Of necessity preachers say a lot of controversial things, and things that that are often misunderstood. So I warn you, you might misunderstand what I mean when I announce the title of this message— “I love imperfect churches”. That seems to go against the grain of what we generally think. As you know, it is common to hear people say, “There are too many hypocrites in the church”. We hear that all the time–usually in an effort to justify the person’s rejection of Christianity. The fact of the matter is, there are too many hypocrites in the church–one is too many. But what does that have to do with you? Who are you? What do you expect?
J. C. Ryle (1896) wrote: “Churches are necessarily corrupt… everything must be imperfect which is carried on by human agency…Fault-finding is the easiest of all tasks. There never was a system upon earth, in which man had anything to do, in which faults, and many faults too, might not soon be found. We must expect to find imperfections in every visible church upon earth.There always were such in the New Testament Churches. They always will be now.” Good for him. He saw what we all need to see.
If you’re looking for a perfect church stop it–now! You’ll never find it and if you did you would corrupt it the minute you joined. If you’re going to serve God, and you should, you must learn to live with imperfect people. We must learn to work with people as they are, not as we wish they were or as they ought to be. Not only are there imperfect people in the church, the whole church is made up of imperfect people– which includes you.
To stop attending church because there are sinners in it is like refusing to go to the hospital because it’s full of sick people. Surely you’re smarter than that. Instead of getting bitter and complaining about the shortcomings of the church members, get busy being a helper rather than a critic. God’s people aren’t perfect, even though they want to be. We ought to love them unconditionally. When I say “I love imperfect churches” it doesn’t mean that I condone sin. It means I love them even though they are imperfect. After all that’s the way the Lord loves me– and you. Indeed I love imperfect churches– there is no other kind!
