First, a definition of terms:
It must first be stressed that we use these term to describe spiritual realities, issues of ultimate significance. As such, we admit immediately that they signal states known to God, but not by us regarding each other. I might be as certain of my status as of any other thing I can know, but cannot really prove it to you. While you might come to the conclusion I am indeed of one status or the other, and for very good and logical reasons based on extensive evidence, you cannot truly know. In choosing to call each other "brother" and "sister" as fellow believers, we are making an assumption based on the evidence at hand. Further, this assumption is based on evidence laid out in Scripture. The guidelines are found in several places, and are sufficient for the purpose of deciding with whom we should fellowship as with Christ Himself.
At the outset, that evidence is often nothing more than the declaration of the other. If my declaration is not adequately supported by the evidence of my life, you are commanded to reject my assertion of being saved and treat me as one lost. The grounds for doing so are equally sufficient in Scripture. For both inclusion and exclusion, we often speak of whether we see Christ in the other. This matters so much because we are expected to find others of faith for fellowship and ministry. We are a part of the Kingdom, part of a single Body of Christ. If I find Jesus in you, I am obliged to love Him in you, which obviously means loving action toward you. It means you have a claim on my personal resources, in that Christ owns them and you have a claim on Him. All of this is clearly laid out in Scripture, and to cite the applicable references here would take up a great deal of space. If you have read the New Testament but once, you'll recognize these principles.
There are no Lone Rangers in this faith life. From the very start, humanity was designed to commune with God, and thus each other. Sin creates the barrier; faith removes it. The Lost cannot truly commune with anyone, for their spirits are dead. The Saved, quickened to Eternal Life by the Savior, cannot avoid it. If you are saved, you are in the Kingdom, and everyone in the Kingdom owns a piece of you, and you of them. You most certainly can and must pray and worship Christ individually, but just as surely you must do so in communion with others. His Holy Spirit makes possible the command to love those with whom we share the Kingdom; His power is manifested in love, His love. That's one of the greatest miracles on earth: I can love someone in Christ when there is no earthly reason to even notice them. It's part and parcel of the miracle of saving faith. Faith and love can be discussed separately for academic purposes, but are indistinguishable in practice.
Love requires action; it is a verb. In Christ, it requires action of the Body. Our combined faith-love can overcome any human barrier. To act in faith-love is also to worship. Our actions are an act of worship. Coming together in One Spirit to worship and serve is a continuity; they cannot be separated. It is incumbent on us to find a way to worship-serve with others in Christ. Yet we are each individuals. If you fail to see how faith-love includes respect for each, then you sorely need to study the Word more. How often did Paul write that we are each an individual expression of God by our various gifts from God? He warned us no two servants of the Lord would express Him in quite the same way. You dare not assume that your particular gifts are somehow superior to those of another, and that your service is better. All are a necessary part of what the Lord does here on earth. We are His chosen incarnation, His hands and feet. We are Christ born anew, each of us.
To stand beside you as we lift our voice to the Lord in thanksgiving and praise is easy, even if we don't even share any human tongue. Worship transcends that. Working together in the lost world is a little more difficult, because we will naturally have different assumptions how to meet human needs in love, but still possible. Someone with a gift for it will have to take the lead and make some decisions to prevent chaos. Such a thing rarely fails when believers assemble for that purpose. When we need to sit down and discuss our weaknesses, the barriers are much higher. First, it is absolutely necessary that we have a means to communicate, some form of common language. The more intimately we share, the more developed that shared language must be. Obviously, human language is built on a vast background of common experience, otherwise words have no useful meaning. It's nice to be able to write fluently and produce fluid prose, but only if you understand my selected figures of speech. If we start from scratch, we'll spend an awful long time gaining a common pool of words and expressions. That's why humans take so long to mature from infancy and childhood.
Assuming we have all that, we still must bridge the unique experiences we each gained from meeting Christ. Surely there are common elements, but He comes to each of us in our own isolation, and does not bring each of us into the Kingdom in precisely the same way. In emerging from lostness, I gain a picture of God that will inevitably be my own, just as your experience with God brings your own unique view. Often we can share that; sometimes we cannot. Further, what keeps me faithful to Him may not move you so much, and vice versa. As more of us gather in His name, the variations become ever greater in number. Common elements will arise, just as surely as many of us share a certain hair color, for example. Some will share easily via common experiences, such as having survived in the same military service. For others we share precious little; fellowship is exceedingly difficult. Without the miracle of grace, we'd have nothing to share. I am required to try my utmost in faith to bride the gap, but it will take time. Just getting to know Jesus better will take the rest of my life; getting to know you half so well may take longer.
It is altogether likely that we will eventually hit a snag. In our individual experiences with Christ, we will come to conclusions about Him that are written on the heart indelibly. My unique pain and suffering will leave scars which you cannot understand. As we go through this life, our Enemy attacks each of us where we are weak, and no two are alike in that, either. There are moments when Christ alone stands with me, and we share things for which no other human is equipped. These times will shape my understanding of Him in ways that you cannot share. We are His Bride, and the reality is not so far different from marriage. It's not so much secret as it is private. The marriage bed is a sacred place of two, and only two. I may not even have the words to express that unique experience with the Lord. So it will be with you. If I do attempt to share it, you may be forced to reject it, because it is simply too foreign for you. If I attempt to teach others of Christ from that experience, you may conclude I am a heretic, that I am a threat to the peace, harmony and love in the Body. You might conclude I am not saved, and you are not required to fellowship with me.
Over the past 2000 years, we in the Kingdom have naturally divided into those with whom we share some elements of experience in Christ. To worship and serve in groups requires organization. Chaos is the natural enemy of spiritual unity; even so is organization the natural enemy of spiritual freedom. We have found in our two millenia of experience there is a place of tension somewhere between the organization and freedom that permits us to be effective. That place varies over time and geography. Organization by its nature requires dampening individuality. There is of necessity a certain amount of sameness of some sort. The greater the sameness, the greater the efficiency, if for no other reason than the time factor -- there's no need to discuss much if all agree. Sameness can be thrust upon the group by circumstances, as when an emergency threatens the very existence of everyone. It may be adopted by consent when the group in question can detect few differences. There are thousands of ways to create, enforce, or surrender sameness, and we see it in church polity the world over. Some groups arose over that question of polity alone. Others arose over the things for which sameness was demanded. It is the very nature of congregating humans that requires larger groups have greater organization. Organizational overhead -- the expenditure of resource, both tangible and intangible -- increases exponentially as the group grows in size and the rules remain the same. On the other hand, larger groups have the advantage of economy of scale. That's why smaller churches band together for mission work, because smaller churches working alone can't afford to support even one missionary in a spiritual frontier.
As the human race increases in number, it is only natural the Kingdom citizenship from among humans will also increase. Bigger groups also mean a greater variation of individuality. Naturally, that leads to greater subgroup specialization. In the introduction to his letter to the Ephesians, Paul uses a Greek term to describe the Kingdom: koinonia. This is the term used to describe a large estate, administered on behalf of an owner usually not physically present. Thus, "stewardship" is a common translation. We are obliged to make the best stewardship of the Lord's resources. Long human experience shows that means a specialization, a division of labor for the most part. This accords nicely with having various recognizable types of spiritual gifts. Since we are most certainly at war with Satan, it is a short jump to seeing that our stewardship is expanding our Father's estate by raids into the Enemy's territory. We are liberating his assets, those enslaved to sin.
While the American experience is a military ruled by incredibly detailed regimentation and regulation, that is not the only model that works. Even in America, our most successful units are the ones least regulated because of the higher skill of the individuals. Self-discipline replaces regulation. An army of conscripts is just one step above slavery, and just about as useful in battle. They will fight only to survive. An army of devoted warriors requires a lot less leadership and expense. If they are trained further to work together and take advantage of all their varied talents and skills, they require almost no supervision at all. That's the vision of the Lord's Army. It is absolutely essential that we all have some common teaching and training, but equally essential that we each excel at something different. Without the uniqueness, the army risks missed opportunities that inevitably arise in battle.
The trouble comes in deciding what must be shared and what must be unique. That most of us can agree on something is why there are so many groups. We find people who operate enough like ourselves that we join them. That there are so many different kinds of groups is a tribute to the wide variety of ways we operate. This is the paradox of the Kingdom. We organize out of necessity, and it naturally leads to organizational divisions. The institutional church is hardly the objective. Woe to those who think it is, for they will be entangled in the mere trappings of faith. Our churches are loaded with folks who are devoted to the organization thinking that is devotion to Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is our oneness in the Spirit that matters, not the organizations we must assume to express that oneness. Organization is a tool. It can wear out or become obsolete. It is clothing; when the climate of operation changes, we wear something else.
Efforts to unite the disparate organizations are wasted. Christ called us to be one in Him, not in our organizations. Satan would love for you and I to become so hung up on the mechanism we forget the mission. Jesus died on the Cross to save people. We are one in the Spirit -- that is Truth, regardless of our thoughts and feelings, for there is only one God. To seek from that a utopian oneness in organization is to deny the Spirit, for He cannot be chained within the weakness of fallen mankind. A Christian denomination is nothing more than an organization.
Ed Hurst
21 September 2004, revised 08 July 2006
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