We are one.
My wife and I.
Me and the others sitting beside me on a Sunday.
Our Anglican church in Cheltenham and the Baptist church round the corner.
Our church network in the UK and the church network on the other side of the world.
We are one.
Our unity in Christ marks the church out amidst a culture that is increasingly divisive and amidst a generation of people that increasingly lives in isolation one from another. The deep relationship we pursue with others in the church and our mutual dependence on each other is something that marks the church out amidst a society that is increasingly superficial in its friendships, and increasingly geared towards protecting self-interest.
Our unity in Christ marks us out because we are people who forgive each other for making mistakes, rather than suing each other for the slightest infringement or invasion of personal space. Our unity in Christ marks us out because we understand the value each person brings to the whole, we rejoice in their success, their fulfillment, their achievement, rather than use every opportunity that comes our way to walk over them in the pursuit of our own personal advancement in life. Our unity in Christ stands us out in the world because we are prepared to lay everything on the line and say that somehow ‘we are all in this together’.
Maybe having different dreams.
Maybe pursuing different journeys.
But still all in this together.
Our unity in Christ is expressed when we see the person amongst us who is ill and we go to pray with them and care for them. Our unity in Christ is expressed when we set up a food-kitchen and serve meals to people amongst us who are struggling to provide for themselves. Our unity in Christ is expressed when we go to the other side of the world to encourage a missionary who is being persecuted. Our unity in Christ is expressed when we join together on a Sunday and sing songs to God: we say ‘no’ the cacophony of individual words and tunes, and say ‘yes’ to the greater song of unified voices.
We were born to be as one. We were designed to live as one.
Someone once said that our unity starts at the point of disagreement. And there may be some truth in that because our unity is never really tested until we disagree. But actually, our unity starts way before any disagreement arises. It starts at the point we say ‘Yes’ to Jesus. It starts at the very moment we say ‘yes’ to Him as King and are born into His church.
It is a day one occurrence.
We are one.
Unity under threat
Our unity, our ‘oneness’ was the subject of Jesus’ intense prayer on the night before he was betrayed. He feared for us if we didn’t manage to stick together.
John 17:20 – I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you
Our unity was the subject of repeated attempts by Paul in his letters to protect from arguments in the early church (1 Corinthians 10; Ephesians 4, etc).
From day one we are made one. But from day one that unity comes under threat.
Disunity can arise through obvious sin or disobedience and, in one sense, those issues are the ones that are easiest to identify and arguably the most straightforward to identify a solution to. They may still cause a huge amount of hurt and conflict and distressing consequence but, as I say, they are normally the ones that have a more obvious way forward.
But there are countless other reasons that disunity arises, which are in the main a result of our imperfections as human beings living life in the ‘now and the not yet’ of the Kingdom: reasons that arise from Christians all seeking the truth, searching for the voice of God, but ultimately coming to different conclusions. And those are the areas that are harder to understand and harder still to know how to deal with.
In my marriage I work out unity by fulfilling the promises I made on that day in August 1995. To love, to be faithful, through sickness and health. Staying close, living under the same roof, sharing the same bed.
But in our church life, sometimes the best possible way to express out unity is not by staying, but by staying away.
Strange, isn’t it.
To protect the unity of Christ, we sometimes actually need to walk away from conflict.
It’s not God’s ideal. It’s not ‘plan A’.
But it may be the best thing to do. Just like Paul and Barnabas had to walk away from each other (Acts 15; 36-41). They had to walk away from each other to protect their unity in Christ.
Not Plan A.
But still a plan.
Theological Differences
I have never completely agreed theologically with anyone. I like to think that one day everyone else will catch up with me and come to the conclusions that I have come to. But until then, I reckon that I will always be at odds theologically, at least in some measure, with the people I share life with and share leadership with in church. I have led worship at many New Wine conferences in my time and I have sometimes shared a stage with people with whom those theological differences are very big. I do it because, despite theological differences, I trust them. And I do it because of my commitment to the bigger picture of New Wine. And it’s bearable because after a couple of days I can come home and not have to listen to the person ever again.
But I think that the more I have to share in leadership with someone, the more time I have to spend working closely with someone, the more closely I have to travel a journey of faith with someone, the more that our theological positions need to be closer.
If I lead ministry with someone then I need to be quite close theologically with them. If I share leadership with them, I need to be theologically closer. If I am in paid employment with them, I need to be theologically closer still. Because the closer I work with someone, the more those differences will become exaggerated, and the more that disunity could result: especially when the pressure is on.
When I committed to working at my church, Trinity Cheltenham, I left a church where I felt I would be a cause of disunity because of big theological differences. I left rather than staying behind and becoming the dripping tap. And because I have left, most of my friendships there have lasted and I can still visit the church and I still find a warm welcome.
Unity has been preserved but by a parting of ways.
Not plan A.
But still a plan.
Personality Differences
Personality differences will always exist in the life of any group of people and, the more time we spend with others, the more those personality differences can impact on the way we relate, work or minister together. In one very real sense, we just have to live with the fact that they exist and get on with life. But it seems to me that one of the ways to help deal better with such differences is to acknowledge that they exist in an open and frank way and not see them as a threat to one another.
One of my personality traits is that I am something of a perfectionist. If one of my teams works on a project or a piece of design or a song and says something like ‘that will do’ it annoys me because I don’t want things to ‘just do’ I want them to be ‘the best possible’. In the past this has cause friction, especially with the people in our team who are more pragmatic than I am, but over time we have come to a point where we can appreciate the strength that having both perfectionists and pragmatists on a team is a good thing.
I work with two other worship leaders on staff here at Trinity – and I think they are awesome worship leaders – but we have come to recognise that we operate in very different ways, especially when it comes to writing songs. One of us is stronger prophetically, one of us is more progressive and one of us (guess which one) is a perfectionist. There have been times when this has caused frustration, especially when we write songs together. But once we sat down and acknowledged it, we got to the place where we could recognise what our natural personalities and gifts brought to the table and we are definitely stronger because of it.
Not more uniform. Not any less diverse.
But stronger.
Vision Differences
The trouble with too many of us is that, when we get a dream, a vision that we believe comes from God, we feel that everyone else in our church, our denomination, our network, has to agree with it, embody it, embrace it and live it out.
But actually they don’t have to. Because God is a God of many visions and there is always more room in kingdom of God for another one. Having different visions doesn’t mean we become disunited by pursuing them.
The planet is so desperately in need of the message of Jesus Christ that it is going to take many, many dreams, visions, churches and projects to make it happen. When we go into all the world to make disciples, we go with one message but we go a thousand different ways, travel a multitude of different pathways and employ a plethora of methods to achieve it.
In our town, we have a number of churches, with different visions, different ways of doing things, different styles of worship, different ways of sharing their faith. So there is plenty of choice. And if someone decides to leave our church for another one, we bless them on their way. Because we know that unity is sometimes maintained by not being in the same building with some people for too much of the time.
But when I do sign up to a leader, to a church, to a community, I sign up to their vision. So when I choose my leader, my church, my community, I need to understand the vision, and even if I don’t agree with it all, I need to embrace it. There is of course, plenty of room for debate, for influence, for a vision that can emerge and grow and shift emphasis over time. But if I sign up, I put up.
If I sign up, I put up.
When I started in paid worship ministry there were very few such posts in Anglican churches around the UK – and also very few within the New Wine network. This is now increasing – and I think that is a good thing as it shows the wider church’s priority for developing worship is increasing. But this brings a danger: that us worship leaders may get into the whole ‘career worship leader’ mentality, where we take on a paid position more to serve our worship leading career than to serve the vision of the church we go and work for.
And in my mind, if you take a job as a worship leader in a church without signing up wholeheartedly to the vision of that church, you will almost always end up in a frustrating place, a difficult place, a place where you could put unity at risk. We are often told as we choose a marriage partner that we should never choose a husband or wife because we think we can change them. We choose a husband or wife because we love them.
And my advice would be this: don’t become the worship leader in a church with big plans to change their vision. Join a church because you love that church and want to be part of it and serve the vision.
Because if you sign up, you have to put up.
A final word
Some people in leadership manage to co-exist and work with people who have very different theological frameworks, personality types, visions than they do. I am not naturally one of them – because for me, life is too short to be arguing about such things for too long. But I am willing to accept that people can make it work, and I have, over the years become more pragmatic in my leadership approach. And I know that, in many ways, I am fortunate enough to have found a church and a senior leader with whom I am pretty close theologically, that I don’t clash with personality wise and with whom I pretty much share the same vision.
But I am always reminded of something that someone once said to me on this issue, and it’s this: ‘You deserve what you tolerate’. It sounds harsh, but essentially it is this: you pay your money and you take your choice; you make your decision before God and you live with the consequences.
And ultimately, this has to be our approach: for although we can provide a framework to help us, ultimately the voice that we need to be obedient to is the Lord’s. There probably never will be a formula for success, and so we are always going to have to do our best to hear the voice of the Lord and go with it.
I want to finish with a quote that came our way recently, and it comes from a Bishop in Kenya, where we are building relationships with as a church. And he said this: ‘If you want to travel quickly, travel alone. But if you want to travel a long way, travel together.’
The hard truth of the matter is that sometimes we do need to go our separate ways to protect our unity. But at some point we need to be able to find people we can work with. And actually, I wonder that if all of us looked a little closer, and worked a little harder, we would find those people closer to home than we imagined.
Neil Bennetts
