Richard Lawton
March 2009
Unity
The motivating force for the foundation of Churches of Christ was the disunity of the church. How could Thomas Campbell have had his knuckles rapped for daring to admit to communion a member of one of the other fifteen branches of the Presbyterian church?
On reflection, he wrote in the Declaration and Address:
The church is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally one.
Is it?
Campbell was influenced by the prayer of Jesus:
That they may all be one, even as you and I are one, that the world may believe.
Anything less on the part of the church is flying in the face of Jesus!
Paul, writing to the tragically splintered Corinthian church, gave significant space to his own call for unity. The case is clear: this is God’s intention for the church. So the Campbells were right to make a stand for unity.
Restoration
The other plank on which Churches of Christ were born was restoration. It stemmed from the call to unity. If we are to come together, how? The only way, said our forefathers, is to clear away all the human additions to and subtractions from the life of the church and get back to the ‘pure’ practice of the faith as we find it in the New Testament.
Easier said than done, we’ve found out. Which part of New Testament Christianity should we restore? Those early followers of Jesus weren’t exactly a united mob. There appear to be a number of different approaches to the practice of the faith: in the set-up of the local congregation, for example, and in the relationship between the congregations.
Which plank gets the emphasis?
Part of our own internal disunity has been a clash over which plank is most important.
Some of us have leaned towards unity: let’s do our bit towards fulfilling the prayer of Jesus, and together we can work out the rest. Some have leaned towards restoration.
Ironically, these differences in emphasis have become the cause of disunity among us. Unlike our American counterparts, Australian Churches of Christ have officially held together, despite the tensions over the years. Unofficially, we are often in different camps.
Structural unity or the unity of like minds?
Unity proponents have traditionally gone for the big picture. Let’s join with Christians from other parts of the church in every way we can: locally for combined services or outreach; at local, State, national and international levels in councils of churches, in which we serve God together and do everything we can to further the cause of structural unity. We have entered bilateral talks with other denominations. In a few local areas we’ve merged with other denominations, usually the Uniting Church. In some countries our churches have officially merged with other denominations.
The biggest problem with mergers, locally and nationally, is that they only partially work. Locally, that may not matter much: those who don’t want to join with the united congregation simply seek out the nearest Church of Christ and became part of that fellowship. Everyone may be able to be satisfied.
Nationally it is more difficult. Just as Australian Presbyterians didn’t all go into the Uniting Church but perhaps half constituted a continuing Presbyterian Church, so in England, where we were small anyway, a significant number formed the continuing Churches of Christ, while others merged into what became the United Reformed Church. If that happens in the other denominations also we are left with one more denomination than we started with. The proponents of the merger feel they have done the right thing by uniting, as they believe Jesus would have them do, but is that unity: one combined group, and a number of splinter groups?
In Australia, we had observer status at the formation of the Uniting Church. For us, to have pressed the point at that stage would have led to our going separate ways, some in and some out. And it was probably easier for the uniting denominations to get on with their thing without the markedly different emphases that uniting with Churches of Christ would have entailed.
On the other hand, many of our people have not concerned themselves at all with structural unity, unless it has been to strenuously oppose it. A good number, however, have been happy to join like-minded Christians in various mission activities: Billy Graham Crusades, Tear Australia, World Vision, religious censuses, Bible Society …. They have good friends in other denominations. On special occasions, especially Christmas, Easter or Pentecost, they may worship with them, but that’s it. They talk of a spiritual unity. Councils of churches, and union talks, are seen as distractions to the real mission of the church.
Some fear that if we joined other denominations our peculiar restorationist emphases would be lost. Others suggest that we are more likely to be heard from within than from without.
A few people even see Satan at work in any moves for us to come together. One world church is seen to be the work of the enemy, or an attempt to build a modern tower of Babel and usurp God.
Others may cynically say that if we struggle to see eye to eye with each other within Churches of Christ, how are we ever going to achieve unity in the larger body of the church.
Some fear that with increasing secularisation our churches will grow smaller, and eventually be too small to have any effective voice within the wider church and community. The Quakers punch above their weight, but if we get as small as they are we may not have anything distinctive enough to likewise punch above our weight.
So where to from here?
(and perhaps these are points for discussion)
1) I personally believe that Jesus’ prayer (John 17) still has to be taken seriously. Anything less is sin, because it is contrary to God’s will. Of course, the big question is How? How do we best co-operate with God so as to move towards its fulfilment?
2) Should we initiate mergers with, say, the Uniting Church or Baptists, as something we can do in the direction of God’s unity? The downside is that this would take significant energy on the part of our leaders. Should this be a priority in the life of the church? Is there energy for this and other emphases of the church? There are still enough of us for some to devote themselves to this part of God’s will while others concentrate on other parts of our mission, but would we trust others to do this on our behalf and take each other along in these various aspects of God’s mission?
3) Or do we abandon any conscious efforts towards unity, just as we have all but abandoned our State and national Christian Union Committees? To do this we would probably have to also abandon any pretence to being a movement for the advancement of Christian unity, which could be more honest!
4) At the least, we need to hang in with our representation on councils of churches and combined church efforts. Anything else would be virtually saying to the rest of the Christian world, We don’t need you. We are not interested in the unity of the church. Our original plea was misguided. However, this needs to be by conscious decision of our various conferences and not simply be the preserve of a few people who are keen on that sort of thing. It also needs to be properly funded, lest the lack of funding says we are not taking it seriously.
5) Should we not, at least once a year, preach on this part of the heritage and plea of Churches of Christ. Otherwise, how are newcomers to our churches to know about this? How else are our people to keep this focus in mind. Pentecost is a traditional time for this; if our focus from Acts 2 is rather on the coming of the Holy Spirit, perhaps the Sunday before Pentecost would be appropriate.
Conclusion
Numbers 1, 4 and 5 above should be self-evident. The difficult question is whether we take up numbers 2 and 3.
Our forebears willed that we dissolve into the larger body of the church. That larger body is not yet united, so we could dissolve only into a part of it, perhaps there to continue our witness to a wider unity. I frankly can’t see us doing this together. So what would we achieve?
Those in leadership may (sinfully?) prefer to be large pebbles on a small beach rather than small pebbles on a larger beach, but we’d no doubt give theological reasons for it.
Do we even try? Or do we give up on this part of our emphasis?
Can we even talk about it without pointing the finger at each other?
If we believe in our witness as Churches of Christ, at the minimum unity is the elephant in the lounge room about which we MUST talk.
