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The pastor was not a bad man—in fact, he was a good man—but Lillian realized that he held back the church. Early in his ministry he had experienced an ugly split in a church he led. The incident had marked him. At bottom he was afraid. He had to keep control, he thought—and so he stifled any initiative. He feared putting himself on the point, so he operated by manipulation.

A consistent pattern showed itself: a new lay leader would appear, would optimistically rally the church toward new ministry, and then eventually—worn out by the pastor's style of indirection and manipulation—would quit the church and go elsewhere.

Whenever Lillian's out-of-town friends came to visit, they were struck by the church's attractiveness. "We learned to hate what we called the p word," Lillian says. "People were always telling us how much potential the church showed."

Lillian sometimes thought that if the pastor had been a bad man, had acted in an obviously sinful way, they might have gotten rid of him. As it was, she realized he would never leave. He had at least a decade before retirement. That began to seem like a life sentence.

She realized how bad her attitude had become when one Sunday the pastor said he had an important personal announcement to make. She sat up straight. Her heart began to beat hard, and her face flushed. Was he going to announce that he was leaving for another church? She could hardly breathe.

"The wonderful news I have to share with you," the pastor said with unfeigned excitement, "is that thanks to the generosity of this congregation I have a new carpet in my office."

Lillian wanted to cry.

But Lillian does not leave churches, unless it is for a much better reason than frustration with a pastor's leadership style. She stayed. She worked. She found places where she could make a difference. And she suffered. She felt deeply the gap between what her church should be and what it actually was. It took, indeed, almost 20 long years before the pastor finally sank into retirement.

Looking back now, many years later still, Lillian finds that she cannot think a negative thought about those years and her choice to stay. It was like having a baby, she thinks. However difficult, she would not trade the experience or the result. Something died in her, but something also came to life. That something was Christ.

Somehow long-suffering is appropriate to a place and a people who worship Jesus. "How could we experience him in his death," Lillian wants to know, "if we could not tolerate some little deaths ourselves?"

The church is the body of Christ, and it carries his wounds. To know Christ is to share in the fellowship of his sufferings—even if the suffering comes at the hands of the sinners who sit in the pews or preach from the pulpit.

How can we communicate this to unchurched Christians? The only way I know is to preach it. We need to tell them, even if it goes against the grain of our culture. We need to tell them, even if talking so frankly goes against our philosophy of outreach.

If people commit themselves to the church, they will undoubtedly suffer. The church will fail them and frustrate them, because it is a human institution. Yet it will also bless them, even as it fails. A living, breathing congregation is the only place to live in a healthy relationship to God. That is because it is the only place on earth where Jesus has chosen to dwell. How can you enjoy the benefits of Christ if you detach yourself from the living Christ?

Tim Stafford is a CT senior writer.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Recent Christianity Today articles about needing the Body of Christ include:

Why I Return to the Pews | The church has often left me bemused, bored, or mystified, but I can no more abandon it than I can myself. (Dec. 16, 2004)

Editor's Bookshelf: Survival Through Community | An interview with Charles Colson, author of Being the Body. (May 19, 2003)

Barna statistics about the unchurched, including born again Christians, are available from their website.

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January 2005, Vol. 49, No. 1