Church Unity Starts at Home

"But he, wanting to justify himself, said, 'And who is my neighbor?' And Jesus said to him, 'First, your neighbors are the people in your church, then the ones with whom you enjoy greatest doctrinal or ecclesiastical commonality, then those with whom you enjoy less commonality.'" -Said Jesus... never

Since moving to Englewood, we have been blessed to be involved in the nuts-and-bolts practice of Church unity. The pastors here talk about the One Church in Englewood, and mean it. They love each other, pray fervently for each other, and long for the unity they enjoy to spread to their congregations. Among the participants are Messianic Jews, Dutch Reformed, Anglicans, Southern Baptists, Assemblies of God, and nondenominational folks. We’ve even had one or two pastors who could get into trouble for associating with us, if they got caught at it. It's not every tribe, tongue and nation, but we're getting there. (We’ll have another post describing the Englewood movement more fully.)

A little while back, Peter Leithart's incendiary blog post "The End of Protestantism" began a fruitful conversation about how Christians ought to relate to each other, culminating in a productive round table last week and continuing discussion online. From our vantage on the cutting edge, we believe the current discussion is a giant leap forward, but some critical points are being overlooked or underemphasized.

In his opening remarks, Leithart said that the unity of all God's people is internal to the gospel. God is making all peoples into one in Christ through His Church. This point should have been a bolt of lightning, but instead, it hit the ground with a dull thud. The response was something like “Yeah, unity would be nice, and someday we will be one in both theory and practice, but right now we have bigger fish to fry; we don’t want unity in Christ to get in the way of the really important things.”

But neither Jesus nor Paul thought unity was a lesser thing that could wait until the last day. Jesus prayed for His people to be visibly unified in a way that would induce the world to believe in Him. Paul rebuked Peter for failing to eat with some of Christ's people, and described it as "hypocrisy," a failure to be "straightforward about the gospel." From our earliest days, visible, practical unity has been essential to our testimony and evangelism among unbelievers and our practical faithfulness to the gospel among believers.

Since visible, practical unity is so important, we must obey as far as we can. Like perfect sanctification, perfect unity will have to await the New Jerusalem, but we can and should anticipate it now, as Paul insisted and Jesus prayed for. But where do we start? At home, of course—but the way the issue has been framed has obscured one of our most important obligations in regard to Christian unity.

In the round-table discussion, Leithart laid out a big-picture vision of Church unity that would bring together all branches of Christianity. This seemed to all participants to be an agreeable long-term aim, but raised a number of questions about how to get there. Trueman, the self confessed nay-sayer of the group, suggested that uniting Roman Catholics and Protestants is an unrealistic starting place. After all, noted Trueman, there are a number of presbyterian denominations that share the same confessional standards. Shouldn’t we “start at home” and try to unite the more closely related denominations before we tackle the more distant branches of the Church? Doug Wilson, in a blog post after the event, agreed with Trueman, arguing that strengthening “local loyalties” will make “broader ecumenical loyalties possible.”

Leithart disagreed: “Does learning to get along with people like me, who share my religious beliefs and my whiteness and my middle-classness and my Republican politics, help me get along with African Americans and Hispanics, the homeless, Democrats? Color me dubious. Strengthening bonds with people like us might well make it more difficult to get along with people unlike us. Strengthening the tribe doesn’t seem a promising strategy for overcoming tribalism. Catholic means universal. Catholicity cannot begin at home because, by definition, what happens at home isn’t catholic.”

We agree with the point Leithart is after here, but there’s a problem with the language. This whole discussion assumes a metaphorical definition of "home" (meaning one's "home" denomination or ecclesiastical tribe) and "local" (meaning "nearest in confessional terms"). The fact that we allow the metaphorical to overwhelm the literal in this way exposes a significant blind spot.

“Home” and “local” first of all mean where you literally live. Your neighbors are not principally the people who believe exactly what you do and live in another state. Your neighbors are the ones who live 30 feet from your front door. As a church, your neighbors are, again, the people who live 30 feet from your front door. Your neighbor churches are principally the ones right down the (non-metaphorical) street, not the ones that believe exactly what you do, and have an address in another state. Defining “neighbor” as “those like me” is exactly what Jesus was speaking against in the parable of the good Samaritan.

Of course, you have a duty to love your metaphorical neighbor churches (churches in your denomination that live in another state), but not at the expense of your literal neighbors. The churches two blocks away are your literal neighbors, and you have a Christian duty to tangibly love them. This is difficult to do if you never spend time with them or even learn the names of their people.

Catholicity must begin at your literal home, because when Jesus said to love your neighbors, He didn't just mean unbelievers. Have some Christians from other churches over. Eat together, like Paul did and Peter (temporarily) didn't. Team up to love your unbelieving neighbors together, and see what happens. If you’re a pastor, become friends with the other pastors in your city; you’ll be surprised how much common ground you have and you’ll find the blessing of local, catholic, friendship a great encouragement. A friend close by is better than a denominational brother far away, as Solomon might have put it.

Of course, when you dig into practical unity, you will have problems. We're all sinners, and we have an enemy who hates what we're doing. We can also tell you from experience that many of the problems you imagine won't happen, and many of the problems that happen will surprise you. But future problems—real or imaginary—ought not to stop us from obeying the Scriptures to the extent that we can, right now.

Joe Anderson and Tim Nichols both work to further the kingdom by serving the united Church in Englewood Colorado. In addition, they serve the broader Church by publishing Bible curriculum and other tools for Christian education at Headwaters Christian Resources .