The Church: A Spiritual Gym or Hospital?

Too many people have been hurt by the church. Sadly, the one place that should be safe for vulnerability has become a place where people have experienced more hurt and injury. According to a Barna study, as many as “four out of every ten non-churchgoing Americans (37%) said they avoid churches because of negative past experiences in churches or with church people.” This is a sad reality that none of us can deny.

I also want to remind us of the truth that the church is not intended to be a room full of spiritually healthy elites. We are not a collection of people whose habits are under control, whose emotions are in check, whose marriages are mostly sorted, whose opinions are neatly aligned, and whose lives are free from any anxiety or stress. The church was never meant to be a showroom for holy all-stars.

The church is better seen as a spiritual hospital where our Great Physician is working on broken, sinful people. Augustine is often credited with saying (though I don’t think anyone has ever found a verbatim quote from Augustine): “The church is a hospital for sinners.” Although he may not have said exactly that, we do know that he wrote in Confessions, “See, I do not hide my wounds; you are the physician, and I am sick; you are merciful, I in need of mercy” (Conf. 10.28.39). That is not a person attempting to perform, but a person bringing his real wounds into the light because he trusts that God heals what we actually bring, not what we pretend to be.

When we think of the church as a clinic, our expectations change. In a clinic, you do not walk in offended by the fact that people are sick. You expect limps, scars, and awkward stories. You expect a healing process, and recognize that healing is rarely tidy.

That is why the church can feel both comforting and unsettling. Comforting, because you can finally stop pretending. Unsettling, because other people also stop pretending, and their brokenness bumps into yours.

Faux Friendliness or Charitable Community?

This leads to a temptation most churches face. That is, settling for the façade of a friendly community. On the surface, we can look wonderful: people smile, lives look put together, and arguments are rare. In the narthex or parish hall, the only thing you see are hugs, handshakes, and a pleasant buzz of conversation.

However, that is not necessarily unity – nor am I saying it is all wrong. The point is, unity is not the absence of tension, but is people bound together in Christ, sharing the truth in love, and refusing to leave when it gets hard or messy. When we look beneath the surface of each other’s lives, we are bound to find upheaval, souls battling temptation, strained marriages, worried parents, people grieving, angry, or lonely. Unity is not found by ignoring those realities, but by walking with one another through them. Painted on smiles and faux niceness are not what bind God’s people together; they communicate, “It’s not safe to talk about that here.”

Please do not hear me incorrectly. Niceness can be good, but niceness cannot always carry the weight of real life. When a marriage is on the rocks, niceness will not get you the help you need. When the political climate is explosive, pleasantness will not keep a church from fracturing. When animosity is simmering, polite avoidance will not bring reconciliation. In fact, it usually does the opposite. It gives bitterness room to grow.

So what do we do? I think we look to one of the best guides for messy church unity – the Apostle Paul. Paul’s ministry was rife with churches that struggled with unity. He gives us three layers of unity that we’re going to look at over the next three weeks:

Bear with one another (Ephesians 4).
Take on Christ’s mindset (Philippians 2).
Develop a Christ-shaped life (Colossians 3).

Bear with one another

In this first article, we start with the first layer: bearing with one another. Until we learn to stay when things become difficult, we’ll never experience unity, community, or healing the way Jesus fully offers.

Paul writes in Ephesians 4.1-3, “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Notice what Paul assumes. He assumes there will be friction. He assumes you will need patience. He assumes love will sometimes feel less like a warm feeling and more like a stubborn choice to stay.

You only need patience when you are being tested. You only need to bear with people who are frustrating you. And lest we slip into accidental victim mode, remember this. You frustrate people, too. I frustrate people, too. We tend to have an impressive memory for all the ways we bear with others, and a shocking forgetfulness about all the ways they have borne with us.

Bearing with one another is not the whole vision of unity, but it is the doorway. It is the first commitment a church makes when it decides to be a clinic instead of a showroom. It is the decision to live with people who think, live, and act differently, for the sake of the gospel.

What does that look like in ordinary church life? Not dramatic heroics. More like quiet faithfulness.

Absorb small offenses: Not every annoyance needs a conversation. Not every awkward comment needs a verdict. (Proverbs 19.11; 1 Peter 4.8; James 1.19)

Refuse gossip: You do not recruit an audience for your irritation. You do not “process” someone else’s sin as entertainment. (Proverbs 16.28; Proverbs 26.20; Ephesians 4.29; 2 Corinthians 12.20)

Practice charitable interpretation: When someone’s tone hits wrong, you do not immediately assign motives. You ask, “Help me understand what you meant.” (1 Corinthians 13.7; James 1.19; Proverbs 18.13)

Make room for different levels of maturity: New believers are learning. Longtime believers still have blind spots. Sanctification is not instant. (Philippians 1.6; 1 Thessalonians 5.14; Romans 14.1; Galatians 6.1)

Stay present long enough for trust to grow: You do the slow work of getting to know people beyond their rough edges. (Colossians 3.12–14; Hebrews 10.24–25; 1 Thessalonians 5.11; Ephesians 4.15–16)

And if you are thinking, “This is going to hurt,” you are not wrong. The church is full of broken people because the church is where broken people come to be made whole. So we should not be surprised when sinful people do sinful stuff. We should be sober about it, not scandalized by it. And we should be serious about what happens next.

Friendly façades can keep a room pleasant, but they cannot make a family. Unity begins when we stop pretending we are fine and we start bearing with one another in love, in the presence of the Physician who does not despise our wounds.

Fr. Chase