At What Cost?

Peace within the church and unity of the brethren is not a "nice to have", it is a fundamental requirement, a non-negotiable commandment from Christ. Psalm 133:1 speaks of the joy when the brothers live in unity. We are commended to be one just as the Father and Son are one ( John 17:11-23 ) in Christ's prayers. Peter and Paul both urge us to work to a unity of Spirit, faith, knowledge and love (Ephesians 4:3; 4:13 , 1 Peter 3:8). I cannot help but believe that Christ is grieved over the divisions in His Church, especially since so much of what divides the church is due to disagreement on important but secondary questions. For example, I can drive to at least five different conservative Anabaptist local churches in less than 15 minutes that would look to the casual observer to be almost identical and yet they are distinct from one another and in some ways in competition for the same pool of members. It really bothers me that this is the case.

On the other hand, there is an awful lot of division that is unfortunate but also proper and necessary. The church in America is in the midst of a seismic event in the form of sexual ethics, especially the attempted normalization of homosexual behavior. The church has to address it and there really isn't a way to "live and let live" on this question. Either homosexuality is, as has been understood in the church for 2000 years, an aberrant and sinful behavior (assuming one identifies as homosexual based on taking action on urges rather than struggling with them in a celibate lifestyle) that must be repented of or it is a special category of specifically named sin that really isn't a sin at all. We are all sinners, even and especially those in the church, but for those with a new heart we cannot wallow in our sin and even celebrate it. You won't see, at least for now, "'Men Who Look At Women With Lust' Pride Parades". We either turn from sin to Christ and receive redemption or we remain under condemnation, turned away from Christ and embracing sin. There is no middle ground. If we had such a structure it would be a good time for a Council of Nicaea type moment so the church can go on record about this issue. Unfortunately, due in large part to the aforementioned division in the church, that is not feasible, leaving the issue up for debate from the level of large denominations to local churches and individual Christians.

I was reminded of this in a news story I saw recently relating to the Mennonite Church USA. By any measure the MC-USA represents the left-wing of the very diverse Mennonite community and is dealing with the homosexual normalization issue like the rest of the "progressive" wing of the American religious community. One regional conference, the North Central Conference of Mennonite Church USA, is stepping away from the MC USA. A representative of the very small (less than 400 total members in 10 churches), Fred Kanagy, said the following

“The NCC has come to recognize and identify ways in which MC USA has moved away from what we understand to be traditional, orthodox interpretations of Scripture from an Anabaptist perspective,” he wrote in an email. “ . . . The movement of many in MC USA in thinking, discernment and practice has created a separation, and the trajectory seems to indicate a widening divide, which we feel requires of us that we either change our convictions or change our affiliation.”

That is really the proper way of putting it. It is not the stodgy conservatives who are bringing disunity, it is those who are straying further from orthodoxy with each passing day. You might say, so what, it is only a few hundred people but they aren't the only ones. Also announcing their departure is the venerable and much larger Lancaster Conference with over 13,000 members , which according to the Mennonite World Review amounts to a loss of 14% of the total membership in MC USA. That is a major loss and I expect others to follow as Christians and local churches "vote with their feet".

This is not an unusual or rare problem. Many other "mainline" Protestant denominations have seen splits, especially in the Episcopal church in America which was the first to put forth a divorced (now twice divorced) open and unrepentant homosexual as "bishop". Individual Christians, local churches and groups of local churches alike have declared that the direction some have taken has led to an unequal yoking and they cannot maintain their affiliation. Rightly so. If we are not to associate with or even break bread with the unrepentant sinner that claims to be a Christian (1 Corinthians 5:9-13), we certainly cannot remain yoked with an entire group of people who " give approval to those who practice" sins such as homosexuality (Romans 1:32 and preceding verses).

There is a place for denominational unity I suppose but in many cases what we are seeing are local churches and individual Christians who are stepping away from denominational unity in order to remain in unity with the broader church. What seems to be occurring, as someone who identifies in many ways with Anabaptism but on the outside of the MC USA, is the same thing that happened in any number of "mainline" Protestant denominations. As their denomination moved further away from orthodoxy, they were forced to choose between unity with a denomination or unity with the broader church. In these cases they chose the more difficult and less popular route of choosing loyalty to the church universal, Biblical orthodoxy and Christ Himself rather than denominational ties. Rightly so. The path of following Jesus is pretty much never the smoother, easier path.

HT: Tim Challies

I generally have little use for denominations, even though they sometimes work powerfully for good. This issue of sexual morality is going to be one that more and more denominations are going to be forced to address. Even "conservative" denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church in America are going to have to deal with individual churches who flaunt their disobedience from Scripture and their challenge of the broader denominational norms. We are already seeing a lot of this. There are many Presbyterians and Baptists who differ on church governance and the question of baptism that nonetheless have far more in common with each other than they do with fellow Presbyterians or Baptists. I think we will continue to see the rise of cross-denominational, "para-church" cooperative efforts in the years to come, if for no other reason than simple survival.

Unity is critical and the church needs more unity and cooperation but that can never come at the expense of truth.

The Limits On Unity

Alan Knox has a new chain blog, this time on the topic of relational unity. The word "relational" is critical here. A lot of Christians will acknowledge the concept of unity while by their actions practically deny that very same unity. Saying "we are one in Christ but I don't associate with you Sunday morning or cooperate with you in any meaningful sense" is a farce and sinful.

I talk a lot about unity and there are some great posts already in the chain blog. I want to add a different viewpoint having to do with the limits of unity. Can we have unity without exception? Does unity trump everything else? If not, what are the limits?

When we look to Scripture we see clearly that unity is very important, not just in theory but in reality. We see the church around the ancient world collecting funds for famine relief for churches in other regions, we see the church freely sharing with one another materially, we see Jesus praying for unity in His high priestly prayer. However we also see that from the very earliest days there were people who for a variety of reason that we are warned about and often those warnings required us to separate from people, to be dis-unified for the sake of the church. Where we run into trouble is the "when" of this issue. The sad truth is that most of what we divide over in word or deed has essentially no Scriptural basis and sometimes it seems we fail to divide when Scripture says we ought to.

I want to start by looking at some places where separation is required and the first place in Scripture that springs to mind is the opening of Paul's letter to the church of Galatia.

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Gal 1:6-9)

That is some pretty strong language. Not "we should form an ecumenical council to discuss common ground". If someone, an individual or group of individuals, denies central tenets of the Gospel, replacing them with teachings that subvert the very essence of that Gospel, we cannot have unity with them. We can love them, and must. We can pray for them and ought to. Be visibly unified in the faith with them? No. This warning and the next are especially pertinent in our world today. No as far as what those central tenets are, that is a conversation for another day. Mormonism and the Jehovah's Witnesses obviously fall outside of Gospel orthodoxy. Historically that has been true to a lesser extent with Roman Catholicism. What about Seventh-day Adventism? Again, important topics for a different day.

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, "I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty." (2 Cor 6:14-18)

This might as well have been written to the political activists on both sides of the church. I see this mostly applied in the church to marriage as a warning against "inter-faith marriage" but it clearly is a much broader command. I understand the impulse to make public signs of unity with like minded unbelievers to achieve common goals but there is a real danger of unity with those whom we are nto united in the faith with. So there ought to be clear distinguishing lines between the church and the world.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you."  (1 Cor 5:9-13)

Sexuality immorality and other gross sins that fester unrepentant in the church are destructive. Paul is not saying here that they have "lost their salvation" or that people who are sinning are not believers but that they should be treated as unbelievers, denying them the fellowship of the saints and "purging" them from the church. It damages the witness of the church and causes confusion when we look past these sins. So when people are refusing to repent of their sins we must of necessity separate from them.

So obviously the Bible places limits on unity. Here is another one, a tricky one to ponder....

But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.  (Titus 3:9-11)

That is a hard one. The response to someone who is divisive is to...divide from them? In this case yes, being divisive is harmful to the church and for the sake of unity we must stay clear of people like that. Now they are plenty of people who are excessively quarrelsome in the church, not the same thing as people asking legitimate if difficult questions, and the church has an obligation to discipline and potentially eventually, to borrow an Anabaptist term, shun those who refuse to repent.

We face a major stumbling block in this whole issue of unity and limits in that we have an awful lot of trouble identifying and agreeing on what those limits mean. Most of what divides the church does not have much, or any, Scriptural support. Divisions over eschatology, music style or church governance, specifics of soteriology, traditions, denominations, etc. are common in the church but are completely absent from Scripture. I guess when you are being persecuted for the faith you don't have time to worry about secondary issues. Because we divide over secondary issues and other issues that are so silly they don't qualify as secondary we fail to clearly define what issues we should see as legitimate limits to unity.
We ought to seek unity, real and relational unity, as a top priority for the church. We should find barriers to unity and tear them down. Yet we must not mistake prioritizing relational unity with false unity, unity at all costs. Unity that compromises the Gospel is not unity we should pursue. Unity that overlooks what Scripture declares to be inviolable principles is false unity and worse than disunity. What is truly ironic is that because of our disunity we have utterly failed to have the conversations in the church that would clarify what rises to the level of an issue to divide over. Our disunity makes unity nearly impossible.

So what do you think? What are the reasonable limits of unity in the church? Where do we draw the line?

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Chain blog rules:



1) If you would like to write the next blog post (link) in this chain, leave a comment stating that you would like to do so. If someone else has already requested to write the next link, then please wait for that blog post and leave a comment there requesting to write the following link.

2) Feel free to leave comments here and discuss items in this blog post without taking part in the actual “chain.” Your comments and discussion are very important in this chain blog (both on this post and the other link posts in the chain).

3) When you write a link in this chain, please reply in the comments of the previous post to let everyone know that your link is ready. Also, please try to keep an updated list of links in the chain at the bottom of your post, and please include these rules at the bottom of your post.



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“Links” in the “Real Relational Unity” chain blog:

1. “Chain Blog: Real Relational Unity” by Alan

2. “The Treasure of Unity ‘in’ our Relationships” by Jim

3. “So The World May Know – Observations on the Road to Unity” by Christopher

4. “Christian Unity – What it is and What it’s not” by Nathan

5. “Steps to Relational Unity” by Randi

6. “Learn to Live or Live to Learn” by Greg

7. “The Limits on Unity” by Arthur

8. Who will write the 8th link post in the chain?

Repost: How to change a culture of accepted disunity

I was thinking about unity in spite of differences this morning and thought back to a post I wrote in March of 2009, How To Change A Culture of Accepted Disunity. I grieved me then and it grieves me now that we seem to spend more time trying to find ways to divide from one another than we do trying to find ways to cooperate with one another in pursuing the command and commission of Christ. Perhaps worse is the shoulder shrugging that accompanies our disunity, like we are just saying "Oh well" to something that I am certain grieves our Lord Jesus Christ. This post was the third in a series, the first two are Sundering What God Has Put Together and The Fruit Of Sundering What God has put together and together they form some early thoughts on the topic of unity for me.

Our basis for fellowship in the church is our common salvation. That is it. We did not choose God and we don't get to choose the other people God has chosen if they meet our approval for fellowship. We are the Bride of Christ, even when we disagree vehemently with one another but we seem to think that we have license to divorce one another while keeping the same Bridegroom. This must not be so. Division in the church, even for the most pious and high-minded of motivations, serves the cause of the Enemy, not the calling of the Lord.

I guess the question comes down to this. What is our identity based on? Is it based on being "Reformed"? Is it based on our position regarding baptism? Is it denominational, "I am a Methodist" or "I am Baptist"? Or is it based on our identity in and through Christ? Unity in the church is not a nice add-on if we can work it out. It is not an option. Our willingness to be unified in spite of differences speaks at a fundamental level to our understanding of the Gospel and the resulting church. Again, if God has chosen a people from out of the entirety of humanity to purchase, redeem and adopt by the blood of His Son, then we don't get to decide who is unworthy of our full fellowship. Jesus knelt and washed the feet of His disciples, in spite of their deficiencies and errors (remember this "Get thee behind me Satan"?). Who do we think we are to tell God that we won't even associate with others that His Son died to redeem?

Anyway, take a look at this post (and the two post preceding it) and think it over...

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Talk is cheap. Complaints and hand-wringing over disunity is one thing, finding practical ways to overcome it is another. In this third and final post about unity in the church, here are some ideas I had to help us move past a culture of accepted disunity and into a culture that actively seeks fellowship among believers in spite of denominations and doctrines.

Number one, change our understanding of the church. Our view of the church has a direct impact on our acceptance of disunity. When we reduce the church to a strictly local gathering that erects barriers based on secondary doctrines and views itself as distinct from every other local church, disunity is sure to follow. Some of the notions that go along with that include the unspoken belief that if you attend a different group than the one you usually attend, you are somehow being unfaithful to your “home” church. We need to jettison this view of the church as a bowl of marbles and start seeing it as a single loaf of bread, made up of lots of different kinds of believers but all part of one united Body.

Number two, actively seek opportunities to meet even while recognizing (as has been pointed out) that you are going to have to meet people where they are. Waiting for others to come to you so you can be unified is not going to work. Unity is important and requires work and it requires sacrifice. We have hundreds of years of tradition that go back to the founding of this country, traditions that see nothing unhealthy about our division even though it runs in clear contrast to the teachings of Christ. The cultural church landscape most of us grew up with must not be allowed to continue driving our understanding of the church. We must instead take our cues from Scripture.

Number three, be willing to place unity at the same level as other doctrines. In other words, unity in the Body is something that needs to be given priority even when it runs up against traditionally divisive doctrines like baptism, church government, soteriology and eschatology. More often than not, unity takes a back seat. It is something that just happens by default after we have sufficiently divided ourselves from every other Christian who fails to adhere to our list of distinctives. Unity cannot be something relegated to the back bench because when we do that, disunity is always the result. How important we consider a doctrine will often drive our actions and as the church has demonstrated by its indifference for hundreds of years, we just don’t consider unity to be all that important and our witness has suffered immensely for it.

Number four, stop the name calling. I am not talking here about ignoring wolves among us or not calling out those who proclaim a different Gospel. I am thinking here about charges of heresy when what we are discussing fails to rise to that level. A prime example is found in the Calvinism-Arminianism debate. It is common, and I will admit to having engaged in this as well, for Calvinists to imply or outright claim that Arminianism is a heresy. I have also heard the opposite be claimed by Arminians. Many Calvinists seem to have a permanent sneer when speaking of Arminians and I have seen more than a few books and tapes being hawked that claim to debunk the “heresy” of Calvinism. As an unapologetic Calvinist I have to ask “Is the Arminian my brother?”. If he is a believer, he absolutely is my brother even if I think he is wrong on this crucial issue and I am his brother, even if he disagrees with me about Calvinism. In fact it is precisely because I am a Calvinist that I must recognize that I no more choose who is my brother than I chose who is my Savior!

Number five, and perhaps most importantly, stop being afraid of other Christians and other churches! We seem so afraid of other Christians and the churches they attend. Maybe if people from our church go to their church they will like the preaching or the music better. They may go and not come back! It is fear that drives much of our disunity, fear of one another caused by a belief that churches are called to compete with one another. If someone goes from church A to church B to serve, praise God! Find out what the other group is doing, see how you can be in fellowship with one another and encourage each other. How often do you pray for your church versus how often you pray for the other churches in town? They might not meet as you do and they may not have any interest in being in fellowship with you but many of them are brothers and sisters in Christ, no different than the people you see every Sunday or the believers we pray for overseas.

What are some other thoughts? I know I have raised this same topic in the past but it is on my mind again. The splintering of the church is simply unacceptable and every Christian, one believer at a time, needs to take concrete steps to rectify this wrong and pray for the unity of God’s people.

Unity is good theology

Alan posted some thoughts in response to my post, The Assumption of Disunity, with his post Can we begin by assuming unity in Christ?. Like me, Alan sees unity in the Gospel as a non-negotiable that is demanded by the Gospel…

Think about this for a moment… What would happen if we assumed unity in Christ instead of assuming disunity based on our traditions and backgrounds and interpretations? Is that even possible? I think it is…

In fact, I want to expressly state something that I hope has been apparent through my blog posts: If I disagree with you, or if you disagree with me, I do not automatically assume that we are divided from one another because of that (those) disagreement(s). Instead, my first assumption is that we are united in Christ – brothers and sisters – whose bond is stronger than flesh and blood and able to withstand our disagreement.

Idealistic? Maybe. But, like Arthur, I believe that the gospel demands our unity in Christ, and I will seek to live in it.

That reflects where I am coming from. The Gospel demands unity. Real unity, not lip-service. You cannot say “I can’t be unified with that person because of his bad theology” because disunity is in and of itself inherently bad theology.

This is not easy for me! My natural impulse is to find something wrong with what someone says so that I can be proved right. One of the things that really appealed to me about the Reformed church culture (not Reformed theology which I still embrace, but the culture that surrounds many of those who subscribe to Reformed theology) is that smacking around other Christians is something of a favored pastime. Line by line refutations of some Arminian sap is a good and necessary use of ones time. Triumphantly posting a killer post shredding something some theological infant wrote is a source of pride and something that is celebrated and that drives page views. It also is ugly and divisive.

I am trying to move past that mindset and actively seek ways to be united with others in Christ on this side of eternity rather than deferring real unity to the wedding feast of the Lamb. The Gospel requires it and the Great Commission demands it. How can we say we look forward to an eternity with Christ when we refuse to break bread or share fellowship with those we will spend eternity glorifying Him with?

The ministry of reconciliation must reach the church

Ed Stetzer has an important post out on race and the church, Race Relations, Affirmative Action, and the Church: More Reflections on The Help. I am not a big fan of using secular movies to make theological points but when it comes to race relations we as the church don't have a great record. The history of the church, especially in America, has way too many examples of so-called Christians doing unspeakable things to others because of their skin color. From Ed's post...

Why is it that we still seem to struggle with this issue 150 years after slavery and nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act? Why can conversations with those of different races be so stilted, appreciation of our cultural differences so hard, and inter-racial friendships feel so forced?

Why is it that so few African Americans go to white churches and vice versa? That so few churches reflect the racial demographics of their host community? That so many white parents would still rather have their daughter marry a non-Christian white man than a godly, Christ-honoring African-American young man? Why the judgment on Mexicans? Are we concerned at all that certain areas of our country may be creating another generation of "helpers" out of Latin immigrants?

The church is trailing society in an area where we should be setting the pace. Followers of Jesus Christ, for whom there is "no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" should be leading the nation in racial reconciliation, not being dragged kicking and screaming by unbelievers into a life the Kingdom anticipates. Too often, the church trails the culture. For that matter, too many "Christians" were holding the hoses at Selma, not standing for equality. The church still trails.

Those are words that are jarring, especially since many conservative Christians are also politically conservative and recoil at any hint of "affirmative action", the very term Stetzer uses later. There is a big difference between forced integration in society as a whole and state sponsored discrimination of any sort versus what Stetzer is calling for, an active and conscious effort to reconcile believers of different races. While this is an important statement and may seem radical to some, I think it doesn't go nearly far enough because it only touches on one aspect of segregation in the church.

The division in the church is not just racial. We are segregated from one another by all sorts of dividers, some intentional and obvious and others that are far more subtle. An affluent upper-middle class church is going to look a lot different from a rural church in a farming community or an inner-city church. People of different doctrinal beliefs divide from one another by attending the "right" kind of church. If you don't belong to "our" church, you are a stranger and an alien among us. We might even call you out and give you a pen or a "welcome package", just to make sure you understand that you are not one of us. You are of course welcome to come visit with us in the hopes you will come to your senses and become a "member" but your participation by and large is going to be very, very limited until you acquiesce to whatever rules we have regarding "membership".

It often seems that we would rather "fellowship" with strangers who may or may not be Christians at all but who look like and live and vote and spend like us than to cross uncomfortable social or ethnic or racial lines. That is sinful but it is also human nature. When you apply that to the church and embrace the idea that dividing ourselves as the church intentionally and think we are advancing the cause of Christ in doing so is simply foolish. We must seek to reconcile ourselves within the church. Whether our dividers are racial or socio-economic or doctrinal, the reality of our oneness in Christ is turned to a lie when we allow or even encourage the church to be divided from one another.

The world looks at the church and sees us fighting and feuding and dividing from one another over and over again. When that is the image we portray is it any wonder people are not interested in hearing about Jesus?

Where the unity rubber meets the road

The chain blog that Alan started on unity has had lots of great conversations. If you haven’t read through it yet, you owe it to yourself to do so (see links at the bottom of the post). The most recent post, No, We can’t just get along, gets to a key issue in any conversations about unity. What are the legitimate reasons for separation because there clearly are some Scriptural reasons where we can and indeed must separate? Alan lists a few out:

1. Unrepentant Sin (Matt 18:15-20; 1 Cor 5:1-5)
2. Disorderliness (2 Thess 3:6)
3. Refusal to Work (2 Thess 3:7-10)
4. False Teaching (2 Thess 3:14-15; 1 Tim 1:20; 2 John 10-11)
5. Divisiveness (Rom 16:17-18; Titus 3:10-11)

Of those, number four is the tough one. I commented on his post with this:

#4 is the real crux of it, isn’t it? What is a “false teaching”? There was a time when I would have inclulded “Arminianism”, dispensationalism and infant baptism in that category. I still diasgree with all three of those but do they rise to the level of false teaching? I certainly wouldn’t let someone baptize my unregenerate child for the sake of unity but I wouldn’t see them baptizing their infant children as reason to break fellowship, even if I think they were wrong to do so. I spent the last couple of years in Michigan in a group that held more or less to a dispensational hermeneutic, which I likewise disagree with but we still had wonderful fellowship with them.

So what then? Certainly any teaching that denies the Gospel by either subtracting from it or adding to it rises to the level of false teaching. What about presuming to speak for God where He has not spoken (false prophecy?) This is a tough one.

What do you think? What are the legitimate reasons to separate from other Christians? Jump over to No, We can’t just get along and weigh in on the conversation…

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Chain blog rules:

1) If you would like to write the next blog post (link) in this chain, leave a comment stating that you would like to do so. If someone else has already requested to write the next link, then please wait for that blog post and leave a comment there requesting to write the following link.

2) Feel free to leave comments here and discuss items in this blog post without taking part in the actual “chain”. Your comments and discussion are very important in this chain blog.

3) When you write a link in this chain, please reply in the comments of the previous post to let everyone know that your link is ready. Also, please try to keep an updated list of links in the chain at the bottom of your post, and please include these rules at the bottom of your post.

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Here are the other posts...

“Links” in this chain blog:

1. “Chain Blog: Dealing with Divisive Issues Introduction” by Alan

2. “Chain Blog: Dealing with divisive issues starts with love” by Arthur

3. “I am divisive” by Jeremy

4. “Chain Blog: Please agree with me” by Jon

5. “Division and our shared humanity” by Andy

6. “Chain Blog: solving the problem” by Bobby

7. “Divisiveness: Acts 2 & Ugly Carpet” by fallenpastor

8. “Stimulating our Collective Memory” by Trista

9. “No, we can’t just get along” by Alan

10. Who will write the next “link” post in the chain?

Unity is not conformity

Alan Knox wrote a very important post this morning having to do with unity in the church, Disagreement is not Disunity. Here is a snippet...

Let’s start with a statement that, hopefully, everyone reading this will agree with: disunity is a major problem among the church. The church is splintered in its expression in spite of being one in Christ. This is a huge problem. However, forcing (or requiring) people to agree with one another about everything does not lead to unity. In the same way, disunity is not caused directly because people disagree with one another.

I think some people despair of unity in the church because they assume it means absolute agreement and conformity. That is fortunately not the case. In some ways I have used that as an excuse over the years. Well, I can't fellowship with those people because they believe A, B and C and of course they are wrong. That is a cheap and unscriptural view that much of the church holds even if they don't come out and admit it. I still struggle with this but I am trying to put aside my pride so that I can more fully experience the fellowship of other believers.

It is not only possible, it is absolutely necessary that we fellowship with people we disagree with on some issues. The only person I agree with 100% of the time is myself and sometimes I make pretty poor company even to me! The church is united by so many things, first and foremost the blood bought adoption by God. If God has chosen us and caused us to be born again and become part of His family, we need to be united with one another regardless of our differences. To do anything else is to tell God that perhaps He made a mistake in bringing those people into His family.

Examiner Article: Unity According to Jesus

I posted a new article this morning, Unity According to Jesus, using the words of Christ in Mark 9:38-41 and applying them to how we see and cooperate with other Christians.

Keep visitors away from the Body!

Speaking of our culture of acceptable disunity…

I read a short post on the 9 Marks Church Matters blog and was frankly a little nauseated by the title itself: Protect the Flock by Excluding Visitors . Then I started reading and it got worse….

So in our church, non-members are welcome to attend and participate in the public services of the church. We are happy to have them in our Sunday morning gathering, our Sunday evening gathering, and our fellowship meals.

But we don't let people attend small groups or serve among the children or lead music until they are members. In order to join the church, a person must be examined by the elders and approved by the congregation. Once a person has been through that process, we feel reasonably comfortable that they are safe (that is to say, not a wolf).

In what world does that make an ounce of Scriptural sense? If you aren’t a “member”, you can’t even attend a small group? Not lead one, attend one! You can sit and listen to a sermon but you can’t be involved in something where you can speak? Of course there is the small problem of a lack of any sort of elder-interview leading to formal church membership in one local church to the exclusion of all other Christians to be found anywhere in the Bible. Not to mention that there were no “small groups” mentioned, probably because the church met in that format anyway (small groups in homes) rather than massive meetings where everyone sat silently while someone else preached and they had to form "small groups" just so people can actually get to speak to one another (as long as they are "members" of course)

Why are we surprised that we have so much disunity in the church when we have one of the leading authorities on the church promoting the fencing off even small groups from "non-members"? If your people are being equipped properly they should be able to handle a “heretic” or “wolf” who comes to a small group. Or, gasp!, perhaps that small group is an outlet to invite someone who is an unbeliever to come to a less intimidating setting than listening to someone preach an hour long sermon.

Let’s assume there are 1000 “members” of Capitol Hill Baptist Church and/or Guilford Baptist Church (the home church of the author, Michael McKinley). They are both affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. There are 16,200,000 members of the Southern Baptist Convention, a highly dubious number but that is what they report. Based on this policy, the 16.2 million members of Southern Baptist Churches that are members of churches other than CHBC or GBC are not welcome to come to a small group meeting. A Southern Baptist Church that bars other Southern Baptists from attending small group meetings?

Stuff like this makes me even more convinced that the institutional church is warped and divided beyond repair.

The fruit of sundering what God has put together

I wrote yesterday about putting asunder what God has united. In this case I was speaking of the Church, not marriage, but the fruits of disunity in the church are every bit as pernicious as the epidemic of divorce in our society. That is a pretty bold statement and one that might cause some concerns but I believe that the disunity of the church is crippling to the cause of carrying out the Great Commission and living out the Great Commandment.

Here are some of the ways our disunity is damaging…

Division damages our witness

I can think of nothing more counterproductive than a disunified church. As God’s people we are called to be His witnesses to the world and yet our lack of unity is antithetical to that calling. What do unbelievers see when they look at the church? Do they see people who love one another? Or do they see a dizzying array of churches marketing themselves and competing with one another? I think we know the answer to that question.

Oftentimes it seems that we are evangelists for our denomination, our movement or especially our local church more than evangelists for Christ. Someone who is on the outside of the church looking in sees all sorts of signs touting this church or that. Our little free community paper runs advertisements for churches with marketing phrases like “Bible believing”, “welcoming”, “family” in an effort to paint this local church as the place to go. Here is the problem. Americans are savvy consumers and recognize a marketing ploy when they see it. We are trying to appeal to the world through the methods of the world by presenting a smorgasbord of church options instead of a unified Body of believers that collectively is more interested in seeing you saved than in seeing you become a member of “my” church.

Division creates a church shopping mentality

Many people, especially new believers, spend a lot of time trying to find the “right church”. Local churches feed into this by emulating the corporate world to market themselves to potential members (and their wallets). Flyers, advertisements, bulletin boards, special events, demographic surveys, targeted mailings. Some churches put Madison Avenue to shame in their effort to attract believers to Sunday morning services. Other times disgruntled church goers, upset over a perceived problem, take their ball and go somewhere else. Far too many churches are more than happy to fill their pews with those who have left other churches. The other side of this equation is that all of that money and effort being spent to market each local church to believers is that it detracts from reaching the lost with the Gospel. We have a finite amount of time and resources and when we spend those precious resources trying to attract people who already follow Christ to follow Him here instead of there, we naturally are not reaching the lost with the urgency and unity we should be.

Division leads to inefficient duplication of efforts

This is kind of pragmatic but it has serious stewardship issues. How many churches offer poorly attended Sunday schools and Vacation Bible schools just like half a dozen others churches in a five mile radius? How many churches offer very similar ministries to the same area but don’t cooperate because of doctrinal differences? How many churches have activities on Wednesday and Sunday but sit empty all week while other church have activities on Sunday and Thursday? Church after church, ministry after ministry recreates the proverbial wheel over and over again. Why do we do this? Because we don’t trust other Christians to “do it right” so we feel compelled to “do it ourselves”. We even treat the Great Commission this way. Southern Baptists have Southern Baptist Missionaries to evangelize and plant Southern Baptist churches. Meanwhile PCA Presbyterians do the same thing, except they are planting PCA Presbyterian churches. The same with Pentecostals and other evangelical bodies. Often they are in the same country, in the same cities. How confusing that must be to people in foreign lands that didn’t grow up with the fractious and competing church world of Western evangelicalism!

Division denies Christians the fellowship of most of the Body

Perhaps the least obvious but most damaging impact of our disunity is the way it serves to deny fellowship among believers. I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that our division means that the vast majority of Christians who live in a given area will have minimal or no fellowship or interaction with other believers. I wonder how many wonderful believers I have lived near over the years that I never got to know because we went to different local churches? I am someone who could use a lot of wisdom and I am quite certain there has been lots of wisdom all around me over the years that I never even knew about. A lot of that is on me, we didn’t do much in the past to meet other Christians but it also just isn’t something that we thought about much.

Disunity is nothing but a list of bad stuff. I can’t think of a single redeeming quality to it. If anything I am probably underestimating the impact of disunity.

Of course saying that disunity is bad is pretty easy. Where it gets hard is when you start getting down to details. How do we change our collective mindset in a way that sees unity as a primary mission of the church rather than something that is nice if it happens but unnecessary? That is my post for tomorrow…

Most inexplicable tweet ever?

I saw this on a different blog and had to go read it again. It is a tweet from Burk Parsons, on staff at St. Andrews in Florida, from last night ...

The differences among us that divide us denominationally are precisely what make us a strong united front in one Gospel

I don't get how in the world that makes the slightest sense. So the witness we present to the world is of a fractured Christianity divided into competing denominations, each fighting and feuding with one another over secondary doctrines, and that is what makes us a "strong united front in one Gospel"? Denominational differences led to the martyring of Anabaptists in the Reformation. They have led to innumerable schisms in the church. These differences that divide us denominationally are the greatest barrier to Christian fellowship and community, perhaps even the greatest drag up the proclamation of the Gospel, and as such they rise to the level of sinful disunity in the Body of Christ.

We will never be a strong, united witness for the Gospel when we describe the group we gather with as "our church" to the exclusion of all other groups. Agreeing to get together on a neutral site or at the occasional theology conference is not a unity that is going to proclaim a united front. Differences in doctrine are worth having discussions about, even disagreements about, but they cannot supplant the Gospel and lead to division in the Body. Division is something we should repent of and weep over, not celebrate with false praise.

A call for unity and a call for disunity

Eric Carpenter has written an excellent blog post titled Unity and Baptism: A Possible Solution as part of a series on unity in the church dealing with breaking fellowship over issues of doctrine and practice. Eric asserts that baptism is not an issue we should divide or break fellowship over.

Eric first makes the case that baptism is not a Gospel issue, not a first order issue that would necessitate separation:

First, Christ's church should be united around the gospel. This is commanded and easy to understand in the bible. Therefore, we should only separate from those who reject first order (gospel-centered) doctrines.

Then he closes with this statement:

The point is that we don't stop fellowshipping over third order doctrinal differences. If we treat baptism in this way, we will remain united while at the same time holding some differences in interpretation over the meaning of baptism.

I would agree with Eric on this (there is a lot more than those two sentences, you should read the whole series). What makes that even easier to agree is that I don't think that baptism is something that should define a local congregation, nor do I think it is something that is even a function of the local congregation necessarily. If someone chooses to dribble water on a baby, that is their business. We can always properly baptize the child later! Having said that, I would say that sinful behavior is a Gospel issue. I will come back to that.

On the other hand, we have Greg Gilbert writing at the 9 Marks Ministries blog Church Matters. Greg wrote a blog post called Don't Comprise on This and in what appears to be a contrast with Eric, Greg says that some issues like gender roles are a hill to die on. Indeed for the health of the church, you not only can but must separate over this issue.

To put a very fine point on it, to compromise in this case is to lose your church. That's because the question of the roles of men and women in the church is fundamentally a question of Scripture's authority. And if you decide that obeying those parts of Scripture in your church's practice is not worth dividing over---or if you call a pastor who thinks that---then you've really taken out all the stops between your church and full-blown theological liberalism. You've allowed your church's practice to be determined by those who would deny Scripture's authority, and history shows us that once you deny Scripture in one area, other areas quickly follow.

I must say that I agree with Greg at least as far as the facts (I would likely disagree with Greg on his view of the church). Denominationally speaking, the ordaining of women in leadership roles in the church, specifically pastoral roles, has almost always been a precursor to general theological anarchy. Once you reject restrictions on women in ministry, it becomes pretty hard to restrict it from anyone including homosexuals (see my post on this issue here). You need to look no further than the so-called mainstream Protestant denominations. Virtually all of them have embraced women in pastoral ministry and they are all on a downward slide: the Episcopal church, the United Methodist church, the Presbyterian Church-USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church. If they have not embraced open, unrepentant homosexuals yet they are at least having conversations about it. I draw the line back to an issue of authority and once you start carving out the parts you don't like, it is hard to keep it all together. I am not suggesting that every Christian fellowship that allows women to teach or be elders is invariably going to embrace homosexuality but I do think it is hard to be consistent if you say "this" applies and "that" does not.

Here is the difference in my mind. I don't consider infant baptism to be a sin. I think it is wrongly applying baptism without command or example, but I also recognize that there is not a Biblical prohibition against infant baptism. There is an utter lack of evidence to support infant baptism but no express prohibitions against it (possibly because it wasn't practiced so there was no need to speak of it). So infant baptism in and of itself is not a sin. Believing adults who refuse to be baptized Biblically later might be but that is a different issue. On the other hand, although some disagree with me quite strongly, I believe that the Bible speaks very clearly of gender roles in the church and that rejecting those roles is an act of sinful rebellion. I could fellowship with people who baptize infants. I cannot fellowship where women are teaching and exerting authority over men.

For example. If a group of believers in the local assembly decided to drink a fifth of Jack Daniels during the fellowship time and get stone drunk, that would be an issue of discipline. But what if the ones involved were elders in the body? Should you stay in fellowship? I would assume no one would say yes. That seems an extreme example, but we must be careful not to set aside sin in order to foster unity. Ignoring sin for the sake of unity is not what Christ had in mind. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5: 11 that we should not be in fellowship with those who bear the name of brother if they exhibit sinful behavior. In cases where there is a rebellion against the teaching of Scripture I would argue that fellowship is not possible. I firmly believe that women teaching and having authority over men is a sinful practice and an usurpation of roles restricted to male believers and as such I would consider fellowshipping under a woman teaching to be participation in her sin. That is something I simply cannot do.

(As a side note, I wonder what my brothers who are paedobaptist would do with this. If you believe that the Bible commands us to baptize the infant children of believers, do you think parents who don’t are in sin? If so, should you be in fellowship with them? If not, why not?)