I’ve written in the past on the power of Christian reconciliation. I’m convinced that there is almost nothing that can match the glory given to God when His people are divided – sometimes deeply and bitterly – and then reconcile. It is usually intimidating to initiate the process and carries the risk of deeper hurt, but with love and a little humility God is powerfully glorified.
As I wrote about earlier, Aaron at Radical Congruency recently went through some hurt at the hands of folks from his own church. I’m very pleased to report that he has reconciled with nearly everyone involved. Through this whole process, as is usually the case, he even learned something about himself. His post about it is a powerful testimony to God’s plan for our lives, namely that we love each other deeply, go read it.

As I’ve mentioned before, the church I’m a part of is an offshoot of the Churches of Christ. One of the things that attracted me to this church was it’s passion for thestandards and misson of God and for the restoration of first century Christianity. They were determined to get into their Bibles and get it right. Let’s set aside all of our preconceived notions of Christianity and look at the Bible fresh and see what it says. I learned that it said a lot of important stuff that I wasn’t aware of and that a lot of stuff that I thought it said just wasn’t there.
One of the side effects of this sort of passion can be an over the top stand on docrinal issues. In other words, an attitude of “This is right and there is no way around it and if you think otherwise you’re in sin!” In the CoC’s, we are unfortunately famous for such lines in the sand. Some draw a line on musical instruments in worship, some draw one over one cup for cummunion vs. many, sone over kitchens in the church building. A nearly universal line drawn by all CoC’s is on baptism for salvation.
We believe that the Bible clearly teaches that baptism is for salvation. Through it we receive the forgiveness of sin and receiving the holy spirit. There are plenty of verses to back this up, in fact I consider it God’s plan of salvation. The early Christians practiced it and it was only much later in church history (around 400 AD if memory serves) that the idea of any other kind of salvation came to be widely accepted. God wants us, no commands us, to be baptised to receive his forgiving grace.
But the point of this post isn’t the ‘rightness’ of baptism. I haven’t even pointed to scriptures or adequately researched the historical things I’ve spoken about (from memory of classes I’ve been in) No, it’s about the arrogance of my CoC family. Frankly, we’ve gotten many things right. The trouble is we look down our noses at the rest of mainstream Christianity as the only ones who’ve made it and Baptism is our litmus test for your salvation. I’ve been there. In fact, my church group, the International CoC’s, took that arrogance to a new level. We looked down our noses at the rest of the CoC’s as well as mainstream Christianity. We had a lock on Christianity, we were ‘God’s modern day movement’ (yes, that’s exactly how we described ourselves.)
We’ve missed the point. We’ve ‘strained out a gnat but swallowed a camel’. Yes, baptism is an important doctrine, crucial to our slavation. Yes, we ought to teach it to everyone we study the Bible with. Yes, it is God’s plan of our forgiveness. But no, it is not the most important thing. More important than that, it’s not the proof of one’s salvation. Even more to the point, deciding who is saved or not is not our role. That belongs to God and God alone. God has said that he expects us to be baptised in order to fellowship with Him, but it is His perrogotive to make an exception if He so chooses. Should we count on it? No. Should we treat baptism as trivial or unnecessary? Absolutely not. It is one thing to be ignorant of God’s commands regarding baptism, it’s quite another to understand them but simply ignore them.
This post springs from an interesting post at Radical Congruency on baptism. Aaron’s point was that it is not up to us to judge one’s salvation. We should, as Priscilla and Aquila in Acts 18, insruct other on God’s plan for baptism, but if they refuse to listen it is God’s role to decide what that rejecton means. The post lay dormant for a few months, then exploded in a flurry of comments a few days ago. Many of those new posts were judgemental, condescending and mean. What’s more, it turns out that many of these posters were not strangers from accross the country, but members of Aaron’s own congregation. That folks who are supposedly so passionate for God can say such hurtful things – and in a ‘public’ forum to someone in their own church (would they stand up in the local mall and shout those same comments?) – tells me that perhaps they’ve missed (or forgotten) the point of Christianity.
And Aaron, in response to the pain inflicted, has decided to stop blogging for a while. What a shame.

Justin at Radical Congruency had an interesting post about the tension between traditional church structures – any structure really – and the room to freely express, explore and expand our relationship with God. The Emergent Church (First time I’ve used that phrase here. If you’re like me, you’ll need some help figuring out what that means.), that is those trying to emerge from the doldrums of traditional Christianity to live a full life that Jesus promised us, is attempting to throw off the old ways and explore new ways of building a church community. At Justin’s suggestion, I’ve decided to post my response here:

What I hear from the ’emergent’ (I’m only beginning to understand what that means) is a longing for something more. More than a prayer ritual and a Bible reading schedule – a real connection and relationship with God. More than a Sunday service and midweek Bible study group – a real community of believers. More that a set of rules and regulations – a real life that’s free, exciting and fulfilling, not restrictive and dull. So we abandon tradition in pursuit of real, meaty Christianity. No pastors, no buildings, no structure – just live as a disciple! (correct me if I’ve missed what the Emergent Church is about)
There’s a fallacy in that thinking. We need the structure. We need a worship schedule to remind us to go and worship together regularly. We need a prayer list to remind us to pray. We need a Bible study schedule to keep us going. And on and on. Perhaps you are good at one or two of those, but none of us are good at all of them. The challenge is how to have the structure, the accountability, the discipline with out that system becoming the focus. It seems that we take our eyes so easily off of Jesus and onto the system. Then it becomes more about the doing then the why we are doing.
My church is wrestling with this now – and have been for over a year. We’ve spent the last year or so dismantling the structure that our church was based on and trying to recapture the heart underneath. It’s been immensely challenging. We’re discovering how much of who we are spiritually was tied to that structure. We had disciplers that advised on nearly everything. We had mandatory meetings and expected levels of giving. At one time we had input on nearly every aspect of your life. We had a pretty radically committed group as a result, but take it away and make them stand alone and their knees get wobbly and they’re not sure what to do. Structure can build us up, but can also be a crutch.
I’m not sure how we’re going to get to where we need to be. Some structure is needed but many are fearful of it and it’s empty results and lack of God focus. With the structure gone, there’s a void. The easy answer is to fill that void with a new structure. A different method. What needs to fill that void, however, is God, but how do we set up – structure – a church, a community, to do that?