Unity, Churches, and Shopping

~ fundyreformed

As you go to and return from  your church today, think about all the other churches you passed by. Do you think some of them have fellow believers who likewise were worshipping our Lord because of His grace today? Have you ever really thought about the church down the street?

In this age of church-shopping, and church-pew-sitting, we forget that fellowship is to be around the great truths of the Gospel. In New Testament times, there often was just one church in any given city. The church at Ephesus was probably too large to meet in one place, yet it was a single church with many elders. The NT also shows us how much real inter-connectedness and unity existed between the various churches.

Our day is not like that, sadly. We have fragmented so much that there is a Baskin Robins number of church-flavors in even the smallest cities. Now I know we should be connected, intimately with a body of believers. But I want to encourage you to think about a post my friend Nathan Pitchford has written regarding the possibility of purposing to extend Christian fellowship to other fellow Christians outside of our own church.

Nathan’s post is especially relevant for my blog since we’ve been discussing Ken Field’s questions about the label Fundamentalist, and how that label might be adding to schism in the body of Christ. Let me close this post with a quote from Nathan’s post, and one more encouragement to go read it.

It is an interesting observation that, in those areas of the world where the Church is being persecuted, or is significantly in the minority, such manifestations of unity and love among believers of different denominations and doctrinal convictions is much more commonplace — and yet without the compromise of all the particular doctrines which each one holds dear, but rather a labor to understand and be understood, or, in a word, to grow up together to greater doctrinal maturity and unity. Perhaps this is because, to them, the battle is real, the enemy is ferocious, and they feel most poignantly their need for one another. I would contend that, in America, the battle is just as fierce, the enemy is just as deceptive and strong, and our need for one another is just as desperate. If we could have the scales lifted from our eyes but for a moment, even as Elisha prayed for his minister (II Kings 6:15-17), what differences would we see in the attitudes and practices of the American church today?

From “Shopping for the Right Church” by Nathan Pitchford. The post is also posted at Monergism‘s blog Reformation Theology.

One thought on “Unity, Churches, and Shopping”

  1. Bob,

    I found this article from Doug Kutilek’s “As I See It” articles, which was just published yesterday (3/8/2007). Here’s something from his newsletter:

    Real Fire From Heaven

    “And let it never be forgotten that here is the real test: ‘The God who answers by fire, let him be God.’ [I Kings 18:24]. Men have made finances and figures the test, and the church with the most statistics in its favor has been adjudged most favored by God. Fame has been made the criterion and publicity has created much that God never approved from heaven. And their number is legion who, in their Christian experiences, would have it read, ‘The God Who answers by feelings, let Him be God.’ But the test is FIRE, supernatural fire, not the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu [Numbers 3:4], but the heavenly flame of Pentecost.”

    “Too many of our meetings can be accounted for on purely natural grounds: we meet and sing and talk and pray and nothing happens that cannot be explained. We need some meetings that cannot be accounted for nor be explained away, where men must shake their heads and say, ‘We have seen strange things today.’ Some may attribute it to new wine, but it was that sort of meeting that added three thousand souls to the church in a day. The infidel who stood at a burning church and explained his presence there by saying, ‘I never saw this church on fire before,’ would be found multiplied by thousands if spiritually our assemblies caught on fire from above.”

    “Even fundamentalists do not escape here, for all too often they have the facts but still lack the flame. God is not revealed so much in correct theology; heads may be right and hearts still wrong. Painted fire may even be added to touch up the doctrine, but painted fire is not Pentecost fire; it will not burn.”

    “Think of the many tricks by which the church today apes the world to attract men and money. The business and financial and social methods of the age have been brought into the sanctuary, and the cleverness of man is employed to do the work of God. But the world has us beaten from the start at that game and God will not honor it. God works from above with fire from heaven and we put the Gospel to shame by stirring up a fire from our own sparks. Even the world knows the difference, and men only laugh at a church trying to beat the world at its own game. One meeting where God answers by fire is worth all our convocations in the energy of the flesh.”

    Vance Havner
    Road to Revival
    (Fleming H. Revell, 1940)
    ,pp. 14-15

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