When you finally start connecting to a group of believers profoundly and meaningfully, you will soon realize these people have issues. You will find out that the leaders are struggling. Not everyone always acts like a Christian; many of their children are disobedient, and the average person would describe their life as a mess.

This is the point where people start looking around at other Churches. That one has it all together. Those people over there have no issues. That leader is confident and above average. That group over there supports one another, and no one ever seems angry about anything.

It doesn’t take long until we have convinced ourselves that the grass is greener in that pasture.

I have been around Church my entire life in multiple capacities, and I am here to tell you that every Church has issues, but some hide it much better than others. Some Churches are good at sweeping their problems under the rug of meetings. There are personal and private meetings, and family issues are kept secret to only a few. If you are ever able to break into the core group, you suddenly find years of neglected and avoided problems lurking. As a pastor with a Church of 2,000 people once said, “The only difference between us and a Church of 200 is that we have ten times the problems.”

The grass is not greener anywhere else. Even the first Churches mentioned in the Bible had doctrinal struggles, leadership vacancies, immorality, and false teachers. Read through the pages of the New Testament and notice all the times the writer was trying to fix something in the Church he was addressing. Communities of faith started by the Apostles had struggles, and all of them today still do.

The question is not, “Where can I go to find a great Church without any problems.” Instead, it is, “Where can I go to help people work through their issues while they help me work through mine.”