“Be patient with each other, making allowance

for each other’s faults because of your love.”

Your church can be healthy, but it will never be perfect. A group of imperfect people will never be able to create a perfect community.

Psalm 119:96 says, “Nothing is perfect except your words” (TLB).

Everything on this planet is broken—the weather, the economy, our bodies, our relationships, our minds. Nothing here works perfectly except God’s Word. To expect perfection in a church is to set yourself up for massive disappointment.

When pastors read books about the ideal church, they can become cynical. Why? Because they’re hoping for something that doesn’t exist. When you discover what God intends real fellowship to be, it’s easy to get discouraged by the gap between the ideal and reality.

Jesus passionately loves his church, even with all its faults and failures—and he wants us to do the same. If we’re going to be Christlike leaders, we must love the church despite its imperfections.

Longing for the ideal while criticizing the real is evidence of spiritual immaturity. On the other hand, settling for the real without striving for the ideal is complacency. Maturity is living with the tension of what you know the ideal could be and what reality is.

Sometimes we can look around at other churches and become disillusioned by the church we’re leading. 

In parenting, you don’t wait for your kids to grow up before you love them; you love them at every stage of their maturity. In the same way, you need to learn to love people at every stage of their growth, and you need to learn to love your church in every stage of its growth.

Your congregation will disappoint you—love them anyway.

“Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love” (Ephesians 4:2 NLT).