FROM THE PULPIT: CHURCH HUNTING

We have good friends who recently moved to Florida. They related their experience to us, in a belated Christmas card sent in March, that the hardest part of the move was finding a good church. They wanted a church like their previous church (complete with the perfect pastor who never said a troubling word to anyone, knew every member by name and never forgot a birthday or anniversary.)

It wasn't the lack of good churches in their new town. The problem for their unsuccessful search was their expectations. They'd grown accustom to good, biblical preaching and a warm, embracing fellowship. They thought they had several good potential churches to join, but the more they discovered about each prospective church, the less desirable it appeared.

My counsel was there's no such thing as the perfect church. Every church (except mine, of course) has a host of problematic people. Every worshipping fellowship is full of hypocrites and behind every pulpit is a pastor who doesn't always practice what he or she preaches.

We're all work in progress, allowing the Holy Spirit to help us mature in our faith with increasing Christ-like characteristics. We're also facing and fighting a conformity to the negative, worldly ways of relating to one another. It's easier to react out of anger and malice than love, especially when it concerns our enemies.

I encouraged our friends to find a good church and make it better by serving Jesus Christ. As for dealing with the "less than saintly" members, the apostle Paul puts together a three-pronged approach to practically deal with life's irritable, irascible, curmudgeons in his letter to the church at Rome (Romans 12:12).

First, be joyful in hope. Joy is something that comes from within us. Happiness is dependent upon outward circumstances, but joy wells up from within us. Hope is a belief in the future beyond the obstacles of the present. Hope looks for the best possibility despite the present circumstances. We can always hope that God's grace is having an effect on people. We can always hope that god's grace can bring us together.

Second, be patient in affliction. Another word for patience is "long suffering." It necessitates endurance. Many times we must endure the painful, frustrating inconsistencies of people who can't carry the morning message from the pew to the parking lot. To be patient requires us to be forgiving, as God is forgiving of us.

Third, be faithful in prayer. This means to persevere in prayer. Prayer changes things, including our perspective and acceptance of disagreeable people. Through prayer, we can learn to live with others, to drop our need to be right all the time, to share in the giftedness of other people, to begin to see the validity of opposing arguments, maybe even to agree to help others make their committee a raving success: Prayer might also revel our own faults and need for correction.

There is no perfect church, though some come close when only two or three are gathered. Like any family of faith, we all have our back-sliding black sheep and aging adolescents who won't grow up and mature. Any organization with articulate, creative people will differ in points of order or style of leadership. The problem isn't our problems, it's how we deal with one another in attitude and action.

As the family of God, governed by the grace of Jesus Christ, we have the potential, and the opportunity, to rise above our differences and serve the Lord with unity. God calls us to be the institution of peace and grace, of reconciliation and love.