Theological Musings

his post is the fourth link in a chain blog started by Alan Knox. Alan wrote the first link, which was followed by Charlie Wallace, and most recently by David Rogers.

I won’t bore you with summaries of the other posts because you can read them for yourself (and I highly recommend you read them now, if you haven’t already). I am primarily, however, responding to David Rogers’ post…or rather, I should say, I’m attempting to continue the thoughts that David has interjected into the conversation.

David wrote about several roadblocks that he sees in the way of the concept of a “city church”. And in large measure, I agree with what David wrote. But as I read his thoughts on roadblocks, I couldn’t help but think that there was one major roadblock that he didn’t really list. (He sort of touched on this in his fourth roadblock, but I want to flesh it out a bit further.)

Without addressing this roadblock, I am of the opinion that attempting to solve any of the other roadblocks will be an exercise in futility. And in my opinion, this issue would actually take care of several, if not all, of the roadblocks David listed.

That roadblock is pride.

What prevents the body of Christ from being unified in a geographical region? Pride.

David touched on this somewhat in his comment about simple/organic/house churches dismissing the “institutional church” as irrelevant. Now, obviously, many of my readers know that I am involved in an organic church that meets house to house. And I’ve written quite a bit on that topic in the past.

My intent here is not to defend simple church against David’s comment. Because frankly, David is quite right when he highlights certain factions of the simple church adherents as basically ignoring the traditional institution. The only exception I would make to David’s statement is that, as some have already pointed out in the comments on his post, it’s hardly unique to simple/organic/house churches.

The point that I would like to make is that, regardless of the mode of fellowship (institutional, simple, etc.), when anyone shuts anyone else out, I believe that boils down to pride. And without addressing the pride issue, we cannot expect to see any genuine improvement in the area of divisions within the body of Christ.

Recently, on another blog, I read a post about the need for a certain denomination to exercise humility. The author of the post chose to use the phrase “doctrinal humility”. In a sickening twist of irony, the commenters could not get past that two-word phrase. They rushed to defend their lack of humility when it comes to their doctrine. If I may paraphrase, they basically were saying, “We have doctrine that is the most biblical of anyone’s. What are we supposed to be humble about??”

That is exactly the pride that divides. And it is by no means the domain of only one particular denomination. Who among us believes our doctrine is not “biblical”? If we believed that it weren’t, wouldn’t we rush to change it? So to argue that our doctrine, or our ecclesiology, or our system of church, or our mode of baptism, or our position on spiritual gifts is “biblical” is to miss the point.

The only thing over which we are ever instructed to separate from others on in scripture is a compromise of the message of the Gospel. And I would hasten to add that, in the context of the entire teaching of the New Testament, I believe that any separation at all is always with a hope for reconciliation.

So, for a city church to actually be able to function as a city church, there has to be humility. There has to be a willingness to say, “I believe that my convictions in {insert area of doctrine or practice} are based on the revelation of scripture, but I also recognize that those who differ with me also believe theirs is based on the revelation of scripture. Because we are both adherents to the message of the Gospel, I will not allow this area to divide us. After all, my brother or sister may actually be right, and it may be I who am wrong in this area.”

Not too long ago, I participated in a brief discussion on a blog that asked if it’s possible to fellowship and worship together with people who did not believe the same thing about certain doctrines. In the post, the author was offering his compromise, which was to say that we acknowledge a spiritual unity, yet we do not fellowship or worship together with those who believe differently. He used as an example in his post a difference in baptism. Specifically, he was writing from a “believers only” view of baptism vs. “infant baptism”. I offered the following comment:

It’s always refreshing to see other brothers and sisters thinking through these concerns, and I definitely appreciate your heart in these posts….

I think, however, that your solution of “unity in spirit, but not in fellowship” is a step in the wrong direction. And…that’s pretty much what is already going on in the body of Christ today. It strikes me as trying to have it both ways. Unity really means nothing if we can’t actually walk together, in my opinion.

Your example of infant baptism is, ironically, the one that I think is one of the easiest to reconcile. If both sides are approaching the subject with humility and grace, I see no reason why one could not fellowship with the other.

The humility and grace would mean that the one believing in infant baptism would not pressure the other to baptize his infant. And likewise, the one not believing in it would not belittle the faith of the other for practicing it.

It would seem to me that throughout the course of time together, perhaps one might be persuaded to the others point of view, but not because one is demanding it or pushing the issue.

I don’t know if I’m correct here, but it seems to make sense to me. For there to be a “city church”, this type of humility is required. Otherwise, we end up digging in our heels and closing ourselves off to the possibility that we could be wrong.

If we cannot lay down our own pride and humbly relate to our brothers and sisters in the Gospel, regardless of their beliefs about other things outside the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and our reconciliation to the Father through Jesus, there is no hope of unity. And there is no hope of a “city church”.

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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 link 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.

1. Alan Knox, City Church – A Chain Blog
2. Charlie Wallace, City Church: Meeting
3. David Rogers, Roadblocks on the Path to City Church
4. Steve Sensenig, The Major Roadblock to a City Church (this post)
   
5. Paul Grabill, The Resurrection of the City Church: Who Will Move the Stone?
6. Jon Amos, A City Church Thought Experiment
7. James Goetz, The Restoration of the City or Locality Church and Apostolic Leaders
8. Alan Knox, Unity and the Church in a City

ragedy has struck the family of Steven Curtis Chapman, long-time Christian Contemporary musician.  I wrote about it from the perspective of another adoptive family here on our Love Each Child blog.

My heart breaks for this dear family and the hurt that they are experiencing at this loss.  Please pray for them.

hose of you who have been reading for any length of time, or who know me personally, know I have a strong attraction to Starbucks. We don’t have a Starbucks anywhere close, but anytime we get “off the mountain”, we try to find one and visit it.

Recently, my good friend Alan Knox wrote a very creative post about Starbucks that I would like to recommend. It’s called “A Cup o’ Joe or a Cup with Joe“. I highly suggest that you all read it. Enjoy the comment thread after it, too.

I don’t want to give too much away, but just know that you should read it, even if you don’t drink coffee (you’ll understand, hopefully). Be forewarned, though: It might be a little convicting.

Until next time,

steve

am pro-life. Big surprise there, right? But there is something that has been bothering me about the whole topic of pro-life as it pertains to politics. And I would like to open up the comment thread here for discussion/input without much of a post here. Since we just had our primary election here in North Carolina yesterday, this is much more front-and-center on my mind.

Perhaps I’ll post more thoughts on the topic in a fuller treatment later on, but for now I’m just curious and need to ask the burning questions. So here goes:

Is there anyone who is willing to say that they are pro-life in every situation, without exception? I have heard many references to the following exceptions to what I would consider to be a truly pro-life position:

• An exception in the discussion about abortion is almost always stated (very matter-of-factly, I might add) for “rape, incest, and the life of the mother”. Are there people who are anti-abortion who do not hold to these exceptions? And my question for those of you who do hold to those exceptions: Why?
• The idea of “pro-life” to me goes beyond the abortion debate, although it is often seemingly limited to that. In light of that, I would say that many people who call themselves “pro-life” are pro-death penalty. So this seems to be another exception. Pro-life except the lives of certain criminals.
• Yet another area that seems to be a large exception is in the area of military action. From a political standpoint, it seems that the ones most opposed to abortion because they are “pro-life” are also “pro-war” in many cases. So an exception seems to be made for killing one’s enemies.

I’m not trying to start a huge debate, but I am very curious. If you hold to any/all of the exceptions I’ve noted, how do you reconcile that with a pro-life position?

Sorry for the heavy topic, but this has been on my mind for several years and I’ve never had the courage to really ask the question of anyone. Now that it’s fresh on my mind again, I thought I’d take the chance here.

Just to let you know, I was brought up believing every one of those exceptions. It’s been a way of life for me for my whole life. But I’m questioning now.