I was talking with Kimo the other day and our conversation lead to the question of whether or not success kills any church that exists. He was telling me about his friend, JT, who is in the process of deciding if he should leave the church he’s in and begin something new. JT has run out of patience with the organized church and is pondering the idea, with some other friends, of beginning a group that will meet twice a month, or so, to visit a church and then sit around afterwards at lunch or over coffee and discuss the topic that day. This will be their new church; one where they don’t have to belong to a membership role and can avoid all of the structure and organizational junk that goes with a church.

I have another friend, who I remember as I write this, who wanted to start a congregational gathering of people that would meet each Sunday but never have a pastor. They would get together for worship and either invite someone in to speak or one of the immediate congregation would put something together for that day.

As Kimo and I talked we discussed that any group of people who would want to get together to worship God, if it is sincere and meets a spiritual need of others, would find themselves attracting other people and growing to where an organizational structure would be necessary. Success, in this case success means the authentic worship of God and the accepted invitation of others to join in, would require the same trap that we feel exists in churches today – organized structure that steals the life out of the heart of people.

I learned many years ago from my good friend Henry, that as people we put our everyday events and communications through a ‘filter’. This ‘filter’ was his word for the process of putting what we think and hear through our own minds and then breaking it all down so that we can make sense of it. He used this language a lot early on in Brenda’s and my counseling sessions before and after we were married. A common experience shared between Brenda and I would leave us with two different understandings of what took place. While to her it was taking a walk around the neighborhood with the possibility of seeing someone we might know, to me it was missing the Raiders football game, which aren’t aired very often in the Pittsburgh market. Neither perspective was right or wrong according to my good friend Henry, although I vehemently disagreed with him; it was just that we saw things differently and had to come together through proper communication. I suggested that the discussion take place during halftime and commercials.

We do this same type of filtering when it comes to church. Structure and organization are logical elements that address practical issues. Many times, when the worship of God is put through a logical filter, it loses its life, its emotion, its heart. Worship is something that is heartfelt – an emotional connection to God. The movies are full of chick-flicks that show this tension between heart and logic. (If the term “chick-flick” offends you, I would like to take this moment to thank you for allowing me to play such a huge role in your life that you would let something so minor be that big of deal.) The basic storyline of a chick-flick is to present a girl being torn between two options: one logical and one heartfelt. The logical option can be the guy that will be able to offer an immediate solution to her problems (although she generally feels no emotional connection with him), her job that will aid her ability to be an independent woman for the rest of her life, or some sort of life enhancing freedom. Each of the logical options comes with a certain sacrifice of life, emotion, and love. The second option is always THE guy, THE job, THE situation where our heroine (that’s the term for a female hero, not the narcotic) is able to finally feel free. This option requires a sacrifice as well, but the sacrifice is always found acceptable for the result of a fulfilled heart. In the church, worship is this second option. Worship must be heartfelt; authentic worship that fulfills the heart of God is worth sacrificing ourselves for.

Multiple truth. Relative truth. Call it what you want, but it’s everywhere. “That may be true for you, but it’s not true for me” can be heard in most coffeehouses, break rooms, and student unions in Average City, USA. This endeavor to define truth in an age where truth has no definition has become one of the greatest challenges in my attempts to share my faith. Is it impossible? No. It does present significant obstacles, though, as well as a decent amount of confusion for anyone who is seriously trying to rethink their place in life. Where does this mindset of multiple truths come from? What perpetuates the desire to continue to find something that meets each of us individually rather than find the collective common ground and allow for some variation within the common mindset?

My answer, so far, is that the problem begins with us. It begins with Christians. People of the church who would rather go to the next corner and begin their own church rather than stay on this corner and work out the problems while holding to unity as a higher goal than an individual’s right to determine an individual interpretation of truth. After all, it is our interpretation of truth that drives us apart, isn’t it? I believe one thing is true and will separate from the group that believes differently. Isn’t this how the protestant church began? What we have lost along the way is Luther’s desire that he held until his last breath, that the church would once again be united. It was not his intention to begin another church. Separation was not his goal. There were problems that needed addressed, and he held his ground that they be addressed until he was kicked out. He unwillingly obliged with this action when he would not recant. This began a mindset that we have held to this day: we feel vindicated in splicing off of the body of Christ to begin our own work when we can label it as a desire for the ‘truth’. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even take something as large as truth to be our reason. Sometimes all we want is to ‘do church’ our own way; a way that is ‘more meaningful’ to me.

Can you blame the world for being in a place where truth has so many meanings that it has become meaningless when Christians, the ones to whom the truth of the One, Eternal God has been entrusted, cannot even agree on what truth is? We have allowed our individualism to become the driving force of what we seek rather than the truth of Christ, which is not only love, but unity. 1 Corinthians 8 talks strongly about this. There were those in Corinth who valued their own knowledge over the unity of the church as a whole. Paul was quick to tell them that their own freedom, however real and validated it may have been, was not to be exercised at the expense of the rest of the church’s spiritual welfare. The unity of the body of Christ was not to be sacrificed over personal freedoms.

This is not to say that problems don’t exist in the church, even in the theology of the church. But it is to say that when we lack unity, we lack the role in the world that Christ expects us to have. How is it possible to be the Body of Christ when we can’t even agree on what to call ourselves? One step further, how many of the people in the Presbyterian can tell you why they are different from the Methodists or the Lutherans or the Catholics or the (fill in whatever denomination you want)? The same is true of many of the non-denominational churches. I was raised non-denominational and I can tell you that I had no idea what separated us from anyone else, except that we knew the ‘truth’ that the others were missing. Whatever that was.

My stand is that the unity of the church should be valued over and above whatever disagreements we may have. The creeds of years gone by were an attempt to maintain the unity of the church while correcting heretical thought that tried to create disunity. We should maintain an openness to understand that our theology may need looked at as we understand more of what God is saying in our world. After all, I once heard it said that theology is not the truth, it is an attempt to protect the truth. I believe this to be correct. Our theology, our attempt to protect the truth, should not lead us to break apart the greatest asset God gave us, the Body of Christ. One truth; the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the gospel message. Anyone who can agree with this truth should be our ally, friend, and brother/sister.