The Church is not perfect; neither are we

"and that's the amazing thing about grace.  Regardless of how we struggle or how we fall, regardless of how many people are affected by our actions, God is a God of healing.  God is a God of restoration and life."  - Anne Jackson

The Church isn't perfect; neither is Grace; neither are you.  Yet some Non-Christians (and Christians) hold us (or each other) to that standard and chastise us when we [the church] fail.  On the flip and more importantly, some Christians need to stop acting like the picture of perfection while positioning themselves as anointed judges for those outside the church while critiquing every move of those leading the church. One of the most beautiful creations God has given us is the Body of Christ; His Church.  Isn't it unbelievable how much we can fail others, yet how beautifully God builds his Church with all of us that fail each other? I think He wants to see our responses each other as we fail and to understand how He responds to our failures everyday in the most beautiful and humbling way. As a human, man - I find this difficult as I am sure you do to. 

If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves 1 John 1:8

There are really 2 groups here:  those of us who have accepted the love of Christ, the gift of salvation and the most undeserving blessing of grace and those who haven't.  I hold those who have accepted His grace to a higher standard of responding to failure than those who haven't. 

I am humbled every morning to wake up an imperfect father/husband/leader/child of Christ to help lead a group of imperfect people who help lead a group of imperfect people to serve and worship God in a way that is honorable to Him, not ourselves or others.  And all of this is under the umbrella of grace, love, mercy and forgiveness granted us through the death and resurrection of Christ.



The Church has led poorly in the past and will again.  We lean on our own understanding too much and we are a group of people struggling with sin. We have made some bad decisions in the past year and we will make bad decisions again.  We will fall and we will fail in our pursuit of Jesus.  None of that changes the beauty of what God designed the church to be.  Its not a good enough of a reason for some of us to bounce around from church to church.  And it's disheartening to know when some of us act the way we act it invites hypocrisy statements from those outside the church. 
 
It also means that if God accepts me in the imperfections I struggle with, He also accepts others and the imperfections they struggle with; so should I; so should we. 

So let all imperfect people accept the gift of grace and mercy and pursue Jesus together with a passion from us that only He deserves!  That is a beautiful picture of the Body of Christ!

We will fail each other at times, but our Lord never does - "It is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in man." - Psalm 118:8