Our church smells like gym shorts....

Our church is perfect.................if you are looking for a group
of people who are not perfect but play hard.

Yes, the church fails in its mission and makes serious blunders
precisely because the church comprises human beings who will always
fall short of the glory of God. That is the risk God took. Anyone who
enters the church expecting perfection does not understand the nature
of that risk or the nature of humanity. Just as every romantic
eventually learns that marriage is the beginning, not the end, of the
struggle to make love work, every Christian must learn that church is
also only a beginning. -Philip Yancey

How can 50 people live out the dream of God and become a growing
expression of Jesus in the city?

Not without grace.

Grace puts up with the stink of the game because it knows that if you
are going to play the game than you are going to have to put up with
some nasty stench.

Players have quirks, inconstancies, sins, rough edges and sincere but
often self-centered actions.
We are a broken team, who are held together by the mercy, forgiveness
and love of God and we desperately need to allow that same stream of
grace to cushion our life with each other. if you are expecting to
find whole people that will fill your life with purpose, comfort and
beauty than you are heading for a collision with painful reality. The
church is a team that is fallen. We are sinners in need of
redemption.We are in the process of transformation, we are becoming
like Jesus...but we are not Jesus.

I think many people end up leaving a church or a new church because
they realize that it is easier to bitch about something than build
something. Being a spectator is easy, it doesn't take much to shout
out calls on a game that you watch instead of play in. When you are
playing the game, you are up close, in it, reacting to it not just
observing it from a distance. If you are in the stands or watching on
tv (or the internet) you get a great view of the overall game. You
get replays, wide views, close ups etc...but you are not in the game.
And you may feel like you have insight but in reality you don't...you
are just a spectator or a fan but not a player.

Coaches are on the field not in the stands. They are there when the
player falls with an injury, they don't just observe the fall form a
sanitized distance. They are calling plays, wrestling with strategy,
dealing with many peoples insights, frustrations and perspectives and
sorting it all out and placing players in the game where they will
best accomplish the overall goal of the team...TO WIN THE FREAKING
GAME!!!!

Luis Palau: "The church, he said, is like manure. Pile it together
and it stinks up the neighborhood; spread it out and it enriches the
world."

If you smell something that stinks maybe you need to understand that
players stink when they have played hard.
A church should smell like a well used pair of gym shorts....that's
what winners smell like.