As in marriage, all this is possible because God himself is the ultimate reference point, and so the members of the local church do not need to hang too much on each other. The Church should be what it can be, for it does not need to be what it cannot be. The pastor does not need to hang everything on the people, and the people do not need to hang everything on the pastor. Everything is to hang only one place—on him who is infinite and personal, and who can carry everything perfectly. This is not a matter of just hanging everything on doctrines about the infinite and the personal God, but upon him as a person—because he is there, and he knows the local group by name, and the individuals in the group by name.
The alternatives are not between being perfect or being nothing. Just as people smash marriages because they are looking for what is romantically and sexually perfect and in this poor world do not find it, so human beings often smash what could have been possible in a true church or true Christian group. It is not just the "they" involved who are not yet perfect, but the "I" is not yet perfect either. In the absence of present perfection, Christians are to help each other on to increasingly substantial healing on the basis of the finished work of Christ.
This is our calling. This is part of our richness in Christ: the reality of true spirituality, the Christian life, in relation to my separation from my fellowmen—including those fellow men who are my brothers and sisters in Christ—in the Church as a whole and in the local congregation or other Christian group. It is not to be practiced in a dull, ugly way; there is to be a thing of beauty, observed by those within, and those outside. This is an important part in preaching the gospel to the humanity still in revolution against God; but more than this, it is the only thing that is right on the basis of the existence of the personal God and on the basis of what Christ did for us in history, on the cross.
And having come this far, true spirituality—the Christian life—flows on into the total culture.
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[1] For a more complete treatment of this, see the last chapter of my book Death in the City
Francis A. Schaeffer, True Spirituality
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