Church Unity

Does this sound familiar? In any typical week I will get a pile of invites from people wanting Gateway Church to get involved in their project or attend their event. A pastor friend writes,

I've got good relationships with the other ministers in town, but there is a strange view of ecumenism/unity in the churches here that if we work at doing stuff together and understanding one another then everything in the world will be lovely. That's a little tongue-in-cheek, but you know what I mean.

There is clearly a theology of unity and blessing that underpins this. I find the constant pressure to take part in things that in my view are fruitless missionally, and the subsequent perspective that we do not value or desire unity, very frustrating.

There is a lot to unpack here, but my response would be something along the following lines:

1. The starting point would be how we understand the sovereignty of God. For example, we could turn the question around and ask it this way, "Are you saying that if we don't jump onboard with this that God will keep his blessing from the town? Is that really your view of how God works?" Asking the question this way can help demonstrate how a simplistic reading of “How good it is when brothers dwell together in unity” is an inadequate way to develop a theology of God’s sovereignty and blessing.

2. We should also be theologically convinced that when Jesus prayed in his high priestly prayer that “they might all be one” this was accomplished through the work of the cross. All believers are one because we are all united with and in Christ. There then needs to be some visible outworking of this, but I think often we concentrate far too much on the “there are so many denominations and different churches which is a sign of our division” and not enough on “we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body” – our oneness is already real in Christ, and we don’t all need to be working on the same projects to prove it.

3. When discussing these type of issues I often use the analogy of a human family, saying something like, "We want people in other families to be blessed, and we often have other people in our homes and visit other people in theirs, but at the end of the day, Grace & I are primarily responsible to and for one another and for our kids. It’s a bit like that with churches – we want to bless every other Jesus loving, gospel preaching church in town, and will sometimes do things with them, but God has given me a responsibility for this family, and that means we can't always do everything that everyone else is doing." This naturally leads to a discussion about the nature and role of elders in the church, and the loyalty and commitment of church members to the church they are part of.

4. Following on from this I would want to explain that, "We are not here primarily to do projects – there are specific things we value and specific things we feel called to do. In faithfulness to God we want to be faithful to those things." This then begs the question about the existence of your church – in the end we have to say, "We believe we have a unique contribution to make here." If this is not the case you should just shut down and go join another church!

5. This sense of unique contribution then leads to saying, "It is important for us that we are focused on what we are doing, otherwise we might just bounce from thing to thing without actually achieving much." Those churches that are being obviously fruitful tend to be those churches which are obviously focussed and purposeful in what they are doing.

6. Of course, a problem with being focussed is that this focus can get misinterpreted as exclusivity. In part this just has to be toughed out, but there is also some leadership wisdom that has to be shown in making it clear our desire is to bless other people, while not having our time and energy diverted by everything they would like us to get involved in.

7. Finally, this is an area that church leaders can easily be emotionally bullied over and made to feel guilty about – in which case we need to remember that we are under grace not law, and that we are ultimately answerable to Jesus, not to men.

What’s your experience? What so you do with all those invites that end up on your desk?