Unity at any cost?

Welcome to De-Commissioned, a place for former members of the Great Commission movement (aka GCM, GCC, GCAC, GCI, the Blitz) to discuss problems they've experienced in the association's practices and theology.

You may read and post, but some features are restricted to registered members. Please consider registering to gain full access! Registration is free and only takes a few moments to complete.

[maranatha]

This quote and verse was on the Morale Booster today that John Hopler sends out:
****

"The continuous and widespread fragmentation of the Church has been the scandal of the ages. It has been Satan’s master strategy. The sin of disunity probably has caused more souls to be lost than all other sins combined." Paul Bilheimer

"Make my joy complete by being of the same mind..."
Philippians 2:2

****

Sounds good, but just this year I heard Phil 2:2 used in a GCx church to justify not laboring together in a bible study with a person who recently went to another strong bible-believing church.  Because he was no longer in the same church, then therefore he must not be of the same mind??

Smelled like a 1991 issue to me. (elitism)

I know unity is very desirable, but at what cost?

Any thoughts one way or the other on the above would be welcome.

[skewed_grace]

it's an interesting type of unity. FIRST, they spent a good quarter of a century segregating themselves as a movement, NOW after they've totally alienated themselves and sort of got what they wanted, they go around and preach love and unity.

[namaste]

it's an interesting type of unity. FIRST, they spent a good quarter of a century segregating themselves as a movement, NOW after they've totally alienated themselves and sort of got what they wanted, they go around and preach love and unity.

Building on this, I think the issue is a distorted definition of unity.  To GCx-ers, unity means only doing things with the "movement," implicating the sort of elitist attitudes that maranatha mentioned.

Another view of unity implies that we should be looking to build bridges amongst groups, and emphasize similarities and points of agreement, instead of nitpicking and contorting Bible verses in order to tear other groups down.

Any GCx-er preaching about "unity" (which is really secret code for life-long loyalty to GCx) is a hypocrite.  When was the last time in the last 2000 years that the Christian church was actually unified?!?!?!

They're using unity as an excuse to keep people within GCx churches from associating in any meaningful way with other Christian groups.  That in itself is the opposite of unity.

ETA: I'm not minimizing the importance of unity.  What I'm saying, is that GCx is part of the problem, and they won't be part of the solution unless they make some sweeping, fundamental changes.

[namaste]

Sounds good, but just this year I heard Phil 2:2 used in a GCx church to justify not laboring together in a bible study with a person who recently went to another strong bible-believing church. Because he was no longer in the same church, then therefore he must not be of the same mind??

The verse in question is this:

Philippians 2:2 (New International Version)

then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

Are you for real?!  That verse was manipulated to mean that people shouldn't do Bible studies with non-GCx groups?  :shock:

That's pretty stinking egregious.   :evil:

[Massman]

to all this is the amazing amount of church shopping and dropping.

No doubt some have left for good solid reasons.  No doubt many run from one church to the next, only to find themselves there.

I would hope we could land some place to love a community for lifetime.

Any depth in relationships takes time.  Where the flip side is so dangerous is when people start feeling exposed on any front, they head for the hills.

For those wounded, they may only view this from the perspective of their wounds.   Not real clear vision for that.   God will give you grace.  But human nature could cause us to flip so hard that now we live in the never never land idea of unity with all, and no real accountability on your lives.  Be realistic and full of faith at the same time.  We can only have so many relationships with real depth.

[Linda]

I would hope we could land some place to love a community for lifetime.

I have to admit that this sounds really great on the surface. But, it seems to me that it is, in reality a very shortsighted, limiting, and as Namaste just mentioned, elitist view of what the Church really is.

You can't put the Church in a box.

Think about it. A bunch of people came to Minnesota, or Colorado, or Iowa, and started churches. Why would they do that? There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Bible believing evangelistic churches in those states already.

It seems to me that the reason that would be done is because they thought the current churches weren't good enough, or doing enough, or doing things the way THEY thought things should be done.

Here's the funny part, I sort of agree with that. If someone feels God has given them a certain focus, or mission field, or way of doing things, I wouldn't want to stand in the way. So, why then would these churches start preaching loyalty to THEM for the rest of your life. Wouldn't loyalty to God mean that believers have the freedom to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and move where they are led.

Moving on to a different church or a different state might be church shopping, but it might not be.

Remember, point 2 of the error statement is an apology for elitism:

It is a truism that when one chooses some­thing, wheth­er a home, automobile, job, or spouse, it is usually because that person believes his choice to be the best one.  It is no different with a church.  Most people choose to become members of a church because that church, for a variety of reasons, most closely reflects what the person per­ceives to be the "ideal" church.  There is nothing wrong with that.  The problem arises when one makes the subtle shift from believing that "this is the best church for me" to a conviction that "this is the best church, period."  We confess that this latter belief, though never, to the best of our knowl­edge, public­ly taught and probably only rarely expressed, infect­ed our churches for some time.  There is no simple explana­tion for how or why this happened, but there are a number of factors we believe were, in some way, responsible.

Also, remember what the statement said they were going to do about it:

Concerning a member who wishes to leave a church that is part of our association, we are committed to expressing our appreciation, both verbal­ly and in a letter, for that individual's service to the Lord while part of the church, as well as the hope that God will continue to use them in the future.  In addition we will do all we can to make their depar­ture and transi­tion a com­fort­able one.

In my book, accusing people who want to leave of church shopping, disloyalty, or lack of commitment violates that promise. I believe they have this statement on their web page so the issue is do they still believe it and are they still committed to practicing what they promised.

All I can say is that our departure was not a comfortable one. We did receive a letter that I recall had a small paragraph expressing thanks for our service to the church over the years, but the bulk of that letter was correction and rebuke. Oh, and did I mention that a copy of that letter was sent to our adult children. (Yeah, I know I've only mentioned it a hundred times now!)

[maranatha]

There was a missions video shown at Faithwalkers this year speaking of-and I'm probably not remembering this correctly-so feel free to correct away- that spoke of "unity-centered evangelism".

Though unity is important, should it be so central?  Shouldn't Christ be the center of our evangelism?

I read something recently that seems related:

"I fear that the cross, without ever being disowned, is constantly in danger of being dismissed from the central place it must enjoy, by relatively peripheral insights that take on far too much weight.  Whenever the periphery is in danger of displacing the center, we are not far removed from idolotry." (D. A. Carson, a Bible scholar and professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)

John Stott agrees, " All around us we see Christians and churches relaxing their grasp on the gospel, fumbling it, and in danger of letting it drop from their hands altogether."

(both are quotes from Living the Cross-Centered Life, Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing", by C.J. Mahaney)

Thoughts?

[skewed_grace]

Any depth in relationships takes time.  Where the flip side is so dangerous is when people start feeling exposed on any front, they head for the hills.

you are absolutely right, BUT the process is somewhat backwards in the GCx movement. They expect the life-time commitment after the second meeting, whereas it needs to be natural. you don't love other people only because it was commanded, you love other people because it's a desire of your heart. you don't stay in a place for the rest of your life out of a law-binding commitment, you stay there because naturally that's where you've invested your heart.

Again, the backwardness of the process is when GCx preaches so much about the fruits of the spirit that the people get a little blind-sighted, and as a result start practicing these fruits without initially growing the spirit.  that's why we have people trying to stitch up their marriages only because divorcing would not classify as one of those spirit-borne fruits. and we have people committing to the local GCx churches out of the same motivation - because commitment and loyalty are supposedly the so passionately desired and EXPECTED fruits in a christian walk. now, are we really kidding God by unintentionally faking them?

[puff of purple smoke]

Any depth in relationships takes time. Where the flip side is so dangerous is when people start feeling exposed on any front, they head for the hills.

GC's expectation of commitment for life is often explained away as necessary to maintaining lifelong friendships, as you just did, but friendships in GC are not truly valued in this way. There seems to me to be a lot of what I would call internal-church-hopping that goes on in GC.

Think about it. In GC, your social circle, your life, is your small group. If you go from being single to married, you are procedurally switched to a new small group. Your friend ground changes entirely. If you have kids, you are again switched. Again your relationships change drastically. Generally the people being moved onto a new small group would lose almost all contact with the people they were formerly fellowshiping with from their previous "life stage." They might say hi to them after church now and then, but the relationships pretty much die down to the aquaintance level. This is expected and acceptable in GC, and I have seen it numerous times.

I feel that GCers are quick to throw around terms like "church hopping" and "lifelong relationships" as justification for the sermons about loyalty to GC for life, but that is not really what is practiced within the movement. It is a not a valuing of people that keeps asking people to commit to GC, it is a valuing (over valuing) of the movement itself. Elitism.

Remember Mark Darling's sermon on loyalty to GC for life. He says its only justifiable to leave your GC church if you are moving to another city that has a GC church in it. Does that sound like a group that demands loyalty to preserve relationships? No. This is a group of people suffering from serious issues of spiritual pride. They do not have faith in any other church movement but themselves.

[searching]

Funny thing for me is...we now attend two different churches! At times I feel very guilty about it, yet the people at one of the churches has no expectations of us at all, they have lovingly accepted us and our kids. For the first time in my church life I do not feel judged(only that brought on by myself).  It is funny though that when I tell people where we go to church now I feel this need to over explain why we are at two churches...like I am trying to justify it.

When I think about all of this and the elitism attitude it makes me sick.  And I hate to admit that when I was involved I had that attitude.  Though if someone told me I did I would have laughed at them and thought they were so wrong...oh how I drank the "kool-aid"...yuk!!!!!

[Massman]

i respectfully request you to consider some of what you said:

"you don't stay in a place for the rest of your life out of a law-binding commitment, you stay there because naturally that's where you've invested your heart."

We invest out of obedience to God and his word.  There really is nothing natural about this.

Let me share this example.  I had a doctricinal dispute w a friend and fellow leader.  We were at a real impasse.  I mean, we were not seeing each other at all.  But by the grace of God, and our choices, we endured.

We never reconciled our doctrinal differences to date, but the friendship is stronger.  

There is nothing natural about me staying in this relationship.  Frankly, I thought his beliefs were whacked!  But what kept me there was love, committment, obedience.   The same thing that kept him there.

These are the types of guys I would die for.   Man, I am glad neither of us bolted.

Also, if you had experience in a church or two, this is directed at all on the post, don't be so forward as to paint the entire  movement with these statements.  I have been in a gc church in Dubuque IA for 23 years and have a very contrary experience to much of the negative posts.

[puff of purple smoke]

Let me share this example. I had a doctricinal dispute w a friend and fellow leader. We were at a real impasse. I mean, we were not seeing each other at all. But by the grace of God, and our choices, we endured.

We never reconciled our doctrinal differences to date, but the friendship is stronger.

Are you suggesting unity is more important than doctrine?

[G_Prince]

Good points all!

It's very unfortunate how GCx interprets the word "unity" as extreme ethnocentrism. In order to be "unified" with other believers one has to identical in belief, lifestyle, and personality. There is no collaboration with anyone who looks or behaves in variance to the GCx code. This means churches down the street with nearly identical creeds and ideas about evangelism are seen as different, mistaken, or not doing church the right way. "Why would you want to spend time with anyone else," we are told, "when you can spend time with your true brothers and sisters in Christ, right here in your own church?"

In Mathew 12, however, Jesus seems to have a slightly different opinion. "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?’ Pointing to his disciples he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

The baptist women who loves and cares for her family is my mother. The episcopal man who volunteers at the local soup kitchen is my brother, and the Catholic nun who prays fervently for those in need is my sister.

GCx seems to see only the things which divide us Christians from each other while ignoring our comanalties. Real unity is in our common love for Christ and for our neighbors. Why don't they see this? Why is this restricted to their little group?

[Massman]

Linda, if your children found a church they loved, and served God in.

Where people cared for them, and they were cared for.  Where they were growing in God and made a lifelong committment to love these people, to serve God and pour out there lives unreservedly for God and people--why would that be bad???  I don't care if it is a gc church or any church.

My whole point is this, your last experience does not necessarily mean it will be your next one.

Uggh.  It may be impossible for posters to answer this question because of bias and past experience everything is coming back to GC faults.

Is it elitist to be committed to a church for life ?  (not just a gc church, any church?)

[AgathaL'Orange]

For some people being friends with people who believe completely differently than us DOES come naturally.  I don't feel like all my friends have to agree on ANYTHING really.  I just enjoy people and being around them (they may not always enjoy me!!!!).  I naturally have lots of friends.

But I THOUGHT that the GC people WERE my "natural" friends.  Then I found out they were "obeying" God and "investing" in me.  Wow.  Those kind of "relationships" really don't have the staying power without forcing it.

For me personally, I like friendships where you can discuss things whether you agree with each other or not.... lots of stuff in life is theoretical anyway.  It's fun to hear other people's views.

Anyway, that's just me.

[namaste]

Is it elitist to be committed to a church for life ? (not just a gc church, any church?)

Of course not.  What's elitist, is committing yourself to a church for life, and then deciding that EVERY other church is inferior to your church, that everyone who goes to another church is wrong, and that you'd be wrong for ever doing anything (say, serving in a soup kitchen) related to ministry that's not connected with your church.

In GCx, people aren't simply saying that GCx is the best place for themselves.  Oftentimes, they've decided that GCx is the ONLY valid place for ANYONE.

Does that make sense?

[searching]

Brian,

Glad you are having such a great experience.  My life, my marriage and many other relationships have been screwed by this mentality.  God does not call me or my husband to be committed to the church.  My commitment is to be to HIM!

I did not bolt from my relationships, I bolted from what GC beleives and teaches.  Too bad that once I left  the GC church those relationships have pretty much ended, not by my choice.  People in GC churches do not know how to associate with people outside the movement.  There are some exceptions to this, because I have several good friends who are still at the church.

[Massman]

I wish I was there to high five you on this post!

"I fear that the cross, without ever being disowned, is constantly in danger of being dismissed from the central place it must enjoy, by relatively peripheral insights that take on far too much weight. Whenever the periphery is in danger of displacing the center, we are not far removed from idolotry." (D. A. Carson, a Bible scholar and professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)

John Stott agrees, " All around us we see Christians and churches relaxing their grasp on the gospel, fumbling it, and in danger of letting it drop from their hands altogether."

amen, and amen, and amen, and amen.  Men and women, enjoy and relish your communion time w God.  We cannot forget the cross in all of our hardship and dialogue and disagreement.  The cross will never, ever, disappoint us!!

[AgathaL'Orange]

NO it isn't elitist to be committed to a church for life.  Of course not!


I just don't think that in this day and age we should not allow people to move away to do something different in life... especially if they think that's what God wants for them.

I DO think it is elitist for people to say, "God is not telling you to move to XYZ state because there is not a GCx church there."  

I pretty much think it's always elitist to speak for God on things that He really hasn't spelled out exactly.  That's just my opinion.

[Massman]

Thank you for dialoging sincerely.

I agree with you fully.