“Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap, because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the best ways to grow a church is to invite new people to come. That sounds like it should be obvious, but perhaps not as much as you would think. Inviting people to church is such an old-fashioned idea. Surely there are more modern, seeker-sensitive methods of getting them to come. I mean, if that’s all it really takes to grow a church, how is anybody going to make money off of gimmicky approaches that guarantee successful church growth campaigns for only $199? Don’t you worry. Those will still be there. In any event, the trouble with this is that it feels awkward to invite someone to church. So we don’t do it. Especially if you are an introvert like me. After all, they may not come in response to our invitation. That’s true, but they almost certainly won’t come without one. Well, the other day, I invited someone to church. What I got in response was a bad church story. The invitation may yet play out, but if it doesn’t, that bad church story will have a lot to do with it. The whole thing got me thinking about why people have those and what we can do about it.

I don’t have a bad church story. I should. In fact, I probably should a couple of times over. When I was in college, the church I had grown up attending and which my family still attended faithfully split. My family was on the losing side that had to leave. The church was stagnant and even dying, and most of that was the fault of the pastor who was leading the church in its decline and creating a pretty toxic work environment for other staff members along the way. A group of faithful families who had been invested there for a very long time met together in my parent’s family room to talk about what they were going to do about it. I remember being in the room for that.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it was one of those moments that was going to shape my view of the church for the rest of my life. The humility and godliness of this group was palpable in the room. They loved the church. They loved the pastor in spite of his flaws. Rather than being angry and plotting either a coup or a dramatic walk-out, their hearts were heavy and there weren’t many dry eyes in the circle. They prayerfully decided to follow the Matthew 18 approach to conflict resolution. When that didn’t work, they honored the authority given to the pastor by God, and quietly left. And then, when they left, they didn’t go start a new church, they merely integrated themselves into other churches in the community and started having an impact there.

I learned then in a powerful way that you’ve got to love the church. She’s not perfect. Neither are her people. But she is the bride of Christ. She should be handled with gentleness and respect. There is occasionally a place for anger, but only a righteous anger, not a selfish one. And when things look like they are heading for a fight, if the issue is not one of central doctrinal importance, it is better to quietly walk away rather than stirring up conflict that could needlessly wound others in the church collaterally or else hurt the church’s community witness. What could have or even should have been my bad church experience turned out to be one of the best church experiences I have ever had. I love the church because of it.

At the same time, I recognize that my experience is incredibly unique. A whole lot more people have had bad church experiences. Like I said a minute ago, I just spoke with one this past week. As we were talking, I got a strong impression I should invite her to church. I really don’t know how to put it other than that. There wasn’t anything audible, but I knew I needed to do it. In response, she related how she had grown up at church that was legalistic and judgmental, and with a parent who was unintentionally guilty of some spiritual abuse. She really hadn’t been back to church since she was able to get herself out of that situation. Several months ago, I had another conversation with someone who experienced something roughly similar. She had a family member who didn’t check off the right moral boxes as far as some church was concerned, and she and her family were driven out because of it.

Bad church experiences are some of the most damaging things to a person’s faith and view of God that can happen. And while sometimes these happen to people who are only involved on the periphery of a church family, they much more commonly occur in the lives of people who used to be actively involved. It is a similar phenomenon to the kinds of wounds that can be dealt to a person by domestic abuse situations. There are no wounds quite so grave as the ones your family can deal you. The difference is that family is forever (even if we don’t want it to be). A church family, on the other hand, can be rejected and left and we don’t ever have to engage with those people again. Now, yes, if church family trauma happens in a small town things can quickly get complicated, but many communities are big enough that when you leave a church, you won’t have to see many of those folks ever again.

Yet why do these bad church experiences happen? I think the apostle Paul gives us a clue here. In these verses Paul is talking about the kind of behavior we should have in public. He’s talking about the kinds of investments we should be making in the lives of the people around us. Through an idea that sounds very much like the Buddhist and Hindu doctrine of Karma, Paul observes that we reap what we sow. This doesn’t at all mean that Christianity and these Eastern religions share some kind of ideological common ground. Rather, Paul is pointing to a principle that is true for all relationships. If we are constantly ugly to people, we should not expect them to be kind and gentle with us. If we live by the rules of the world, those same rules will come back to bite us. If, on the other hand, we live by the rules of the kingdom of God, those rules will come back to bless us. Notice that Paul doesn’t imagine “the universe” somehow making things right. He says that God’s Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, will bring the blessings if we follow His lead.

His goal is to make sure that local churches enjoy the favor of their community. They should be known as places where anyone can experience the kindness and compassion of Jesus. They should be known for their good works. They should have a well-developed reputation of leveraging their strengths to the benefit of the people around them and with whom they come into regular contact. The community should know that anyone, regardless of their issues, can engage with that group of people and expect a warm, loving reaction. Churches should be filled with people who genuinely love one another and even mostly like each other. There should be a genuine affection and concern shown for one another. They love their community well, but they really step it up in their care for one another.

This is what the church should be. Bad church experiences happen when we fail to achieve this mark. They come when we are judgmental of one another and not on the basis of the standards of Scripture, but rather on the basis of our personal tastes and preferences. They come when we refuse to receive people as they are, but instead insist they get themselves cleaned up before they can engage with the rest of the body. They come when we fail to hold each other lovingly accountable for walking the path of Christ, instead turning to fear and guilt and shame to keep our members in line. They come when we don’t comfort the broken and hurting in our midst. They come when we lean into the biases of the dominant culture rather than the love of Jesus.

And because the church is the body of Christ, when someone has had a bad church experience, what they learn is that God is not good. He is not kind. He is not loving. He is judgmental and capricious and hateful. He is hypocritical and cold. He demands they meet impossible standards and casts judgment on them quickly and severely when they fail. They learn all of this and naturally conclude the church is no place for them and that they don’t want anything to do with God.

Yet in experiencing all of this and coming to this conclusion, God is the one person they haven’t met. His identity has been obscured. His character has been maligned. They have instead been presented with a false god operating under His name and have rightly rejected it. The trouble is, they rejected it thinking they were rejecting the real God.

Helping a person who has had a bad church experience reengage with their faith is a challenging thing. It takes great patience and humility and love. It takes a willingness to repent and apologize on behalf of the erring church even if yours didn’t have anything to do with the situation. It takes gentleness and compassion.

Rebuilding trust in an institution when that trust has been shattered so thoroughly doesn’t happen quickly or easily. But it can be done. And this work starts with an invitation. It starts with an invitation that is extended several times. It continues with a church willing to do a bit of ruthlessly honest navel gazing on the places where it is not being consistent with the love of Christ in its daily operations. This work is not easy. But it is absolutely necessary for the church to be doing and to be doing regularly. We need to make sure that as far as it depends on us, we won’t let a bad church experience in our community be the reason a person rejects the Gospel and refuses to return to it. We do this because we understand that a person’s eternal destiny is at stake. Nothing less properly honors the name of the God whose image we bear.