It is rare to find a church that is completely homogenous in terms of beliefs and traditions. My own experience of leadership has been in churches where people have come from all kinds of backgrounds, reformed, Baptist, Brethren, Anglican, Pentecostal, charismatic, cessationist, young earth creationist, old earth/theistic evolution, egalitarian, complementarian etc. There’s a good chance that unless you are very small that your church will see such a mix as well. It’s possible to achieve a kind of homogeneity but that tends to rely on finding your niche and drawing the crowd from a wide area. I’m not sure that is a great thing to be doing. Surely we want to be reaching a local community. Indeed, for many in the churches Ive serve in, their newness to Christian faith means that all those labels are meaningless.
So, how do we keep diverse churches united? Well, I think there are three potential ways in which we can unite, things to unite around. The first is around a specific mission, if there’s a sense in which there is a focus to reach particularly people or fight for a specific cause. The second is around a compelling vision for what a church should be like. One particular thing becomes the priority. For example people might set aside differences on mode of baptism for a church where there is a strong reputation for contemporary worship. Now, both of these are better than attempting to unite around one charismatic personality -though that happens too. However, the reality is that those will only work for a time.
Our deeper unity is found when we learn how to make Christ the main thing and that means God’s Word will be central. A church can have a diversity of views when there is a willingness and hunger to go to God’s Word, to be fed well, to be sharing the good news in it with others. This also means that every member is willing to let God’s Word disagree with them.
Faithroots 