Have You Lost Faith in the Church?

If you have lost faith in the local church, what may help is to remember that the church, though it is the body of Christ, is made up of sinful people just like you and me. As much as we wish the church was perfect, everything this side of heaven is flawed. Also consider that Christ loved the church enough to die for it.

Many, especially American Christians, view church membership as incidental to their Christianity. They view church membership as optional to their Christianity. They view church membership as extraneous to their Christianity. And I want you to understand, from the Bible’s perspective that is not the case. Church membership is vital and biblical, and it is not optional. --Ligon Duncan

1. It is Biblical

2. It is vital for discipleship, encouragement in the Christian life and for accountability. You cannot be accountable outside of a place in which there is authority. There’s no accountability where you’re choosing either or not to be accountable. Where accountability is optional, accountability does not exist.--Ligon Duncan

3. It is not only where we can assemble together to worship and bring God the glory together, but it is a vital means that God uses to grow us in the grace and knowledge of Himself. There is no way that you can [display] your tangible membership in the universal body of Christ without expressing it in the local church... the Bible is clear that to be a Christian involves identifying with the bride that God has created for Himself. ... It’s much harder to love people that you know and who have hurt you and have let you down, and who you have hurt and let down. But... ‘That’s exactly where [Jesus] wants discipleship to happen: where people who have hurt one another have to forgive one another; where people who have let one another down have to ask forgiveness and repent and be restored and reconciled in their relationship. Because that’s how [Jesus] grows Christians who are ready to die to be a part of My body.’--Ligon Duncan

"Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it" (1 Corinthians 12:27)

The problems come mainly when we get our eyes off of Christ and on ourselves as we let our egos and sinful natures drive our desires, instead of seeking to do God's will for His pleasure. Are we seeking to serve for God's glory or seeking to serve or be served for our glory?

When your actual body has a disease, the rest of the body goes to work to heal itself. That's what we need to do.
Yes, we will be hurt by problems in the church. We are, though clothed in the righteousness of Christ, humans that are flawed and sinful.

The body of Christ, the church, will grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord as we pursue more of Him and less of ourselves. Just think, if Christ would have not loved us while we were yet sinners... what hope would we have? Yes, the church is filled with sinners. Some saved by grace through faith alone, some riding on a roller coaster ride of self-sustained religion, others with no true-saving faith.

2 Peter 2. This chapter describes men who at one time were baptized, members in good standing and who had even become teachers. Peter, does not say that they were loved or forgiven but that they for a time "escaped the pollutions of the world" (2 Pet. 2:20). That is, they had an external reformation of behavior based on an intellectual knowledge of the word. Peter makes it crystal clear that these men were not united to Christ, regenerated, forgiven or saved because he says their natures were never, ever truly changed. He says, "But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: 'A dog returns to his own vomit,' and, 'a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire'" (2 Pet. 2:22). A dog and a pig act according to their own nature. One can wash a pig and make it clean, but a pig is a pig. It will return to wallowing in the mud—in disgusting filth—because that is what pigs do. The apostle is saying that people who apostatize, who return to their former lifestyle, never had an interior work of the Holy Spirit. They were never regenerated and united to Christ. Their natures were never changed. The apostle is, in fact, teaching that if we could look at the hearts of those who apostatized, "we would discover that at no time were they ever activated by a true love of God. They were all this while goats, and not sheep, ravening wolves, and not gentle lambs." In other words the visible church contains not only real believers but also unsaved hypocrites.

...We need the body of Christ. We need to be a part of a local body of believers. This is not just an act of obedience; a command in Scripture to not forsake the assembling together. It is essential to our growth as we edify, hold one another accountable to the Truth without compromise. It is a place to love one another, forgive, worship, be encouraged, convicted... to practice what we proclaim to believe so that we can go out and proclaim the Good News, be salt to the earth and beacons on a hill.

The New Testament assumes that all Christians will share in the life of a local church, meeting with it for worship (Heb. 10:25), accepting its nurture and discipline (Matt. 18:15-20; Gal. 6:1), and sharing in its work of witness. Christians disobey God and impoverish themselves by refusing to join with other believers when there is a local congregation that they can belong to.--J.I. Packer

The wars between nations and enmity within families and neighborhoods is but the wake of the serpent's tail as he seeks to devour the church, employing the same tried and tested methods: not only martyrdom from without, but heresy and schism from within. In the rest of this article, I want to suggest a few of the ways we are routinely tempted toward what can only be called, tragically, "Christless Christianity.... Christ gets lost in churches where activity, self-expression, the hype of "worship experiences" and programs replace the ordinary ministry of hearing and receiving Christ as he is given to us in the means of grace. Christ gets lost when he is promoted as the answer to everything but our condemnation, death, and the tyranny of sin, or as the means to the end of more excitement, amusement, better living, or a better world-as if we already knew what these would look like before God addressed us in his law and gospel."--Horton

Studying why it is important to be a part of a local body has brought me much personal conviction as well as encouragement. I prayerfully and earnestly read through the Scriptures and actually looked for excuses or loopholes around what God's Word teaches about this topic. Couldn't seem to find any. Have I missed the boat? Let me know. I pray I am teachable, but not tossable; sometimes slow to learn, but I truly, by the grace of God, desire not to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

Please consider reading What a Healthy Church Member Looks Like.