denomination

All posts tagged denomination

ONE – Small steps…

Posted by David Ward on 30/10/2016
Posted in: Community, Personal thoughts, Relationships, unity. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

warning-copy

For four or five months I taught unity to my congregation, which had grown to about 1, 500 people. At the end, I asked, “How many believe that the church is one?”

Many hands went up.

“Put them down. How many of you really believe the church is one?”

Even more hands were raised.

“How many of you are willing to prove it? To demonstrate this with your own lives?”

Many hands again.

“Good. Next Sunday go to the church closest to your house, whether it’s Catholic, Lutheran, or Presbyterian. Whatever money you normally spend on gas or bus fare to come here, give it to that church’s offering. Only those who live closest to this church come here.”

Silence. They didn’t want to accept the challenge. But a third of the congregation obeyed.

Eventually we gave two hundred people to the Catholic church, fifty-three to the Anglican church and others to other churches. Many good things came of this…

Juan Carlos Ortiz, “God is closer than you think”, p170-171

I felt I needed to begin this blog post with a health warning…once you decide to become part of the answer to Jesus’ prayer, “That they may be one”, it may require you to actually do something about it…and there’s no telling where it will lead.

Living as one church in a locality has certain implications, some of them costly, but ultimately, of great benefit to the Kingdom of God.

So…where do you begin? Here are suggestions of some small steps to make the prayer of Jesus a reality in your life and locality.

  1. Share the prayer

Regularly pray the prayer that Jesus prayed yourself. In many ways, there is more justification to say that this is the real Lord’s Prayerthan the one we have traditionally given that name! (The other one is maybe the Disciples Prayer…) Look for opportunities to become part of the answer to the prayer

  1. Overcome the obstacles

Be determined to accept that no difference is too big to be overcome. Structure your life and the life of your church (if you’re a leader) so you are able to respond freely to the Spirit’s prompting to worship witness and work together.

  1. Find a friend

Seek out another Christian from a different denomination or Christian background to yours. Share your stories of how you came to be a follower of Jesus and the ways you see God at work in your life and in your church.

  1. Worship their way

Get a friend to take you to a worship service at a church that’s very different to yours. Let them make a return visit. Compare notes, ask questions.

If you’re a church leader, close your building down once in a while and go and worship with another church…might be a good idea to warn them in advance. It might be possible to share in the leadership/music/preaching.

  1. Investigate their ideas

Do some research, read some books about their particular beliefs and ways of doing things. My advice would be to try to read what their own members have written about their beliefs, rather than comments and articles by other groups. Many myths about what people believe have been prolonged by passing on inaccurate understanding…this is especially true of the internet, where great care should be taken.

  1. Guard against gossip

However strong the temptation is we should make it a solemn promise that we will never speak badly of another Christian, church or denomination. Sometimes we may feel we have justification or have been sorely provokes…we need to grow in grace.

  1. Forgive each failing

I believe that justice is not about punishment or getting even…ultimately it’s about reconciliation, about trying to restore a broken relationship.

And that’s where forgiveness comes in.

We may feel that we have been hurt, marginalised and misunderstood by a particular person, church or denomination. Grace and forgiveness provide us with the only route to be reconciled…and that’s healing for us as well as for them.

one

 

“ONE” – Windows and Chapels…

Posted by David Ward on 08/10/2016
Posted in: Community, Personal thoughts, Spirituality, unity. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

playschool

If, like me, your memory of British TV goes back a few years you will have instantly recognised some of the characters from BBC’s Play School, sitting underneath the famous Play School windows. In every episode the time would come when one of the presenters would introduce a film clip of an activity or an exotic place by saying, “Today we can see such and such a thing through the square/round/arched window”.

For me, this is one way of thinking about the advantages of followers of Jesus being ‘one’. Each individual Christian, local church or denomination is like the view through one of the windows.

Imagine that through the windows we catch glimpses of what God is like and what he does in the world around. Put all the views together and you get a much bigger picture of God than each of us would have as individuals.

In his book “The Body Broken”, Robert Benson is discussing the ways we come to know God. He says:

“Think of…large windows, so to speak, through which groups of people are looking in order to catch a glimpse of the Mystery itself. Certain groups look primarily through certain windows: Catholics rely heavily on the view through the window of tradition, while Baptists look more through the window called scripture…While none of us, either as groups or individuals, are likely to be found looking only through one window, our primary points of view are pretty clear. One realises pretty quickly that no one window affords a view of the entire Mystery itself. One can also say that in the course of one’s own journey, one has looked through different windows and different combinations of windows.”

canterbury-cathedral_mapIf you don’t respond to the ‘Playschool illustration’, maybe the “Cathedrals and Chapels illustration” will work for you. This is developed by Brian Zahnd in his book “Beauty will save the world”.

Put succinctly, a cathedral is a huge building which often contains several chapels, all of which may be used simultaneously for worship. If Christianity is the cathedral, built around our confession of “Jesus is Lord”, then the denominations are the chapels where we each worship according to our own particular understandings of our faith and practice. This is great as long as we don’t make the mistake of thinking that one of the chapels is the whole cathedral…although this seems to be all too common.

Zahnd goes on to describe a significant discovery:

“One of the greatest discoveries I have made in my Christian journey is the discovery of the entire Body of Christ – the whole vast cathedral of Christianity…Whether it’s Orthodox theology and art, Catholic appreciation for mystery, Anglican liturgy and prayer, Protestant prominence of scripture, Evangelical emphasis on conversion, Pentecostal experience of the Holy Spirit – all of these ‘chapels’ have their particular treasures that have made Christianity for me much more rich, beautiful and astonishing.”

A bigger picture of God, much more humility about our own interpretations and theologies, a larger resource for worship and prayer, a united witness, and a chance to represent the alternative and subversive Kingdom of God all flow from our commitment to be one church in our locality and our world, meeting in different places and in different ways but united in our love for Jesus, our love for one another and our love for those who have yet to be introduced to Jesus.

That excites me.