Pastor Ron has been talking a lot about unity lately. He's talked about the difference between unity and conformity but I still get the sense that this concept is a little difficult for some of us to get our minds around. I ran into a blog entry this week that developed this idea further and thought it might be helpful to us. You can view the blog here http://faithwalking.blogspot.com/, but the full entry is below.
Unity that only Jesus can create
By Jim Herrington
Lunch last week with my good friend, Rick, was lively. We had miscommunicated about some stuff and we met for lunch to work things out. We are both very assertive folks so you can imagine the conversation. At the heart of our miscommunication was the topic of unity in the Church. Rick and I are deeply passionate about this topic, and in a conversation a week earlier, the conversation became animated and misunderstanding ensued. We are good friends, so by the time lunch was over we had cleaned things up - emerging more committed than ever before to seeing God unify His body as servants in and to the city.
I walked away realizing how illusive unity is. Many people use unity to mean uniformity - coming together and doing things alike. In this context unity means that we gather others who see things pretty much like we do so that we build a larger, stronger force for seeing and doing things the way that we see and do them.
Some people actually mean conformity when they say unity. In this view of unity, there are some designated leaders who hear from God for the rest of us. They tell us what God has said. They develop plans to achieve what God has said. And, in this view of unity, they expect the rest of us to fall in line (ignoring or suppressing what we hear God saying - especially if it is different than what the leaders hear.)
Some people want unity so that "the Church" can be a more powerful voting block - a group who by the shear size of numbers can get the culture to acquiesce to it's wishes, desires, and even demands.
What do I mean when I talk about unity? Unity is when individuals with a core commitment to follow Jesus and who have truly different perspectives, come together in authentic relationships, loving each other - saying what their is to say - especially when the points-of-view are divergent - staying together long enough for the Holy Spirit to use our difference to give us all a larger view than we started with.
So in my view of unity, widely different perspectives in the church would come together and as a growing sense of unity was achieved the purpose would not be to serve ourselves but to serve the world. Paul says that it is a ministry of reconciliation to which we are called. Personal and community transformation result from the reconciling work that we have been given.
In our unity, we would intentionally gather democrats and republicans in the same room for honest, respectful dialogue about how to most effectively govern. In our unity, we would intentionally gather poor people and rich people in the same room for honest respectful dialogue about how to effectively deal with consequences of sloth and greed, materialism and hedonism. In our unity we would gather teachers, administrators, parents and students in the same room for honest, respectful dialogue about how to make our schools work. In our unity we would intentionally get those on both side of the immigration issue or the issues around the war in Afghanistan - or around any issue that divides people in our neighborhoods or communities- and in all these setting, honest, respectful dialogue would take place. It is, in my view, in this setting that Jesus is most likely to have our permission to be the head of His Church.
Out of this dialogue (that we can trust the Holy Spirit to guide) we would serve as a ministering, reconciling presence - salt and light in the places where there is the most brokenness, the most division, the most inequality, the most injustice. We do this, not to win converts (though some would be converted) but to be agents of God's mercy, love, and justice in a fallen world - providing the world with a foretaste of heaven, a incomplete but distinguishable taste of heaven on earth.
The challenge with this view of unity is that it requires participants who are capable of holding two opposite things in tension. First it requires that each participant has clear, well thought out convictions that can be expressed clearly. Second it requires that each participant has a deep sense of humility that leads to a recognition that they see only a part - not the whole - no matter how deeply convicted they are about their part. So they offer their part with confidence, and they listen to the part that others bring with a kind of openness that allows God to enlarge their view - trusting that He is at work in all this process.
That kind of spiritual and emotional maturity is deeply challenging and often absent. So, we settle for a cheap substitute that is about uniformity or conformity or political power in a fallen world. In fact, in the last book, A Failure of Nerve, author Edwin Friedman called our society a regressive society. A regressive society is one in which the level of chronic anxiety is so high that leaders are increasingly incapable of the kind of engagement with diversity that I'm describing here.
The leaders of the ministry of Mission Houston (of which Rick and I are a part) are committed to this level of engagement with diversity in the Church - not to grow a political power block but - to be servants in the city in the places where the amazing, unconditional love of Jesus brings his reconciling power. That kind of unity is unique and it is virtually missing in our culture today. And like all our colleagues and friends, we are incapable of the very thing we believe God wants for us. So, with humility we stay connected as a branch to The Vine and are intentionally seeking to allow Him to continue growing us up.
The Body of Christ has come a long way down the road in the 25 years that I've been observing it and participating in it in Houston. And, we have a long, long way to go until we become like Paul's description of the Church in Ephesians 4:14-15 . . . then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ.
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