structures do not own all of the Church even if they are a part of them. The body of Christ is made up in part of leaders, teachers, polity structures, in many cases property, and the like, but it is more than that. It is all of us that follow Jesus.

A while back, TheOtherJournal.com had a well-written article about John Howard Yoder, a theologian whose work wonderfully articulates a compelling and faithful vision of the Church and the Christian faith. In it, though, the writers faced head on the reality that Yoder was a serial sexual predator that harmed numerous women, and because of his prominent stature and writings in academic circles, Church and academic leaders looked the other way for decades while women suffered. But poetically, the article captures a truth in its description of Yoder’s victims, “Stymied by hushed and impotent institutions, Yoder’s victims banded together and became the church Yoder could, apparently, only write about.” In some circumstances, believers come together in living rooms or in coffee shops to become the Church that their particular churches can only preach and talk about.

“Organized Religion” is a Good Thing
Of course, being anti-structure or anti-organization seems silly to me, too. Churches without some kind of structure or leaders and leadership are impossible; even the most organic of house churches and gatherings cannot function without them. People organize and pull together. That is how roads, hospitals, universities, and farms are pulled together, built, and maintained. Being “anti-organized” religion on some level is a delusion. All forms of spirituality are passed along and maintained through systems of organization and people taking charge to pass along ideas, understandings, and habits. Like it or not, while hardly perfect, organized religion is ultimately a good thing.

And I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge what some understandably hurt and angry people may not want to about the Church and its institutions and leaders: they are hardly all bad all of the time. There are numerous imperfect churches that have wonderful faithful people guiding and leading them. In my experience, most church leaders are really trying to serve and be faithful before the people they are charged to take care of. Sometimes dealing with all of us is no bowl of cherries. Church congregations, leadership, and polity structures exist not in a binary of good and bad, but rather on an ever-shifting continuum with areas and aspects of greater and lesser actions, seasons, and moments of faithfulness and unfaithfulness. That is how life works.

Of course, not every church or situation is like this and I do not want to suggest at all that people should stick with abusive churches or church leaders; there are times to walk away. But for those who do need to walk away, my hope is that they do not walk away from worshipping God with other people and living out their lives in Christ intentionally with other believers (i.e. in common parlance, I hope they seek out another church group to be a part of). Bad churches do not own the Church, God does.

So, do not give up calling out evil and dysfunction in the Church; covering anything up or pretending like it is not happening is not helpful or faithful. And neither are “the Church sucks” speeches. Part of the people of God will hurt you and part of the people of God will comfort you when this happens. To paraphrase a quote often attributed to St. Augustine (though perhaps it actually came from Dorothy Day), the Church may be a whore, but she is still our mother.