2008 May 30 » Theological Musings

Archive for May 30th, 2008

The Major Roadblock to a City Church

Friday, May 30th, 2008

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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