A Beautiful Picture Of The Church (or... A Lesson From Vincent Van Gogh's Life)

Before he became one of the greatest and most innovative painters of the 19th century, Vincent Van Gogh desperately wanted to be in the ministry.  In his mid twenties he abandoned his career as an art dealer to go into ministry training to be a pastor like his father.  We can never really be sure what went wrong, but the exceptionally intelligent Van Gogh could never get his head around his studies and failed out of school.  The state church would not even consider making him a pastor.  They wouldn't even financially support him to be a missionary (it wasn't just his lack of knowledge that led to this, his rejection of materialism, and his radical attempts to identify with the poor and dejected didn't sit well with the upper class clergy.  Add to that his abrasive nature, spiritual intensity, and fits of melancholy made the church nervous.  It also sounds like he was a pretty awful preacher - in that he was long winded, scattered in his thoughts and boring).  The best he could do was become a volunteer missionary who would have to undergo constant evaluations to see if he would be allowed to stay on the field.  Maybe, if he did a great job, they would start supporting him... maybe.



Van Gogh was sent to be a missionary to miners who barely eked out a living working long hard days. Unlike most (any?) missionaries of his time (and a few decades before Hudson Taylor would make the concept normative) Van Gogh lived among the people to whom he ministered - eating the same food, living in the same homes, and dressing the same as them.  Having grown up with every provision, seeing people live with so little and in such terrible conditions was incredibly novel to him.  He hurt for the people and was inspired by them all at the same time.

In these mining villages people risked their lives daily for little pay and in terrible conditions.  Injuries were common and the threat of explosions and tunnel collapses was constant.  There were no professional nurses or doctors.  People had to look out for each other to stay alive, their employers and the outside world couldn't care less about them.  Van Gogh wrote to his brother about one family where everyone was sick, they had no choice but to care for each other.  The woman of the house described it like this:

Ici c'est les malades qui soignent les malades.

or

Here the sick tend the sick.

That is a beautiful picture of what the Church is meant to be.  Yes we are healed in Christ and walk in newness of life, and are daily being transformed into His image, but we still find ourselves struggling with sin and temptation. We are pulled away at all times from what Christ has called us to and towards what we have been saved from (sin).  We are sick people in need of healing.  And it is our job to tend to one another.  God uses the Church to help in that work of sanctification.

There are two great mistakes people make in regards to the Church: 1) they expect all pastors to be perfect sinless people who have all the answers and have moved past regular men in regard to holiness and Godly living, and 2) they get upset by the hypocrisy and sin they see in the Church.

Well pastors aren't meant to be perfect, they are in as great a need for the love and forgiveness of Christ as anyone else.  They are the sick tending to the sick, and they are the sick in need of being tended to.  Pastors aren't those who worked out their salvation with fear and trembling and are now living perfectly.  They should stand before their congregation and say "I am a sinner in desperate need of Christ's forgiveness each day.  I will teach you, according to Scripture, who Christ is and how to live like Him.  By my example I will teach you how to seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness.  And when I stumble and fall I will show you how to receive correction, repent of my sin, and walk in newness of life.  We are in this together.  We are each in need of Christ and in need of each other to live the Christian life."

We can't expect anyone else to be perfect either.  We are being renewed into the image of Christ while still living in a sinful world in bodies corrupted by sin.  We will all sin, over and over again.  What Christians need is a community where we people take care of each other, where sin is met with loving correction and support as the person works to right their wrongs.  We need each other to push each other towards holiness, to keep each other accountable and protect each other from sinning in the first place.

Beyond the issue of sin we need to help each other just to get through each day.  There is always someone in need, someone who is sick, depressed, struggling financially, dealing with some great loss, confused, seeking answers to tough questions or doubting.  We are called to be there for each other, and turn to each other when we are in need.

There are always reasons to stay away from the Church or be disappointed by it.  It doesn't take a genius to come up with some excuse to swear off the Church entirely.  But Christians are called to be committed to the local church and the global community of believers.  This is not an option.  Because we need the Church and the Church needs us.  Here the sick tend the sick.  This is how God designed it, and I am honored to get to be a part of it.