Dividing lines

April wrote a post and mentioned feeling kind of guilty about looking around at other churches, and it got me thinking about something that I have considered before. In American Christianity, with it’s carefully delineated lines of “where do you go to church?”, it can be seen as a sign of faithlessness and abandonment for someone who worships regularly in one place to worship and fellowship with believers in another body. In an extreme example, I know of one person who was accused of forsaking the assembling together because he was in fellowship with other people for a few weeks instead of the church where he was a “member”. Not that he was hanging around with heretics or pagans, he was with other believers but not the right other believers.

Are we abandoning the church by fellowshipping outside of the church we have been attending? I would argue no. In fact, as I commented at April‘s blog, I think that the real abandonment of the church is the false divisions we have created even among like minded people. How often do similar Baptist churches fellowship together? How about Presbyterian churches? I am not talking about once or twice a year, but on a regular basis. We sequester ourselves based on denominations, “membership” and loyalty to one local body to the exclusion of other believers. I pastored a church for over a year and in that same time Josh Gelatt pastored a church twenty minutes away. I never even knew he was there, much less had fellowship with him. Despite his youth spent in Arkansas, Josh is not some heretic to be shunned. He is a Baptist, about my age, Reformed in theology. I remember crabbing to my wife about how few other Reformed believers were in our area, and here is Josh twenty minutes away pastoring another Baptist church. Of course, they are a GARB Baptist church and we were SBC, so we had no contact. Josh was probably the most like-minded Christian in the area, was very close to us but I never sought him out. Believe me when I say, I could have used that fellowship.

Why do we fear to fellowship together outside the confines of our own local church? Certainly not because there is a Biblical reason. Pastors get together at conferences all time. The conference I am going to next weekend will have pastors and laity from all sorts of church backgrounds. Together for the Gospel is designed specifically to bring together pastors of different denominational backgrounds under the banner of key truths that we do share. But among local bodies, try getting churches to do stuff together. It is hard to do with very similar churches, Baptists with Baptists and Presbyterians with Presbyterians. Try getting a Baptist and a Presbyterian church together and see how that goes (no one invites Lutherans to stuff, they are no fun).

Where we have truly forsaken the assembling of the saints is in letting our doctrinal differences inseparably divide us. I think there is a place for doctrine. I would not fellowship on a regular basis with those who, in my doctrinal framework, apply baptism in error. But why should we completely exclude those with whom we have doctrinal differences? There are so many believers that live right by us that we rarely get to know because they don’t worship in the same circles and that is shameful. Rather than focusing ever inward on those who believe exactly as we do, we should seek out opportunities to fellowship with the body at large. Not to convert them to our way of thinking or to poach believers from their church to ours (the fear of exactly that might be behind some of this), but to be in fellowship. Instead we bunch ourselves together, raise walls and lock the doors. I am as guilty of this as anyone. I wouldn’t even consider regular fellowship in a paedobaptist church but I also don’t spend much time in our new home with people who are not like minded. I am going to make a concerted effort to get to know other believers in the area. Maybe on Sunday nights, since we don’t have church services currently in the evening. That might be a great opportunity to get out of our comfort zone and meet other believers. Not to shop for a "new church" but just to spend time with other believers.

I think it is terrible that we are content to wait until eternity to worship with and be in fellowship with so many other Christians.