Lack of Unity?

Today a young Christian woman(a wife and mother) wrote to me about her church. She wrote about the lack of unity. About separations between the older women and the younger woman(the younger women were trying to encourage relationships and were not being successful).

I wanted to tell her it sounded like she didn't have a "church". Church IS unity.
After all, look what we have in common! Paul says we have one
body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father. I
hope Christians recognize the cohesion that we
have in Christ. There is cohesion, a glue, a unity here that holds us all
together, moving toward a common purpose. And I think we are seeing first
hand how unity in the body of Christ, the church, can move us ahead. The
Bible rightly insists that God’s people have unity.
But we have to listen. An insistence on unity must never be confused for an insistence on uniformity. Unity and uniformity are not the same, and in fact may well
be opposites! A lot of people these days think that unity means uniformity,
but they are wrong. Unity brings together diverse people to use their own
uniqueness in a group to accomplish a common purpose. Uniformity pushes
away those who are different, insisting on lockstep agreement and results.
Unity adds people to the group; uniformity divides people from the group.
Unity results in a multiplication of people, uniformity results in a subtraction
of people. Unity is a vital imperative, but uniformity is a fatal attraction.
An insistence on uniformity does not cause unity. It causes division. We
are seeing the results of an insistence on uniformity in our world today.
Fundamentalism in Islam, Judaism, and even Christianity is insisting that
there be a uniformity of thought and culture in order for us to all get along.
Isn’t that what all this terrorism business is about? Or what about the issue
of race relations? For a long time our country lived with social systems of
uniformity, but we certainly had no racial unity. And heaven knows that for
centuries churches have sought to have uniformity, trying to coerce and
force believers into a mold of their own making thinking that if they could
just make everybody dress right, or act right, or believe the right way then
there would be unity. But no, there was no unity in that model. Only
uniformity.

The Bible says that unity comes when diverse people are bound together by
the gospel of Christ. Unity is diversity with cohesion. Diversity in the
church is no accident. In fact God designed it that way. In verse 11 it says,
he “gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be
evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s
people for works of service.” That word “prepare” translated in KJV as
“equip” is a word used for setting a broken bone or joining ligaments back
together. It is sometimes a political word for bringing diverse parties
together so work can proceed. It is a word of cohesion. So the task of the
apostle, and prophet, and evangelist and pastor/teacher is to bring different
people together for God’s service. And believe me, there are different kinds
of people in God’s kingdom. In I Corinthians Paul talks about how some
have the gift of prophecy, or teaching, or administration, or hospitality, or
giving, or mercy. Not much uniformity there! And over in Galatians the
Bible says that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male
nor female, for you are all one in Christ.” So for unity in the church we
don’t give up who we are for the sake of uniformity. We join with others
who are different than we are to create a body that is greater than the sum of
its parts. So we come to church and those who are wealthy are bound
together with those who are poor. Democrats and Republicans work side by
side because of the common purpose they have in Jesus. Blacks and browns
and whites and yellows are joined together by Christ, even when the world is
trying to pull them apart. And you may well be sitting next to a person who
has a whole different way of looking at life and God and maybe a different
way of interpreting the Bible, but you are joined together by Jesus. One
person has remarked: Differences are not meant to separate us but to
draw us together. I wish Christian people could get a good dose of what
God is really trying to do through the church. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle where
none of the pieces are the same, and alone they accomplish nothing, but
when they are fit together they make a beautiful picture. God has no desire
for us to break relationships with fellow Christians just because they are
different than we are somehow. God is piecing people together who may be
different colors or shapes or textures until they form a whole entity that is
better than any one of its parts. That’s what unity is all about. It’s about
diverse people being stuck together by God to accomplish God’s work.
Now we can see what a healthy Christian community looks like. A healthy
Christian community, a healthy Christian family, a healthy Church is different kinds of people doing different kinds of things, bound together by the love of Jesus to accomplish the mission of the church. It is diversity with cohesion. It’s that kind of interlocking of different people that keeps us strong. Or as Paul says, “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 the cunning craftiness of
men in their deceitful scheming.”

Were it not for the common experience we have in Christ Jesus, many of us would
never even know each other. Yet here we are, working together towards a
common purpose, bringing what we have to the table and offering it as a gift
to God’s kingdom. And it is this interlocking of people, this diversity with
cohesion that makes churches mature. Some people are so afraid of
differences. Some run from diversity, afraid to be exposed to anybody or
anything that doesn’t fit into their box. But the Bible says that it is a
cohesive diversity that makes the church healthy and mature. A healthy church succeeds in accomplishing God’s will. There are some real and practical implications to that vision. Some of those implications may be difficult for us. We will not always agree on everything. And that’s OK. In our cohesive diversity we will be able to stick together because together we can accomplish our common purpose. Together, and only together, we all win.