10 things I hate about Church

This Sunday we finish off our series in the book of Colossians and have spent a week looking at our vision under the title ‘A Church Not For Ourselves’. I wrote a blog post a while back saying that our church should be for the good of the city and engaging to sceptics and this is what we’ll cover on Sunday.

To get us into the mood I thought I would do 2 quick blog posts, inspired by that Hollywood Classic (?) 10 things I hate about you. So here is the list of things I hate about church…tomorrow I’ll talk about the things I love (you’ll see that they match!).

1. Humans mess it up – whether this be through sexual abuse, financial embezzlement or some other form of abuse of power. Typically, humans mess it up when they start to believe that the church is to serve their purposes and build up their status, rather than serve God’s purposes and spread his fame throughout the earth.
2. Lives are messed with – too many people have testimonies of church saying it was restrictive, abusive, judgmental and manipulative. “Heavy shepherding” is often a term used for when people are controlled in an unhealthy way by the leaders or the community and it leads to greater problems rather than greater healing. Too often nowadays the church is the cause of many hurts. How sad!
3. It’s cliquey – People can find church on a Sunday and the people within it very cliquey and the community very closed. Coming to church can be a scary and unpleasant experience.
4. It’s stagnant – do read my blog where I get an honest appraisal from some friends who don’t go to church. This was a big negative. Many commented that church was static, old, irrelevant, institutional and out of touch.
5. It looks pathetic – in one sense this is to be expected. Jesus said that the church will often seem fragile in the world’s eyes because that’s part and parcel of being ‘a community of the cross’. However there are also times when the church does itself no favours and is unnecessarily out of touch and comes across as desperate. It is not growing. It has no energy. It is just trying to cling on to those it has and that neediness makes it look pathetic.
6. Jesus leaves the church – Revelation 2-3 tells us that the presence of Jesus sometimes leaves local churches when they refused to repent of their immoral ways or false teaching. This is scary.
7. The Holy Spirit is quenched – Ephesians 4:30 and 1 Thessalonians 5:19 talk about how the Holy Spirit can be quenched and his work can be stifled because of our sin and disunity in the community.
8. Dreams are squashed – People find that instead of the church supporting them to go out and be salt and light, the church sucks all their energy and talent. The churches agenda is all about how it’s members can fit into its programmes and its thinking is too small-minded.
9. Prevents people connecting to heaven – Jesus said this may happen and gave strong warnings to those who stopped people entering the kingdom of God. Instead of the church being a channel to God, it’s a hinderance, because it serves its own purposes and sets up multiple rules.
10. It’s boring – It should give life, but often it feels like death. You’ll have all experienced this.

So there are 10 reasons why I often find myself hating church! Tomorrow will be 10 reasons why I love church.