Just the facts, please

In a world that constantly condemns and judges the ineffectiveness of the church, I thought these facts might be good to know: (Facts, not opinions; facts ...) I constantly remind folks that the church doesn’t exist for the one hour per week we do worship. Far from it. The church exists for the remainder of the 167 hours per week. One hour versus 167. Where could we possibly do the most good?
Just the facts, miss.
The Church is the largest single provider of health care in the world, and also the largest single provider of education.
Whenever one wants to complain about the Church, one needs to remember the leaders of the early church successfully campaigned against infanticide, and the same Church Fathers (an interesting term when one starts to absorb the following fact) stood up for the rights of women by naming marriage as a sacrament. Sacraments, by the way, are things Jesus told us to do.
Churches established the first orphanages.
Churches established the first homes for the elderly.
Churches established the first homes for the disabled.
Churches were vital in the effort to abolish the slave trade, helped pioneer social work, modern foster care, modern nursing and free health care for the terminally ill.
That’s the church. Is, was and will continue to be, I suspect.
A missionary pioneered the most successful world literacy effort in history.
The church feeds, teaches, houses the young, the sick and the old. Always has.
A minister spearheaded a campaign to protect children from abuse at home or in the work place. Don’t even get me started on what the Salvation Army did for care of the poor and the least and the lost or what the Quakers did for prison reform.
If you think this is all about the early church, what about Pope Francis, the darling of the left and the hope of the right, whose latest ideas are to provide showers and free haircuts for the homeless in St. Peter’s Square.
That’s the church.
Justin Martyr said of the early church and Christian love, “We who used to value the acquisition of wealth and possessions more than anything else now bring what we have into a common fund and share it with anyone who needs it. We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.
Clement, an early Christian Father describing the person who has come to know God, wrote, “He impoverishes himself out of love, so that he is certain he may never overlook a brother in need, especially if he knows he can bear poverty better than his brother. He likewise considers the pain of another as his own pain. And if he suffers any hardship because of having given out of his own poverty, he does not complain.”
That’s the church.
When polls continually show the shrinking number of church attendees each week, we cringe and act as if the world has broken apart. But that’s not the be-all, end-all.
No. As important and vital as worship attendance is, that doesn’t begin to be the whole story.
The church is and has always been the first to throw itself into the battle to feed and clothe and give to those who are starving, those who are in need.
That’s who we have always been. Nothing about the circumstances of the times, about gender and sexual roles, has changed that. We are there with bandages and water and food when the earth shakes. We are there with doctors and nurses and care givers when the typhoons strike, when lightning strikes and the flood water rises. We are there 167 hours of the week, and on that 168th, we’re there to lead those who have been fed and clothed and emotionally treated in worship and thanksgiving to a God who allowed those of us who are capable to help those of us who were not.
That’s the church.
Don’t let any rumors or gossip or stories tell you differently.
A church’s love is much, much more than never having to say it is sorry, though there is plenty to ask forgiveness for. We’ve been part of terrible scandals, and for that we’ve suffered as a church universal.
But a church’s love means getting up and going, answering God’s call in ways we never did before, also. Love means not just singing and preaching and praying, but holding someone who needs holding, propping up those who need it and picking up those who have fallen.
That’s the church, friends, and those are things that others can do, but they never really do.
In the dark, it provides light. To the hungry, food.
To the homeless, the ill, the dying, it is the avenue by which God has chosen to peak hope to.
All the squabbling and fussing and fighting the members of the body of Christ does, won’t diminish the fact that when the world needs an element to care for others, much more often than not, it’s the church that becomes that element.
We show up.
That’s the church.
But the undisputed fact is that there is an unchurched element in the world that chooses to not help others, but instead makes fun of the element in society that does help.
When all is said and done, it is the church that puts its life on the line, time after time after time
So, don’t listen to all those who will knock her for what she isn’t. Don’t watch those who will parade false accusations against her. Don’t even see the mistakes she has made and shake your head in disgust and, at times, pity at others.
The church is not perfect. That’s not the claim. The church falls down, sometimes even on the job.
Nah. The church isn’t perfect. The one who built it is.
Billy Turner is a pastor of the United Methodist denomination and a retired journalist.