Love Your Church Anyway
“We are all like porcupines with pillows strapped over our quills. The unique stresses of cross-cultural living tend to take the stuffing out of our pillows, and before we know it our quills are poking through, and we’re hurting each other.”
This is the caution my friend received as part of her training with Wycliffe Bible Translators before heading overseas . Yet while there are certainly unique stresses to cross-cultural living, this image could also apply to life in any local church.
The last several years have been hard on churches. In his book Pastor, Jesus Is Enough, Jeremy Writebol describes a difficult season when half of his church left following a statement he made in support of racial minorities in his community who were hurting over incidences of police brutality. At the end of 2021, my church also experienced loss when three of our elders asked the fourth one to resign. There were several difficult congregational meetings where feelings ran high. By that time, most of our pillows only had a few wisps of fluff left. A lot of sin and sadness and poking ensued. We looked like the opposite of the love described in 1 Corinthians 13—we were impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, insisting on our own ways, irritable and resentful, rejoicing in wrongdoing, rejecting the truth. People bore nothing, believed nothing, hoped for nothing, endured nothing.
I struggled for a long time after that. How could each of us, who claimed to love Jesus, arrive at such different conclusions about a conflict? How were we supposed to untangle who was sinning and who was justified when perhaps everyone was both sinning and justified to some extent? How could we begin to make peace when the ugly words and deeds that had passed between us couldn’t be undone?
I had been leading Bible studies and book studies for women in our church for the past few years, but after that situation I found myself feeling cynical and reluctant to stay connected relationally. There seemed to be lingering hostility in some hearts, and I felt suspicious and on edge, waiting to learn that someone else was leaving. I wanted to keep my distance, to stay opaque. It seemed the only way to be safe in community was to not truly commune.
When I read the words Jesus said to the crowd in Matthew 17:17, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” I thought, Preach! I’m so tired of people too, Jesus. Present company excluded, of course. Except that I’m not excluded. This has turned out to be the truth that keeps me from completely pulling away. I am not Jesus; I’m one of the faithless crowd.
I took the scenic route through college, so by the time I graduated, I was already Mrs. Kellogg, but I still had a lot of growing up to do. One of my favorite professors taught Classical and Medieval Literature. I like to think I was one of his favorite students too (probably because I made a fancy, hand-written sign for his office door that said, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”—in Latin). Despite my favored status, I was not above reproach, however. One evening, I came to class with a tenuous grasp on “The Franklyn’s Tale” from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which I was poised to recite to the class as part of an assignment. My professor seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time going over every possible announcement with us before getting started, so I blurted out impulsively, “Please hurry; it’s leaking out of my brain!” He responded sternly, “Mind your place, Mrs. Kellogg!” Startled, I minded my place.
I am years past that moment, yet the gospel is still teaching me to mind my place. I’d love to be the pure, sinless person in every story, but I’m not. We are all blind to some of our sin—which is a mercy for me since the sin I do see is discouraging enough for now. Throughout my walk with him, God has patiently and gently revealed sin to me in such a way that I sometimes wonder how I didn’t see it before. I’m thankful he doesn’t overwhelm me with the full revelation all at once. When I wonder how someone else doesn’t see their sin, it helps me to remember that God is probably being merciful to them in the same way. He knows exactly when and how to open their eyes to their sin in a way that makes them feel grateful for the chance to change. Even if other people have sinned as much as I think they have, God has a plan for their sanctification. I don’t know what that trajectory is, and I don’t need to. I just need to remember that whatever sin I see in them may well be a small speck compared to the logs of sin I’m not seeing in myself.
Being part of a church isn’t just about bearing with each other’s sin, though. I cannot count the number of times our church has been our source of comfort and help when we most needed it. When my family first headed overseas, friends from church drove us and our luggage four hours to Miami to catch our plane, feeding us lasagna in their big van before sending us off with prayer and hugs. When we called home from West Africa to say our two-year-old was struggling with his asthma during the dry season, a friend from church organized a round-the-clock prayer vigil for a week. When our son’s pulmonologist examined him upon our return, he said he wouldn’t have known he was looking at the same kid. Years later, when my dad lay in a coma in Minnesota, I flew up by myself right away, but my husband and children followed in the car. A friend from church made the four-day road trip with them so he could help with our children. My daughter still fondly remembers him reading Winnie the Pooh to her.
The women of my church have a text thread where we share things we’re giving away or selling at a bargain, and we can ask to borrow things we need. Does someone have a car seat they’re willing to lend? Yes, they do. Will someone host a family of three who have Covid while their air conditioner is fixed for the third time this month? Yes, they will. In The Gospel Comes with a House Key, Rosaria Butterfield reminds the reader of Jesus’s words in Mark 10:29–30: “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”
The gospel comes with a house key because the gospel makes us family.
I know that if I continue to connect with people at my church, there’s a chance I’ll eventually be misunderstood, betrayed, and rejected by some, but it’s worth the risk for the chance that I’ll be understood, welcomed, and loved by others. I don’t have to deny other people’s sin or pretend it isn’t serious, but I do need to remember my own sin when I’m tempted to avoid community as if I’m not also part of the problem. Our quills are all pointy, and our pillows could use more fluff, but I want to stay vulnerable to the inevitable hurts of bumping into each other. The joys of walking in the light and having fellowship with one another outweigh the pain (1 John 1:7).
Jesus rebuked the crowd for their lack of faith. He was weary of it. But he still went willingly to Jerusalem knowing he would be abused, blasphemed, and betrayed to the point of death out of love for his bride, the church. Jesus told his disciples, “Abide in my love . . . greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:9b, 13). Jesus knew his bride wasn’t spotless, but he loved her anyway. May our place be with him, loving the church he loves.
Heidi Kellogg lives with her husband, Andy, and their three children near Orlando, Florida. They work in Bible translation, and they lived in West Africa for several years where Andy was a Bible Translation Consultant. Heidi received her BA in English from Cal State L.A. and attended RTS Orlando’s classes called “Teaching Women to Teach.” Heidi will watch almost any movie that takes place in another country. Subtitles? Yes, please. You can follow Heidi on Instagram @heidilouwho_writer.