My Love/Hate Church Dilemma

Roy Hershberger

It Can be Confusing when You Find Yourself Loving
the “Church” Yet Hating the Church

The article you are about to read is was written a few years back and my family no longer gathers with the group of Christians you are going to read about. My thoughts about the organized church have changed little sense I originally wrote it, yet there has been one significant detour in my thinking. I have begun to question the legitimacy of the English word “church.” I don't believe it is in anyway a proper translation of the Greek word “eccleesea,” and we have lost and confused the intended meaning by its consistent inaccurate use. This complication of a simple word with a clear meaning has helped to create many of the problems we are currently facing in regards to the body of Christ.
The Greek word “eccleesea” is equivalent to English words like “assembly, community, and congregation,” and was a non-religious word in its time. The English word “church ” on the other hand grew out of the early Catholic tradition and is very much associated with religion. Its origins are specifically tied to a physical building or a religious structure.
Interestingly the orignial William Tyndale (1525) English translation of the New Testament did indeed use the more accurate term “Congregation.” Why have the King James and every significant translation since replaced it with a term that is more associated with a building then it is a group of people?

Go here for Online access to the Tyndale

This article does not mean to condemn anyone who is part of an organized church body. It is meant to challenge traditional concepts of how and why we have structured ourselves. Are the common popular methods of growing and organizing the body of Christ God’s ideas or just our own? How much have the dim pragmatic methods of mere men entered into the mix? I believe a great deal of humanistic reasoning has saturated our thinking, and my prayer is that more and more will see and understand this so that repentance and greater spiritual health and vitality will come to God’s people.

The number of “Christians” who do not attend traditional “church” services on a regular basis is growing. Christianity Today has had several articles over the last few years dealing with this subject. Most of these have labeled such believers as uncommitted, unattached, and self serving. What is the reason so many people are giving up on “church”, are they just selfish and unwilling to commit or is there a much deeper reason?
     I have spent a lot of time thinking about this problem as well as contemplating my own mixed feelings toward the local group of believers I have become a part of. I can not speak authoritatively about others who are finding it difficult to continue with the “church” thing, but I can speak from my own heart, and I believe many will find it easy to relate.
     My family and I still attend a traditional style “church”, but we have found ourselves growing more and more frustrated with institutionalized Christianity and evangelicalism in general. If you check out my online book A Religion of Irrelevance you'll find many of those frustrations laid out in black and white.
     As I have wrestled with these frustrations there is one thing I have found it useful to do, that is to separate the people from the institution and then to look at both separately. What I find when I do this is that my feelings of frustration and disappointment are not at all directed toward the people themselves. In fact the more I seperate the people from the institution the more love and compassion I feel toward them, seeing each one as a unique individual of God's creativity. In addition, their sincerity and genuine desire to know and serve God becomes more evident and clear. On one hand I can see myself joyfully committing to them as a true friend and (pardon the cliché) brother in Chirst. On the other hand the humanistic (man-made) part of the church I find distracting, a force that seems to pull me away from my role as a member of the body of Christ and squash me into a narrowly defined religious role that would effectively drain my creative juices. A system I can no longer in good conscience commit myself to or be a part of as I have in the past.
     The more clearly I define this difference the more I understand my disinterest in the programs and traditional functions that often define what the modern “church” has become. After much wonderment and confusion over my distaste for such things (I used to think I just wasn't spiritual enough) I have finally discovered the joy and liberating freedom that comes when one divides the true body of Jesus Christ from the earthly conceived and humanly crafted modern institution. I had to conclude from this exercise that I love the people but hate the stuff they have attached themselves to.
     I hate the fact that, though my local group is at this point a tiny congregation, as we continue to grow at some point (barring some miracle) the infamous building program will emerge. Pressure from both outside and inside forces will be placed on us to come up with the finances for a bigger building, which will in turn lead to more pressure to attract more people, which will mean more programs and more pressure to adapt the cutting edge “church” growth programs and proven methods of fund raising for a building filled with the latest in practical sound and structural technologies. I hate the fact that our pastor and his wife are under pressure to make the “church” grow to bring in more people to help finance the building and all its programs, to build a successful and thriving congregation (after all isn't that what we pay him for?). I hate the fact that the people in our group love Christ and very much want to serve him to the best of their ability, but unfortunately they are unwittingly trapped in a religious system that holds them back from discovering their full creative potential. As a result of our traditional non-biblical concept of “doing church” they will find it difficult to discover true and meaningful intimate fellowship with Christ and his body, and never experience the full joy and freedom of just being a follower of Jesus.
     It can be hard to understand how people who are clearly and sincerely committed to Christ, as many in the institutional church are, could possible be doing so much so wrong. It is not that they are willingly taking part in a non-biblical approach to their faith they are only doing what tradition has for centuries been teaching them. They are following the only path they know - what they fully believe to be the best tried and true method of being a “Christian.” Unfortunately they have confused being a part of the body with the carnal act of “doing church”, and the consequences are very troubleing.
     Take for example the many times I have been in the presence of a “church” leader and discovered manipulating, controlling, and deceptive tendencies. These were men who I had grown to respect in a spiritual sense, men who I believed to be sincere and genuine in their desire to do right and serve God without compromise. Why in the face of certain “church” related pressures did these men bow to the most base of human instincts, often without batting an eye or even realizing consciously they had done anything wrong? The answer is simple once we understand and fully perceive the corruption of the system they are a part of. Even the most committed and sincere Christian, even the most selfless and God fearing minister of the Gospel will find himself engaging in acts of manipulation and deceit when he has committed himself, even be it unwittingly, to humanly conceived methodology rather than to the body of Christ and the perfect will of God. I am not saying that every traditional “church” leader is automatically guilty of such things, but I do believe the system makes it extremely difficult to avoid these behaviours. You see we get in trouble when we try to do it under our own strength using our own limited reasoning.
     Those who wish to follow Christ must regain the understanding that His very purpose for coming was to free us from all these pressures. He came to relieve us from the bondage of this “church” thing with its cultic, cliquish, and works oriented mentality. He wants to open our hearts and minds to the fullness of His love and truth. He came to give us life through a relationship with Him and with each other on the most intimate and life changing level. We just deceive ourselves into believing we are better off than the pharisees and that we do not hold the same legalistic and self righteous attitudes. But human nature does not change and our inability to see our own religiosity as paralleling that of the religious leaders of Jesus' time is only typical of the religious minded throughout history. It boils down to getting out of the way and allowing God to build his Kingdom in his perfect way and in his perfect time. We need to cease from our endless striving, listen, hear his voice, and be obedient. Our human methodologies only distracts from what God is doing.
     Jesus loved the people but hated the stuff that held them back from being what He had created them to be. I sincerely hope that this is also my true attitude toward the so called “church”. Hopefully my “love/hate dilemma” will not turn me into a hard nosed cynic who believes real, meaningful reform is unlikely, but will be channeled instead into God inspired creativity that will help to spur my fellow believers to discover what it really means to be a part of the true body of Jesus Christ.

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