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Freedom To Be Flawed? By Pastor Kevin Feder

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When people say that their relationship to their church is not equivalent to their relationship to their spouse they typically mean that they are not married to their church for life. I would agree with this and in this way, your covenant relationship to the church is not on par with the covenant you make in marriage. Thus, as a church we don't want to be cultish in the way we never allow people to leave the church. Far from it. 

On the other hand, covenant is a serious word and it should be meaningful. While your covenant relationship to your church isn't equal to your covenant relationship to your spouse there are some similarities that should be seriously considered. Covenant is first displayed by God and it is a word that tells us that he is committed to his people in and through all of our flaws. Despite our sin and shortcomings, we have confidence God isn't going to leave us because of his covenant love. This gives us some real freedom to move and operate as believers in Christ, knowing that every slip up won't cut us off but that we will be accepted unconditionally. If we wouldn't be free to be flawed there is no way the church could be the church that applies the gospel to one another in grace, wisdom, and sacrificial love.

If we apply covenant to marriage the beauty is that there is commitment. You may have been married long enough to realize that there are significant flaws in your spouse. There are ways that you wish each other to be and they simply are not. By year 15 you will begin to realize that there are some wishes that you have of your spouse that will never be realized and there are some ways you wish them to change and be different from what they are but you will come to realize they will not. Because of Covenant you don't just leave them and find someone that's a better fit, you stick it out and trust that God is using the shortcomings to teach you to love more like Christ and sacrifice more like Christ. In other words, you realize that your holiness in marriage is more important than your happiness in marriage. God is gracious to provide many good things in your spouse that you love, but he is also faithful to give you "thorns in the flesh" to teach you to love more purely and sacrificially. Without covenant commitment you would lose the benefit and blessing of sticking it out and loving when it is difficult. 

Your church commitment is like this, just not to the same degree. There are times to leave your church. 2020 has been a year that many, many people have decided to leave their church and they may be missing out on the potential blessings of learning to love their church when it is hard. God works through the pain and through the flaws in ways you will not experience/benefit from if you give up to quickly. 

Realizing there are valid reasons to leave a church I will spell out some reasons next week for consideration. I pray and trust this will help provide some vision for why should stay at your church and how God might be pleased to use it for your good and his glory, even if it is through much difficulty. 

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