Sinners Anonymous: What the Church Could Learn from AA

My name is Scott, and I am a sinner. Yes, I am a child of God, redeemed, justified and in the process of being sanctified, but I am none the less a sinner. Not everyone I know is redeemed and justified and in the process of being sanctified, but everyone I know is a sinner. That is the only common ground I have with everyone, both inside and outside the church.

I think in many ways the church has forgotten this. Have you ever heard the saying that the church is not a museum of saints but a hospital for sinners? You would be hard-pressed to make that case when you look at the average fellowship today. It looks very much like a museum. Sinful ‘artifacts’ come in the front door and we set to work cleaning and repairing them so that we may proudly display them in our collection. When cracks appear in the artifacts, we pull them from public view and put them in the archives so we may replace them with ‘more significant’ artifacts. We don’t want to display the pieces with imperfections.

In conversation with a friend the other day that is familiar with AA, I realized that we are approaching ‘church’ in the wrong way. How many people do you know who go to AA meetings just because it is the thing to do or because all of their friends are doing it? How many people who have never had or admitted a problem with alcohol abuse would attend an AA meeting just to try it out? People who attend AA meetings understand that they have a common problem – alcoholism. People who deny that they have an alcohol problem will not attend, and AA does not gear itself toward them. The first step is admitting you have a problem. AA cannot help you until you get there.

In our society today, many believe the church is a place where respectable people spend their Sunday mornings. People who seem to have it all together. People who have earned the right to say ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers… I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ (Luke 18:11-12). This is the worst possible thing that the church could lead the world to believe because it is not the ones who have it together that need Christ, but the ones who are falling apart. The ones who are standing far off, not even daring to lift their eyes, beating their breast and saying ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13)

I would love to attend a church that was thought of as AA is. A church where no fine, upstanding, self-proclaimed saint would ever go because to be a part of that church would be to admit that you you need the savior; where fellowship implies that you are sinful. A place where you could stand up and say “My name is Scott, and I am a sinner” and no one in the room would look down on you because they would all freely and honestly make the same confession.  Study the gospels carefully and you have to believe that that is the church the Jesus came to create. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

To become a church that was thought of as is AA, you would have to rely on the grace of God to an uncomfortable degree. You would have to believe that pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is impossible. You would have to believe and teach that the healthiest thing in the world is to admit that you are a big fat sinner and to keep admitting it long after you no longer behaved ‘like other men.’ You would have to abandon performance as the standard by which you judge yourself and others. And this admission would have to be more than lip service. It would have to come from the heart; truly understanding that saying ‘I am a sinner’ is not a doctrinal position, but a stark and ugly reality.

A church like this would appear to the world as unhealthy. It would appear to other churches as unhealthy. No one would ever attend this church because it was the thing to do or because all of their friends were doing it. If you invited your neighbor to this church they would look at you with utter horror because you were specifically implying that they were not the fine, upstanding individual they believe themselves to be. This church would not cater to or seek to attract museum pieces but would open its doors to the injured and bleeding of the world.

This would be the bride of Christ looking very much like her groom. She would be surrounded, as He was, by prostitutes and tax collectors and sinners. There would be no room in this fellowship for those who believed they had exercised sin from their lives. In the end, sin would not be the only thing they had in common. They would also share their desperate need for a savior.

A church like this would be so refreshing. There would be no need to put on the church face. We could be honest with one another and help one another to expose the sin in our lives to God’s light because the ugliness of sin made necessary the beauty of the gospel. As John wrote:

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:7-10)

In this church, the continual confession of our sin would pave the way for our cleansing from sin. We would foster this and encourage one another in this. Recognizing that we never arrive at the point that we don’t need our brothers and sisters or our savior, we would be bound together by the two things we have in common; sin and savior. That is the gospel truth. 

God Bless