Achieving unity means being willing to make the first move

Alan Knox has a vitally important and difficult post on Christian unity this morning, Crossing the Boundaries of the Local Church. Why is this such an important topic? Because unity among believers is essentially non-existent in the church and yet it is something that we must strive for. Why is this such a difficult topic? Alan is quite frank in his assessment here:

The ideology of the local church (as it is practiced today in many sectors) causes sectarianism and exclusivism that tends to divide the church. It could be more institutional local churches or more organic local churches.

In order to promote unity among God’s children, we must be willing to cross the boundaries created by the local church. And, the person interested in living in unity with others will be the one who has to cross those boundaries. Other Christians will probably not come knocking on your door to serve Jesus together with you. You will have to be the to make the first (and probably second and third and fourth…) move.

I think that is quite accurate. The sad and hard truth is that for all of our talk of unity as a concept, the reality is that outside of a few orchestrated events the church rarely shows any semblance of unity outside of our own congregations. A unity that says we will be unified but only on Sunday morning and only with people who subscribe to our every doctrinal distinction is a false unity.

When you get beyond the talk about unity as a concept and try to actually see it happen, the best laid plans sometimes yield little or no fruit. It can be just as easy to be exclusivist and closed off from the greater Body in a home/organic/simple church setting as it is in the most formalized of institutional churches.

Alan talked a bit about what he is doing to make the first (second, third…) move toward seeing real unity. I am haltingly trying to do the same. As I mentioned a few times, we have been meeting on a semi-regular basis with a couple of local gatherings. We are not doing so with the notion of surreptitiously making connections to lure people away, trying to recruit people out of one form of church gathering into another. I don’t want people to leave their current Sunday morning gathering so they can come to my Sunday morning gathering. My goal is not to replace one with the other but to expand on both! That likely means we will rarely meet with the church in our home on Sunday mornings or even on Sunday at all. That is OK because frankly there is nothing particularly Scriptural about meeting on Sunday as opposed to any other day. Sure we see that the church met on the first day of the week in Acts 20:7 to break bread but we also see that the church met in their homes “day by day” to break bread (Acts 2: 46). So if we have other Christians in our home for a Bible study on Tuesday night or to share a meal on Saturday afternoon, that is wonderful and not inferior in any way to a meeting held on Sunday.

My intent when we moved to our new home was to start a home fellowship with other believers. I still believe that a simple church meeting without the frills and worries of buildings and formalities and rituals is the healthiest form of church gathering and I still hope to have fellowship in our home with other believers in a variety of ways but what I have come to believe, and Alan wrote his excellent post about, is that insisting that other believers come to my home to meet in the way I envision is every bit as bad as a local Baptist church insisting people come to them. I want to spend time with the Body of Christ. Period. That means working with other believers in an orphanage in Haiti. It means working alongside other believers in a local crisis pregnancy center. It means going where other Christians are, even if that means there are pews. It means sharing meals with other Christians and opening our home to them. It means seeking out opportunities for unity instead of just being willing to let unity happen. Ultimately it requires a radical break with the notion of the church being defined by where, when and how we gather.

When we start to make demands of other Christians, we inherently start to disrupt unity. That doesn’t mean we welcome heretics without question. That doesn’t mean that those in open and unrepentant sin get a free pass. It does mean that if we truly desire unity in the Body, we need some flexibility. It is far easier and more comfortable to exclude, overtly or subtly, people we disagree with on a myriad of issues. Americans love to divide ourselves over politics, race, ethnicity, sports, etc. and that has spilled over into the way we treat other Christians. I don’t think our Lord is pleased with the thousands of little Christian fiefdoms spread over the land, jealously guarding their “members” so a different fiefdom doesn’t steal them, busily writing up doctrinal statements to keep out the “wrong” kind of Christian, pouring money and resources into sustaining their little kingdoms, tipping our hats to one another in a base acknowledgement of our common faith but never willing to cross the street to shake hands.

Unlocking the door of your church or your house is only the first, tiny step toward unity. Real unity in the Body means stepping outside of your church or your home and going to the Body where they are.