My one-year-old daughter loves books. Her appetite for books is insatiable, and she practically hyperventilates with excitement when she hears the word.

However, the funny thing is that she often has little patience for the reality of books.

The reality of turning the pages one by one, listening to the few short phrases on each page and pointing out interesting things in the illustrations. Almost invariably, before we are even half way through one book she has climbed off my lap to find another… and then another… and then another.

In fact, when left to her own devices she pulls every single book off her shelf, and then – still not content with the huge pile of colourful, stimulating reading material right in front of her – she keeps going back, peering up at the empty shelf, expecting the perfect book to finally appear and fulfill all her bookish dreams.

Now, I am sure that in my daughter’s case it is a matter of not yet having developed the patience and attention span to enjoy ‘reading’ a book from cover to cover. However, I think her behaviour paints a telling picture of a trap we can all fall into when it comes to our attempts to love the church – the body of Christ.

Do we love the idea of Christian community, more than the reality of it?

Do we dream up such idyllic visions of what our church should be and do, that we become disillusioned and are tempted to abandon it when it doesn’t live up to those dreams? We probably all know Christians who have ‘church-hopped’, and perhaps we have done it ourselves, believing that the grass will be greener at the next church, but inevitably finding that there, too, all the saints are sinful and love is hard work.

Below is a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, (found at Women Bible Life) which addresses this problem of discontentment rooted in “proud and pretentious” visionary dreaming – perhaps particularly pertinent for those of us involved in planting new churches.

Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise.

Providence Church is still in its infancy in many ways, yet perhaps already you have experienced some disillusionment when the experience of ‘gospel community’ has not lived up to your expectations, whether due to your own sin or someone else’s, or simply circumstantial frustrations.

Bonhoeffer’s message is a sobering and encouraging reminder to appreciate the brothers and sisters with whom God has graciously united us in Christ, to “love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22), and to not allow our unrealistic ideals of church prevent us from loving ‘the real deal’.