professor

What if God took all the churches in your community or your neighborhood and threw them all together and told their pastors to work out their differences so that the congregations could work and worship together. How far do you think the experiment would go? How long would it take before it unraveled and various groups branched off again, not based on geography but doctrinal and practice divides? I’m convinced that even a direct command from the mouth of Jesus Christ would not be a guarantee for Christians to give up their personal issues and “strive for the unity of the Spirit.”

There is a need in the global church to recognize that Jesus Christ believes that there is only one church. This truth carries deep ramifications for our life as believers.

It works on the local level in this way: there is one church of South Holland, IL (which is the village in which I live), but the one church meets in a variety of places and formats. Because of our emphasis on the principles that separate us, we have created a smorgasbord of inflexible institutions, job duties with accompanying salaries and human traditions. These many times are in opposition is an openness to the variety, spontaneity and world-changing dynamic that comes from holding tightly to the head and loosely to the varieties of relationships.

But if it’s true that there is only one church, it should inform how we read and interpret and carry out the word of God.

For too long, Christians have held to their deeply-cherished traditions and intellectual certainties.

There is a place in the one body for all the streams of theology, worship, service, and structure. My problem (and it might be your problem too) is that there is not room in my local church or my heart for all these manifestations of the life of Jesus.

This website is dedicated to One Body; therefore we will seek to bring in the various streams from all the centuries, all the geographical locations and all the groups of Christians that we can access. This might shake you up. We should all be shaken.

We will not promote individual differences but will celebrate the life of Jesus in his multi-faceted people.

Tell me what you think.

I’ve taken plenty of personality tests. If you’re anything like me, you’ve discovered that you can manipulate test answers to take on any type of personality that you wish to carry for that day, or week or season in your life. It’s tempting to imagine yourself as more creative, assertive, a stronger leader, etc. But usually reason takes over, and you accept again the strengths that don’t seem so glamerous and the weaknesses that always dog you.

What if God took a personality test? What would it look it? I think I have the answer. In Exodus 34:5-7, in response to Moses’ desire to see God’s glory, the Lord exclaims the type of personality that he has. Listen….”compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, loving, faithful, loving (I’m not just repeating the word), forgiving, and just.

I wonder how many of us would like to be known by those adjectives on the job, in the marketplace, amongst our peers. Many of us, men possibly more so, would shy away from having these as our dominant traits. If so, it’s only because we don’t know our Father as he really. As I am experiencing God as compassion, grace and so forth, I am being healed and begin to crave this type of attention from him. I also realize that the world is craving this too.

Over the next few posts, I want to explore this. Here’s a newly written (but not newly felt) desire: I want to be so consumed with the love of the Father that I am filled with all of God and seek to bring this healing love to the nations, one person at a time.

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