What Are You Expecting From Your Church?

Aligning My Expectations

People walk into a church for various reasons. Some are seeking answers, truth, hope, or healing. Others are there out of curiosity, habit, or religious duty. A few walk in desperately hungry for God. However a person may come, most of them have one thing in common: expectations.

When people cross that door, they come with an idea of what church should look like or be. This works until they’ve been crossing that door for years. No matter what their expectations were at first, later on they will dictate whether they are thriving church members, or bitter and critical seat warmers.

The Importance of Aligning Our Expectations

As we open this series, “Stronger Me, Stronger Church”, I want to challenge our expectations and what we are seeking every time we cross the threshold of our local church. What we expect will define how we contribute to our church and how we treat our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We may have expectations that are biblically aligned and are helping us thrive personally and as a community. But maybe, along the way, we’ve picked up one or two expectations that weren’t born in God’s heart. As we read, let us keep an open mind and heart.

What Are Some Faulty Expectations?

Expecting Leaders to Be God

One of the most common expectations I’ve seen people have when they walk into their church is expecting their leader or pastor to be God for them. Let me be clear: God gave us leadership and they are there to help us, guide us and offer biblical counsel (Ephesians 4:11–13; Hebrews 13:7, 13:17). If we set a leader in a place only God should hold, whenever they stumble our faith will tear apart because it was dependent upon a person and not upon Christ.

We must learn to look first to God, and then to leaders. Leaders are supposed to echo the heart and words of God, but if we only go to leaders and never seek God’s voice for ourselves we will never discern if leaders are guiding us biblically or not. We must never ignore the voice of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the leadership of the Lord over us. God is our leader first, and He satisfies every need perfectly. He will never fail.

Expecting Perfection out of Church Members

I’ve heard Christians be criticized over their behavior time and time again. The phrase that is always used is: “And they call themselves a Christian!”. I believe we should hold ourselves to a higher standard because we house the presence of God within us. We cannot forget that each of us is a human learning to become Christlike. We should strive for perfection,(Matthew 5:48), but remember that all Christians have different levels of maturity and they are all growing. If we expect perfection out of the members of our church, we will either be disappointed or misfits.

Expecting the Church to Solve All Our Problems

Many people walk into a church expecting it to be the answer to every problem they have in their lives. This is foolishness. It is like expecting to get fit by sitting in a gym once. It doesn’t work that way. If we go to the gym, we go consistently, do the work, put in the effort and then create a healthy lifestyle outside of it. The same goes for church. If we walk into church, we go and do the work, put in the effort, and walk out the lifestyle outside the church. Sitting in church once every few weeks won’t solve our problems. It may help equip us, but the responsibility is ours.

Expecting the Church to Meet All Our Needs and Feed Us

Many people treat their churches like concerts or shopping malls. They go when they feel like it, they look around, they get what they want out of it, and then they leave. Or they expect church to be their source of spiritual, physical, and emotional provision. I’ve met people who thought church was the place to go for free counseling, child-care, entertainment, and social events. Biblically, the church was a place of contribution (1 Corinthians 12:7; 1 Peter 4:10). Jesus called his disciples to go and make more disciples, not just to meet together and get fat on their own spiritual growth. Jesus feeds us, but we in turn must pass on the food to the other people around the table and beyond it.

Expecting Church to Grant Us Favor with God

Finally, we have the wrong expectation of believing church will grant us brownie points with God. Many people have been going to church for years because they believe it will make them all good with God. But the Pharisees themselves did this, and Jesus called them out for being whitewashed tombs who appeared one way on the outside but were truly another on the inside (Matthew 23:27). God cares more about our sincere heart than our half-hearted actions. If we want to build a strong church, we must approach God and ministry with sincerity and pure hearts (1 Samuel 16:7).

Let’s Align Our Expectations

How should we walk into our local church and what should we expect? Let us remember some key things:

• God is God, and our leaders are humans with godly authority.
• Our brothers and sisters are all on their own journeys, and they have different levels of maturity.
• The church is there to provide a place for Christian community, but it isn’t a place that is “me-focused”.
• Church can equip me to solve my problems, but it isn’t responsible for solving them while I excuse myself from responsibility.
• Church feeds me, but I’m expected to pass the food around the table. It is a family, and if I only consume and never contribute I am ignoring the Great Commission.

If we look back at Acts, church was a place of worship, prayer, the Word and community. It was a hub of blessing for the region it was in. Like the disciples in Acts, let us become stronger Christians who choose to lean in, grow, and share with others what we are learning ourselves.

Reflect and Align:

Take a moment to ask yourself the following questions.

• What have my expectations of my local church been so far? Of my leaders? Of my brothers and sisters in Christ? Of God?
• Which of those expectations are aligned with God’s word and which are false expectations?
• How can I re-align my expectations?

Those with biblical expectations posture themselves to receive better and to give cheerfully. Let us become stronger so our churches can become stronger and glorify Christ.

Thanks for reading! See you next week, where we will explore what it means to be discipled and become a discipler.

– Anna

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Photo by Ali Kazal on Unsplash