I know that several of the readers of this blog are very concerned with unity between churches and church groups, particularly between the various restoration movement fellowships. Let me share something with you that I read today from Dan at Cerulean Sanctum:

I go to Clear Mountain Community Church in Williamsburg, OH. It’s an independent Pentecostal church that is one of the most unusual churches I’ve ever encountered. What makes it unique is that it is a church merge (as opposed to a split–that in itself is rarer), but it’s the merger of a Pentecostal church and a Church of Christ. Yeah, you read that right. I’ve been there a year-and-a-half and I still can’t believe it.

If that COC can find enough common ground with a Pentacostal church to merge with them, why in the world can’t the rest of us in the restoration movement, with all that we share, come together?

I came across this at Mike Cope’s blog the other day:

I’ve mentioned before the three views one can have of parents: a child’s view (my parents are perfect and have no faults); an adolescent’s view (my parents are embarrassing imbeciles); and a mature adult’s view (my parents have strengths and faults).
Those are the same views one can have of a religious heritage.

It got me thinking of us ICOC & ex-ICOC folk.
It seems to me that it’s time for us to grow up.
There are some out there who are still children. The ICOC was all good, nothing wrong. The past 3 years were from Satan, a distraction and it’s time to get back to it. All of it – the discipling, the hierarchy, the evangelist control, the ‘we’re the kingdom’ mindset, everything.
Others are like adolescents. There was never anything good in the ICOC. This is from folks who were immersed in it for years, but now it’s the spawn of Satan. Everything that comes out of an ICOC church is evil, their motives are selfish, they are out for your money and anyone still involved is dumber than a box of rocks and duped.
Time for some of us to grow up. Our ICOC heritage is a blessing and a curse. Many were saved, the gospel was preached, many nations were reached, HOPEworldwide was formed, much good was done. But we must be honest, we were pretty stupid, arrogant, hurtful and even duped at times too. Let’s learn from our mistakes and even laugh at our former foolishness, but please, let’s not pretend it was only either a bed of roses or a torture chamber, OK?

I promised you some follow up on our UP process. Actually, this is more my reaction to the end of the process.
Wednesday night April 26th, after the church had a chance to voice their opinion on the UP via the Likert Scale vote, our minister sent an email out detailing the results and saying that since the congregation’s general opinion roughly mirrored the leadership’s, he would be sending an email to the Unity Porposal Group at noon the following day (the 28th) indicating our signing, unless there were objections.
It was at this point that my emotions went into overdrive. It felt that the careful deliberate process went into high gear all of a sudden. 15 hours from ‘vote’ to signature, after a month of deliberation! I had a hard time getting to sleep that night, my mind in overdrive about how we needed to anylize the results more, think about what they mean, etc. I did eventually sleep and after waking up I sent a hasty email back to him expressing my concern. I was also concerned that about those who were not at midweek and therefore hadn’t yet been heard.
His response, in a word, was “OK.” For one, he agreed that we should try to capture the remaining opinion on the matter, just as we had done on the elections for the board of directors. But he also indicated that if I felt strongly about it and it was going to make me struggle to act so quickly, we would wait. Even though in his mind the process had run it’s course and the results were not disputable, waiting a few days for my sake would not hurt anything.
After I had time to pray and to go over the numbers myself, I realized that there was no way to intrepet them other than the church, on average, was in favor of signing the proposal. Yes, those who were against felt more strongly about it, but averaging the scores still was in favor of signing. The ony way that the results would be changed is if nearly all the remaining votes were ‘not in favor’ and that was unlikely. My reaction was emotional not rational.
After my prayer time, and therefore in my right mind, I sent him this email:

Thank again for this, it does my heart good.
I could go through my analysis and my perspective, but I actually don’t think that’s as relevant. We can go over them later, it might be good. It will be good to talk, but I wanted to put my thoughts on ‘paper’ first because it helps me crystallize them.
The bottom line is that this decision hurts. Not because of anything anyone said or did or because I feel that the process failed, but actually probably more because it succeeded. We got the perspective of the church, and the church (on average, as a whole, more or less, however you want to put it) is in a very different place than I am. I told BG last night that the lack of questions was surprising to me and it just confirmed that I’m on the fringe. He responded “You and me both, brother”
And that’s what hurts, being – or at least feeling – outside of the mainstream, on the fringe. It hurts and it’s scary. If I’m on the edge, what happens if the edge moves and I don’t? If I’m on the edge, will I be left behind if the church moves? The UP showed me that there’s a feeling within our movement that we need to go back toward where we came from. I have no desire to go back in that direction personally. In some ways, though I treasure my heritage in many ways, I don’t feel like I, personally, want to be a part of ‘the ICOC’ anymore. The ‘vote’ (and I use quotes because I know it’s not really a vote, but I don’t know what else to call it) shows that most of my church does want to go back. And then a part of me wonders if I belong here.
PLEASE, don’t read anything more into that than just what is stated, I have no desire to leave or even explore leaving. I fact, on many levels I feel more tied to the CCOC than before. I’m just sharing my heart and my hurt. Given that, I think in addition to contacting the third of the church that did not get a chance to be heard, it might be prudent to contact the 10 folks who expressed strong feelings against (assuming we know who they are) and see how us moving forward with signing would make them feel. I just want to make sure that, while listening to the 99 we don’t leave the one behind. If you agree and I can help in that, I will. It may be appropriate to have one who feels as they do talk to them.
I have absolute confidence that this is what you intend – not leaving anyone behind. You have shown me nothing but grace through this disagreement and others, even though I’ve given you reasons not to, and for that example I am grateful. You’ve responded to my needs, even when born of emotion (and producing in you frustration 🙂 ) and made sure I’ve been heard. Thank you.
I understand that at the end of this, unless an overwhelming majority of the remaining folks are not in favor of signing, there is no logical reason we should not sign. Only if it is going to cause one of us on the -2 side harm, should we perhaps reconsider. Of course, what then if not signing does the same for someone else on the +2 side … Ugh.
I wish there was an alternate choice besides yes or no. I wish we could say ‘pass’, we are neither in favor or apposed and just want to keep doing what we’ve been doing. The Toronto Church has done the closest thing to that, but in doing so, of course, they are still saying ‘no’. You can read their gracious response to the UP here (bottom half of the page).
Anyway, I’ll work through my emotions and we will move on. I understand that means signing the agreement before the week is out.
Thanks again for listening.

I was the the only one to react and ask for the signing to be delayed. I was the only one to express this kind of frustration. Yet, because of the emotions of one of us, all of us waited. In this one action we lived out Romans 14, and for that my heart is pleased. Not so much that my emotional needs were taken care of, but that we are a church that would do that for one of us.
We got a chance to talk later and he reasured me that not only was my perspective valuable, it wasn’t unique. My take on the UP itself may have put me in a small subset of the church, but my thoughts on the broader and more important issues of unity, cooperation with other churches, reaching out to non-ICOC church and so on were shared by most if not all of the church. The differences were not fundamental but ones of interpretation and implementation. Not should we persue unity, relationships with other churches, etc, but how should we.
It’s interesting that , much like Pinakidion, I found that some share the same thoughts as I but came to very differnt conclusions. I was concerned that the UP would end up in division and a return to old ways and could not support it for that reason. Our minister had very similar concerns, yet felt it best to sign with that awareness and be watchful. I desire to build bridges to other RM churches and could not support the UP because I saw it as building walls between us, yet another in our fellowship who longs for such relationships as well was a strong supporter of the UP (writing in a +2.5, that’s how strongly they suppported it!) It’s amazing thing how people with the same vision & goals can come to very different conclusions on the methods.

Well, it is decided. After over a month of deliberate, open dialog, the Columbus Church of Christ will sign the unity proposal. While I am sad and disappointed in that decision, the process that lead to it tempers my emotions quite a lot.
We began with a discussion at our leaders meeting back on April 2nd. Nearly all of the family group leaders and others present had read the proposal and we simply went around the room expressing our thoughts. I was surprised that most people at that meeting had some level of reservation or concern with it. The reasons for concern and the level of it varied, but based on what I heard at that first meeting, it seemed that there was not a majority of support for the agreement.
Next, we asked the membership to read it and we had a discussion at our house church midweeks on the 12th. Then, the leaders came back together on the 23rd for a little more discussion and a ‘vote’. It was not a simple yes or no vote, but what’s called a Likert Scale question. The question was:

Are you in favor of signing the Unity Proposal?
+2 -Strongly in favor
+1 – In favor
0 – neither in favor or not in favor
-1 – Not in favor
-2 – Strongly not in favor

The idea was to capture the strength of opinion as well as the simple yes or no. This process was then repeated at our congregational midweek on the 26th.
The results were that more people wanted to sign than did not. For the leadership group, close to 2/3 were in favor, about 1/4 not and the rest neutral. Those not in favor had a stronger feeling than those in favor, but the result was an average of about +.54.
For the congregation (without leadership), about half were in favor, slightly under a third neutral and the rest not in favor. Again, those not in favor tended to feel slightly more strongly about it, with a resulting average of +.41. The goal of polling the congregation was note to have a democratic vote on what to do, but to get the pulse of the church, to give everyone a chance to be heard (2 chances, actually) and to make sure that the leadership’s consensus & decision was not out of line from the church as a whole.
Combined then it was a little more than half for, a little more than a fourth neutral and the rest against. The overall average was +.45.
And so we sign, I think the email went out today. Am I disappointed? Yes and no. Yes, because I had hoped for more, I had wished that we could somehow rise above this. It seems that we aren’t there yet and that makes me sad. Perhaps I should instead be sad that we as people continue to fail to rise above these sort of things.
But I am not sad about how we went about this. Everyone who wanted to be heard was heard. We stopped the process when just one of us needed to pause to collect his emotions (You’ll never guess who. More on that later). We did not find agreement, but we reached a consensus. I know ther are ways that we could have perhaps done better, but not much.
As our minister has said this is not the end of our striving for unity. It wasn’t really the beginning either, just a step on the road. It was potentially a perilous one, and even if I don’t like the result, I think we handled it well.

A shameless rip off of another’s shameless rip off:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

Soren Kierkegaard

So, do you study to conform yourself to God’s way or defend your position?
Thanks to Greg for the quote.

A few weeks ago I learned of an incredible story about how one person’s love provided God an opportunity to transform another’s life. It was amazing and I wanted to share it, so I wrote up the story and sent it to the individual who had made it happen to see if I could publish it here. I was crushed when the answer came back a firm “No”.
Though it was disappointing, they were absolutely right. The story was too personal, to intimate, involving another’s sin and the resulting hurt. The victory was in how the hurt was overcome, but to share it meant too much would be revealed. Those who knew were very encouraged, but had to remain quiet.
That story made me think a lot about how God works so many times in silence. Lives are transformed, relationships rescued, salvation happens a very few know. I think that too few of those stories that can be told, are told, but so many simply cannot be shared:

• To share the victory over addiction, you must expose the addict.
• To share the marriage saved from infidelity, you must reveal the adulterer.
• To share the share the victory over abuse, you must expose the abused (and often the abuser).

To share the powerful ways that God works to save people from sin, their own and others, reveals the sin. That is simply not appropriate many times. Yet it is God at His best, fixing the hardest things the man has tried to cure and failed. I want to shout from the mountain, “HEY! Look what God did!” but in doing so, I expose the sin, the hurt, the trauma that was healing and being forgotten.
It seems that God is satisfied with the Glory gained from those in the inner circle of the situation, those “in the know”. He doesn’t need our widespread praise and mountaintop proclamations. Actually, I suspect that he isn’t much interested in the praise of those intimately involved as much as he is in the saving of the one who was wounded. He knows only he is good. He knows only he can fix it. He knows it was his doing and that man could not. He rejoices, not in our praises of his works, but in the life renewed and in how it draws those involved a little closer.

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

Luke 15:3-7

I wonder, as I look around my church and just in life, what ways is God at work in these lives? What stories of repentance, transformation and salvation could be told? I imagine there are many, and even in ignorance, I am encouraged.
BTW – If you have a story you can tell, why not go on over to Mike Boyink’s Stories About God and tell it? Too few of these stories get told to wider audience when they can, and Mike’s web site is one way to do so.

Go read the latest from Keith at Blog in My Own Eye. He writes about our obsession with getting it right in Christiandom. And condemning those who don’t. He thinks weve got it all wrong and I think he’s right. There’s a lot of great quotes, but in hoping you go read it in it’s entirety I’ll give you this snippet:

The point, to me, is that a lot of our self-devised rules are pretty arbitrary. They serve to separate, not to unite. They do so by creating castes of “I’m better than you” folks who can live by those rules and look down on those who don’t; who can preach them into hell for their infidelity. They create super-apostles versus lesser believers who can never feel confident of their faith. They foster an “I’m right and you’re wrong” attitude that is totally inconsistent with the truth – that we are all wrong, and only Jesus is right.
You see, I’m not sure that Matthew 18 is entirely about the proper procedures for handling conflict between brothers.
I’m thinking it might also be good tongue-in-cheek advice for how not to impose your fifty-volume perfect-bound personal rule book encyclopedia on someone else: Just leave them alone. Let them struggle through their own challenges, not yours. Because if you love them, you can’t possibly excommunicate them forever, based on your imperfect knowledge and your imperfect judgment.
C’mon. Can you really picture Jesus saying, “… treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector” without a hint of a smile playing at the side of His mouth? The One who came from heaven to redeem pagans and to call tax collectors to follow Him?

Jesus came and he overturned more than jsut tables, he flipped the entire way of viewing God and his rules. But we quietly go back after Jesus and place the tables – and our understanding of God – right side up again. We need our rules and regulations, we need to have laws to obey and to be able to identify others who are ‘right’ as well. But that wasn’t Jesus. He assoiated with the wrong people and acted in the wrong ways. He ticked people off because he didn’t fit within their notion of what it was to be Godly. he just wouldn’t paly by the rules.
Are we too afraid to do the same?