ON THE DISPARAGEMENT OF THE CHURCH

One of the less-endearing characteristics of 21st-century Christians is their habit of disparaging the church. The practice takes many forms, such as

• the super-spiritual group of people who sit extremely lightly to any commitment to their home church but regularly meet together in each other's house for gossip, back-biting and tale-telling. This is more usually described as an inter-denominational time of fellowship and prayer
• the go-it-alone Christian who argues at length (and completely unconvincingly) that he "doesn't have to go to church to be a good Christian" and has 137 reasons why no church within a 50 mile radius of his house is up to scratch as far as he is concerned
• the ecclesiastical butterflies who flit from congregation to congregation sampling sermons and tasting fellowships but never alighting long enough to make any impression.

Each of these people in their own way disparages the local church and like the poor they have always been with us.

Let me say right at the start that I believe these critics have clearly nailed their colours to the 3-masted ship driven by those eternal enemies of the gospel, the world, the flesh and the devil.

Disdain for the church is a worldly attitude of mind which often represents a desire to appear sophisticated and worldly-wise in the eyes of the people who rate themselves sophisticated and worldly-wise. It is a sad reflection on modern western Christendom that contemporary Christians - at least the younger ones - no longer recognize worldliness as sin. These worldly Christians profess that they are disciples of Jesus Christ yet they have no time of the church which he loved and gave himself for.

Disdain of the church is a fleshly attitude of mind. Nowhere is this seen so clearly as in the disdain such people have for the small church. They may speak admiringly of certain aspects of large church life: its high quality musicianship, its clever marketing programmes, the impressive resume of the pastoral team. But the little church with its one-man-band pastor who is too busy cutting grass in the churchyard to be writing another smash hit religious best-seller (Humility and how I achieved it), and with its pianist who struggles with the harmonies of What a friend we have in Jesus if asked to play any faster than molto lento and with its cold building, uncomfortable seats and Rag, Tag and Bobtail company of worshippers - well, the less said about this pathetic institution the better.

This is so utterly fleshly. It is succumbing to the temptation to judge as man does, by outward appearance. It is allowing oneself to criticise not one servant of another man but a whole company of them. It is making my taste, my opinions, my preferences the measure of the worth of Christ's church. Above all this disdain is fleshly because it provides the critic with a rationale for avoiding any responsibility or commitment: this flawed institution with its odd-ball members and its inadequate pastor and its fading splendour is beneath me and therefore I do not need to get involved at all.

Finally disdain for the church is devilish. Nobody is as disdainful of the church as the accuser of the brethren. It is his chief delight to find fault in believers. His contempt knows no limit but it is like all his statements lies and bluff. Yet tragically there are Christians who have taken sides with the father of lies and add their little niggles to his litany of accusation.

Now if you are prone to disparage the church I have something important to say to you. You are not recognising that this organisation you despise is the very body that God has chosen to use to make the gospel known in the world. You may think that when the New Testament talks of the church it is talking of the great company in heaven and earth which no one can count - the capital-C Church if you like. Certainly that is never far away from the mind of the NT authors. However, if you care to pick up your Bible and read through the sections which address the issue of the church you will see again and again that more often than not talk about the church is talk about the local worshipping community. It is about lukewarm Laodicea that makes God sick; it is about sinful Corinth; it is about theologically confused Galatia; it is about bankrupt Jerusalem. So many times "church" in the NT does not mean some abstract ideal of the elect from every time and people yet to be revealed. It is about the very human expression of the Church's imperfect, inadequate, local expression - the congregation.

What does the Word say? God chose it.

Why are you sitting in judgment on it?