Christian Suing Christians

I was in a conversation with a person recently who had a dilemma.  They were owed some money and the person who owed them money was, technically anyway, although they never attend, a member of  the church.  They said to me, "I know Christians are not supposed to sue Christian, but what I am supposed to do?"  I was able to help them find a different solution to try first.  However, the outcome of that conversation is not as important as the questions it raises.
1 Corinthians 6:1 says, "When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints?"  I would like to look at three conditions that existed in the Corinthian church that do not exist today.
The first issue I see is that Paul assumes in the Corinthian church a level of fellowship that does not exist in many of our churches today.  The idea that a merely nominal and inactive church member could avoid financial responsibility under this verse is, quite frankly, repugnant  This situation only works when we have a highly level of fellowship and community.  I truly wish that were the case.
The second issue has to do with accountability and authority of the church.  The assumption here is that the church had authority and that church members were accountable to it.  Disputes would be brought to the church or to a group of leaders and they would decide what was just and order the party in the wrong to make it right.  If they refused to obey the church they would be expelled from the church.  This would mean the the restrictions of this verse would no longer apply and the parties could take the matter to the secular courts.  I doubt that most of us really want a church that has that kind of authority or want to live in that level of accountability.  I wish that we did.
The third and final issue is the fact that in this context the secular courts were steeped in paganism and hostile to Christianity.  This, thankfully, is no longer the case.
It would be my sincere hope that fellow believers would have the degree of fellowship with each other and faith in the church that they could bring their disputes before the community of faith and mutually abide by its decision.  However, I do not think that this verse, if all else fails, prevents Christians from utilizing the secular justice system in order to protect themselves even from one  another.