In short, though my experience says that the church has failed, I believe the church is becoming more and more ready to deal with the great big pink elephant that’s in the room but very few are discussing.
In the least the churches have access to ministry tools, such as Celebrate Recovery, to help men and women though many churches that should have it don’t. I believe that the churches who don’t help can’t for one of a few reasons
First, they do not understand the nature of the problem or the addiction because they themselves do not struggle. Two, it’s too difficult of a problem to deal with and it will get very messy. People will be offended and will leave the church. However to grow, we might need to shrink first, cutting off dead weight. Third, churches don’t want to enact church discipline over such a prevelant problem or churches don’t really believe in church discipline. Fourth, they are afraid of what they may discover. Who really wants to open this can of worms? And if we open it, can we control it? Can we fix it? Etc. Fifth, the church leadership is lying to themselves, deceiving themselves, or are living hypocritical double lives, and they want to protect themselves.
So has the church failed? I am not sure. I am not big enough or knowledgeable enough to say that the universal church has failed. I believe various local churches have failed. I also believe that bigger churches struggle with this the most simply due to the large quantity of people. For example, one of the local churches where I am currently had a guest speaker, an evangelist, ask a group of men to raise their hand if they struggled with sexual sin, especially pornography looking at it in the last week. All but one person (and he could have been lying to himself and others) raised their hand, but there is still nothing in that church to help those people to date, and it is one of the better churches in the area! So what are these men to do?
However, on the flip side, it is not the church’s problem to fix my problem and my mess. I remember telling my story of addiction to a close minister friend of mine. When I was finished, he laughed! He said, “So you are mad at the church for not fixing your problem which you have both created and maintained which they have had no part?” He was right. They were not to blame for my failure to “recover” or to be restored. I am!
Yet on the other hand, the Bible says, “they who are spiritual are to restore those who are sinning” (Gal 6:1). The church should care for its own. If the person claims to be a believer then the church should commit to that person to help them to a state of victory and restoration, even sometimes against their will, or are those commitment statements during times of baptism or church membership made in churches empty? Are people serious about helping their neighbor even to their own personal sacrifice? Are they willing to pursue the addict or the “sinful saint”? Is there any church out there willing to do this? Maybe een assign a Stephen Minister to anyone who claims or who the church deems that they are addicted to pornography?? The church needs to do something more than what is being done. They have the tools, but maybe they don’t have the leadership though Rick Warren and Saddleback have done a great job with this in creating Celebrate Recovery.
What do you think? Has the church failed?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related posts:
