Sick & Tired of Church?

Have you ever thought, “I’m tired of church?” I have heard many people say this through the years, but exactly what does this mean? What exactly about the church are we tired of, or are we just tired of it all? I have also heard people say, “I’m sick of this church.” Can we conclude that there seems to be a vast majority of people who are “sick and tired” of church? I think we can, and I think this feeling of being “sick and tired” is spreading like an epidemic. It seems as if it is always “flu season” in the church, and as a member of the Church, it makes me sick (pardon the pun). For just a few moments, let’s consider some of the elements of being “sick and tired” of church.


Does everyone get sick and tired?

That is like one of those rhetorical questions that is not quite so rhetorical. Let’s not be afraid to call it like it is family of the one true God. Let’s face it guys—we are exhausted. We find ourselves wanting to hit the snooze button more on Sunday morning than any other morning of the week. I went through the great enlightenment of my life just a couple of years ago, when I realized that most Christians do not set their alarm clocks on Sunday morning. Isn’t that a heinous crime? Won’t Jesus get you for that? I guess I’m just Mr. Naïve. I always give myself more time on Sunday mornings to get ready than any other morning of the week, but I must admit that the snooze button doesn’t get much rest on Sunday mornings in my house. Call it lazy or whatever, but I find myself desiring more rest these days on Sundays.

But why do we desire to be away from or out of church? What about church makes us so tired of it? I think the biggest problem is our church worldview. We have a faulty understanding of what Church is. Actually the Church is not a what at all. The Church is not an inanimate object. The church is very much alive and well (1 Peter 2:5). The biggest hurdle that today’s church must jump is this whole idea of going to Church. We have to stop seeing Church as something that is somewhere besides where we are. I have spent the last year re-thinking church, and my conclusion is that I don’t go to Church, I am the Church. Ephesians 5:25-33 reveals that Jesus died for the Church, and John 3:16 makes that death personal by stating that “whosoever” believes is the Church. Do you know how fun it is to live that out in everyday life? Just yesterday I went to Walmart to pick up a few things for our Wednesday gathering in my home. I met a fellow pastor’s wife and her family there. Now check this out. The Church (me) went to Walmart and met the Church (pastor friend’s wife and family). Guess what we talked about? Our families, vacations, pontoon boats, and it all centered around our Lord Jesus. We discussed all this stuff in lieu of how Jesus was at work in our lives. The point is, wherever I go the Church is there, because I am the Church. Oh, and I’m not merely a part of the Church—I am the Church, and you are too if you are a member of Jesus’ family.

Well then that explains how we are tired, now what about sick? The problem with sickness in the church is that it seems to spread through the family like wildfire. The church flu is real. What makes us sick about the church? One thing to keep in mind about church sickness is that it infects the body of Christ, but not the Head. Jesus is the head and he never gets sick. Therefore, we can rest assured that the Body of Christ (BOC) never gets a headache. How cool is that, but we, as the body of Christ, do get our body banged up, bruised, and even broken. I recently read an entry on Facebook that simply asked “Why can’t we just all get along?” We can’t get along because we refuse to be what we were called to be. We are not the body parts of Christ. We are the BOC. The BOC has one focus, and that is to do as the Head (Jesus) commands. The problem is that we react like the body parts of Christ, instead of acting like the BOC. The BOC has no reason to get the body banged up, bruised, and broken. The BOC pleases the Head. The body parts of Christ pleases itself. The body parts of Christ is too busy fighting against itself to be of any earthly good. In fact, I believe that the body parts of Christ is Satan’s most prestigious new world religion. It resembles the BOC, but it is actually mimicking, much like Satan mimics the power of Jesus. This is in reality much more than a flu-like sickness within the BOC, it is much more like a disease of epidemic proportions. Seemingly there is no cure, because it grows and spreads throughout the BOC at an alarming rate. However, never forget that the gates of hell can’t penetrate the BOC.


What are the symptoms of being sick and tired of Church?

The number one tell-tale sign is blame-shifting. This symptom can be traced all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Eve said the devil made me do it, but the devil didn’t care who did it, and Adam even blamed God for it. Remember, Adam said this little purty thang YOU made for me made me do it (Genesis 3:8-13).

This blame-game has continued through the ages, and is very prevalent within the church today. It’s always somebody else’s fault. Adulterers blame their own spouses’ inabilities, and shortcomings as excuses to cheat. Deacons blame the pastor’s kids for their own kid’s rebellion, and vice-versa. Churches blame their pastors for their lack of growth, and pastors blame congregations for a lack of spirituality. Everybody blames the music minister for music that is too loud, too old, or too new. The preacher’s sermons are too long, too boring, too short, too topical, or too expositional. The youth blame the seniors for being too stuffy, and the seniors think the youth are too wild. We all blame the teacher for our lack of discipleship—surely God doesn’t expect us to have personal responsibility for our lack of spiritual growth. If it is broke, failing, or lacking in any way, it has to be somebody else’s fault, but on the flip side, if it is good, we have no problem taking undeserved credit.

Another tell-tale sign is cover-up. We used to call these field dressings when I worked construction. I’ve seen guys literally mangle and disfigure a thumb or some other finger, and then either duct-tape or black tape it up so they could continue working for the day. Now these guys were tough, and I must admit I was one of them. I recall using skill saw one day when it jumped back and ripped my leg open. I immediately dropped my pants and wrapped it with an old bandana, and continued work. Now as macho as all this sounds it was a very ignorant thing for me to do.

It is just as ignorant for the church to just simply cover-up someone’s infectious, pus infested, sin injury that has occurred within the church. Rather than deal with sin, we would rather cover it up, or sweep it under the rug. Matthew gave us the prescription for cleansing the church of sin (Matthew 18:15-20). When someone gets sin-sick, it is the entire church’s responsibility to inoculate that person. The goal of Matthew 18:15-20 is restoration, not separation, but we too often would rather sweep the trash out the door rather than take the time to do some real spiritual cleaning.

If anyone in my family gets injured, we immediately take them to the hospital. We want them to have the best available care possible, and we want it right now. We don’t even care if they want to go to the hospital. There is always that one family member that refuses to go to the doctor, even when it is life and death. What do we do with those guys? We take them anyway. Sometimes it is our responsibility to get people help who are too stubborn or sinful to get help on their own. We must determine now that when we see a member of Jesus’ family broken or injured by the ill effects of sin we will see it as our family obligation to get them spiritual and emotional help.

There are many symptoms of someone who is sick and tired of church, but I will only mention one more that I feel is the secret symptom. This is the person who is sick and doesn’t know it. Have you ever heard of the “walking pneumonia?” I had this one time, and when the doctor diagnosed me I thought he was nuts, but I literally could walk around all day long without any symptoms of the pneumonia until I exerted myself in any way. Once I would do anything laborious, I would begin to cough and bark uncontrollably, but all I had to do was slow down to a crawl again and the symptoms would subside.

I fear we have church family who may have Christian walking pneumonia (CWP). They’re sick and don’t know it until they try to exercise the disciplines of their faith. Matthew describes an believer who is sick and don’t know it. He says they are trying to help a fellow believer, but can’t be of any good because they are sicker than the one they are trying to help (Matthew 7:5). The saddest part of this sickness is that you don’t know you have it until it is too late. For example, adultery infiltrates your life and leaves you beaten, battered, and without any strength. All of a sudden you realize that you have been relying on your own spiritual strength and stamina. All of a sudden God seems a million miles away, and you feel betrayed and rejected not only by your spouse but also by your God. All of a sudden it has to be God’s fault that all this has transpired because, after all, you have done everything you were supposed to do, or have you been simply going through the motions of spirituality for your own merit instead of God’s glory? We should live each day knowing that God does not owe us anything. Every blessing he bestows upon us is just that—a blessing. A blessing is getting something you didn’t expect from a God you don’t deserve. Adultery is just one of hundreds, maybe even thousands of personal sins, or even sins committed against us that infect us unknowingly every day. As a pastor, it never ceases to amaze me at how many of Jesus’ family are sick and I don’t even know it until they come to me for help. We all should take a personal spiritual inventory of our lives and determine if we may have the dreaded illness called CWP.


What about homemade remedies?

I generally enjoy a good laugh, and listening to some of the homemade remedies people use always gives me a good laugh. For example, my daughter is 3 months pregnant right now, and she has experienced quite a bit of morning sickness. She has been counseled by some very world-wise women that all she has to do is crawl over her husband in the morning before he gets out of bed and she will transfer her sickness to him. Well now that is one of the funniest and meanest home-remedies I have ever heard. Undoubtedly I love my son-in-love more than they do, because I cannot imagine desiring he get sick instead of my daughter, but even that is funny. Another example of a homemade remedy is the use of what they call rock and rye. I am a southerner, and it is common down here in the south to use this alcoholic concoction to relieve the common cough, or cold. Now I must admit that this one interests me more than any other remedy I have come across. Just to think that I could get drunk all in the name of medicine. As a Baptist minister, this intrigues me. I used to drink a bit before becoming a Christian, but from personal conviction, as well as respect for those that have been harmed by alcohol I choose to be a teetotaler, but my stomach is bothering me a bit this morning (hahaha).

Churches have their own homemade remedies. For example, we tend to think that doing something new will bring the dead back to life. It seems to me that if you come upon a dead horse you bury it, but when a church comes upon a dead program we throw money at it. By the way guys, money is not the supernaturally spiritual answer to the church’s problems. We also think that if some other church is being successful, all we have to do is copy them and we will be successful. Guess what? We don’t need more Billy Graham’s, Rick Warren’s, or Mother Teresa’s. We need more of Jesus’ family being who Jesus wants them to be. We need you and me to be transformed by the power of Jesus’ resurrection, but we don’t need to resurrect the dead to live again for the church to thrive once more. As a matter of fact Jesus said something like “let the dead bury the dead” (Matthew 8:22). We need the “breathing” to be the church, not the dead.

We also are living in a generation that seriously has lost the meaning of worship. What about music? It seems that many churches are equating a genre of music with worship. Worship is not Sunday morning at 11:00 AM. Worship is not Southern Gospel music, nor is it Contemporary music. As a matter of fact, worship is not music at all. Worship is a beat, but not the beat of a song. Worship is the heartbeat of a child of God, totally surrendered to his Creator on a daily basis (John 4:21-24). Does your heart beat to serve God, and to please him in all you do? Hey guys, I don’t need music for that. All I need for that is a daily constant reminder that Jesus willingly died for me knowing full well that I would not live for him until I was 28 years old. He lived and died for me knowing that I would fail him daily for my entire life. All I need is a constant reminder of that, but how do I get this constant reminder? I get it every day by simply opening up whichever version Bible I happen to be reading through at the time (Hebrews 5:11-14). Music is cool, and I love it as much as anybody, but music cannot make me right with Jesus. Music cannot give me the power to live for him. Music cannot forgive my many wretched sins. Music cannot grow me, and it certainly cannot grow Jesus’ church, but Jesus can, will, and does do all those things and more. Music is not a remedy to fix our spiritual paralysis—Jesus is.


Do you have a family doctor?

Family doctors are mandatory in the Shuford household. If one of momma’s babies (myself included) runs a fever, or even feels bad, Patricia makes sure we get the care we need. We all go to our family doctor, who knows us by name. We even have a special file that has all our information in it. They check us in and the doctor checks us out. We know we can trust our family doctor because he has all the right credentials. He is always careful to give us a good diagnosis and just the right advice and medication to make us feel better just as fast as possible. He always cares enough to listen as well. Could you imagine a doctor that didn’t listen to you describe your symptoms?

In the same way that our physical families have a family doctor, our eternal families have a spiritual doctor as well. The difference is that the entire family of God has the same doctor. Our doctor’s name is Jesus. Jesus claimed to be our family physician (Mark 2:17). We know we can trust Jesus as our physician because he has the right credentials. Actually he is the Creator of everything (John 1:3), and that gives him the knowhow of how to fix all our ailments. He is very personable, and knows us all (John 10:14). The coolest thing about Jesus being our physician is that even though he already knows what the problem is he still takes the time to hear us. He loves to talk to us, but he also loves for us to talk to him. Could you imagine trying to tell Jesus what was wrong with you and he says “OK – whatever – I know what you problem is – Next!” Jesus would never do that. Jesus just lets us go on and on about our lives. He is very interested, and has always got our back. Jesus does one other thing that is really cool. He never misdiagnoses us. He calls it like he sees it, and he doesn’t sugar coat it either. He tells you what is ailing you, and he sees it for what it is—SIN! Once he has given you his diagnosis, he then gives you the prescription to your problems—Himself.

Many times, this is where we blow it. Instead of accepting the diagnosis, and taking our prescribed medicine we tryout some crazy home remedy. Sometimes these come in the form of self-help books. You know. They come with titles like Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day, and yes that was a shot. We really think that if we add stuff to our lives, our lives will improve. If you don’t get anything else I say, get this. Jesus plus something is nothing. Jesus is the only medicine to all our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual sickness. You can read all the self help books you want and still need help. You can even read every discipleship book in the world and still not be a disciple. Jesus wants you to want him as much as he wants you.


Is it contagious?

Being sick and tired of church tends to be very contagious. Maybe some of you have met a guy like this: He who once walked a very close life with Jesus. He read his Bible, prayed, gave willingly, loved to help people, and pretty much anything else you can think. He made many feel inferior when it came to knowledge of the scripture. He now refuses to go to church celebrations, and lives a life of blame shifting. There is always someone else who is less spiritual than he is, and he doesn’t even spend time with the church. He does not give of the bounty God has blessed him with, and describes people who do as hypocrites. After all they are just doing it to be seen. He has marital problems that may eventually destroy his marriage, but he refuses to go with his wife for counseling. He says you’re supposed to take care of your own problems, and not broadcast them to some stranger. He has lost most all respect from his children, and the really sad part of all this is that it if you listen to his story you really want to buy into it. It’s contagious. In reality, his story is more common than not. In fact there was a time this guy was me.

Perhaps you know a church like this one: It has a reputation for running off pastors. They describe themselves as victims. They would never admit that they have a problem, even though each of the pastors they dismissed were totally different men. I have talked to some of these men, and they all accept responsibility for their faults, but I have yet to hear one of those church members admit any responsibility at all. This is one of those situations where the Body of Christ is trying to be the Head. This makes them the Body members of Christ which is heresy. Kind of sounds like the blame-game as well.

Getting sick and tired of church is growing like an epidemic. Personally, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. This is a good place for us all to be. When we get sick and tired of being sick and tired maybe, just maybe, we will get off our spiritual high-horses and humble ourselves and let Jesus inoculate us again with his healing hand. Maybe we will quit going to church, and start being the church. Maybe we will put the blame where it belongs, and begin to pray real meaningful prayers like: “Jesus I’m sorry for my sins. I can’t take credit for the good in my life, but I humbly accept my sin for what it is—an abomination to you. Without you, I am less than nothing. With you, I am complete, and lack nothing. I thank you for your undeserved blessings on my life. I thank you for allowing me to be a member of your family. I praise you for using my messed up life to bring glory to our father. Because of your forgiveness I not only live forever, but I love for you.”