Wanted: Messy People!

“Church can’t be a place where we feel like a visitor, or somewhere we’re afraid to allow others to see our messes. It’s got to feel like home.”   Ross Parsley                                

  I love corn on the cob BUT it’s just so messy. It’s messy shucking the corn. Then, there are always those last few tassels that want to adhere to the ear like they’re attached with super glue. Invariably, I end up dripping butter on my shirt. That potentiality dramatically increases depending on how new the shirt is. The corn gets stuck between my teeth and then I have to find a polite way to remedy the situation.  Add to that, I have a beard and mustache – bits of corn or drips of butter, often unbeknownst to me, stay with me until I can finally find a washroom. But it’s just so good! The end results are well worth the mess and hassle.With our annual Corn Roast today, I've been thinking a little about the mess.

  Churches are like that. They’re messy. Just in case you didn’t get the memo: Grace Church isn’t perfect. Our church is full of messy people. Our volunteers, staff members, and leaders don’t have it all together. In fact, every one of them is a sinner. And our members and the people who attend our services? They’re sinners, too: drunks, addicts, adulterers, liars, gossipers, gluttons, abusers, selfish, proud, greedy, jealous, and divisive – and worse…but we wouldn’t have it any other way…

  We want to be a messy church because we want to be caring like Jesus, who came to rescue the messy people, like me and you. Jesus cares so much about imperfect people that He left the perfection of heaven and came to this messed up and messy earth. “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15). Jesus spent time with the vile, needy, flawed, and diseased. He didn’t isolate Himself from common, everyday people who realized they needed a radical change in their lives. The same way a doctor is motivated to heal the sick, Jesus came to earth to heal the broken and bruised.

  A church isn’t a place of perfection, but of growth and progress. And the church is wrong, if it’s focused on attempting to maintain some image of perfection. Jesus has never been afraid to embrace the controversy of associating with the wrong crowd and neither should we.

  The church was created from imperfect people for imperfect people. It exists to help imperfect people meet a perfect Savior and then follow Him step by step. Our imperfections are not projects to fix, but opportunities to see a miracle of His grace and power. Each of us has a story about how Jesus met us in the midst of our mess and has been changing us from the inside out.

  And we can’t fix ourselves or fix each other, we can though support, correct, and encourage each other. Jesus removes our sins and we learn to live in the freedom He’s given us by His death on a cross and resurrection from an empty tomb.

  But for any church (or individual) to claim perfection is a scandal. The church isn’t a place of perfection, but of growth and progress. We make progress when we listen to Jesus, obey and do what He says. Once we’ve met Jesus, our lives never stay the same. We were stuck in our mess, in our imperfection, but wonderfully God doesn’t leave us there.  When we come to Jesus admitting we’re flawed and struggling with sin, He forgives us and takes over our lives so we learn to do life His way. God’s mercy covers all our mistakes…even the future ones.

  As you and I take our next steps in our walks with Jesus, people, particularly those who are still stuck in their mess, notice. The closer we follow Jesus’ example, the more we, by the power of the Spirit working in our lives become like Jesus, we will attract people far from God. No one is too evil, too controversial or scandal-ridden for God’s grace.

  Neither churches or Christians are perfect. R. C. Sproul minces no words when he calls it “the heresy of perfectionism.” It’s an ancient heresy that teaches that there’s a class of Christians who achieve moral perfection in this life. They don’t. Yet, there’s a kind of elitism in this perceived perfectionism, a feeling that those who are nearly there, are somehow better than other Christians. These “perfect” ones don’t officially take credit for their state, yet smugness and pride have a way of creeping in.

  This “perfectionism” categorizes sin as big and small. Arrogance is small; adultery is big. Cursing is big; complaining is small. Laziness is big; lying is small. You get the picture. What’s forgotten though is that Satan was cast out of heaven for pride. Adam and Eve lost Paradise for only disobeying one rule, eating one piece of forbidden fruit. And Jesus had to die to save them and us for just one broken rule.

  We’re not good people. We’re not even nice people. We think angry and hateful thoughts about the very one that we made a vow before God “to love and cherish…til death do us part.” We manipulate our children, the ones that we brought into this world, to make us look good, to get others to think better of us and even like us more. They become assets for our arrogance. And these are the ones that are closest to us. No wonder others are often little more that collateral damage in our obsession to take care of Numero Uno.

  And yet, we like to think that we’re nice and good, even perfect. The peril of perfectionism is that it horribly distorts the human mind. What mental and spiritual contortions we must put ourselves through to delude ourselves into thinking we’re good people. Inevitably, this error of perfectionism breeds deadly delusions. To convince ourselves we’ve achieved goodness, we must either suffer from a radical overestimation of our moral performance. Or, we must seriously underestimate the holiness and requirements of God’s law. We must reduce the level of divine righteousness to the level of our own flawed performance. Perfectionism then is really anti-perfectionism in disguise. If we think we’re perfect or at least becoming perfect, we’re further from it than we’ve ever been.

  So if you’re looking for a safe, perfect church, sorry. We’re not it. We’re  a work in progress. But God isn’t done with us. We’ve got a lot of flaws, but He’s got even more patience.

  However, if you’re looking for a church full of messies, imperfect people who struggle but take one step forward at a time with Jesus, you’ve found us. We’re so glad to have you! We’re not a perfect church but we serve a great and gracious God!!