Keeping Diversity - By Guilt or By God

"What'd you think?"

I took a second to gather my thoughts. Here was another Church List of Goals. A Mission Statement they call it . . . just as well-defined as an Wall-Street firm.

"That's quite impressive," I said. "And...they're reaching all of these goals?"

Embrace all people regardless of

• Age
• Gender
• Class
• Country
• Culture
• Creed

"We're proud to have a Global emphasis. And we cater to the diverse inter-generational culture of the church. That why we have a classic style, contemporary, and charismatic services. We want everyone to feel comfortable."

"And the children," I asked, suspicious of the answer.

"Oh, a very large, active kids ministry. They have their own separate facility...so they don't disturb the adult worship."

"So they are not exposed to their parents in worship during the 'big church."

"No. That would prove to be too much of a distraction."

My friend saw me drop my head. I took a deep breath.

"And just how is this mission statement, this global acceptance, going?"

Now it was time my friend paused in his sales pitch. I knew something was troubling him about working for this huge, international ministry. By all business and church models it was a model of  success. Huge staff. Multi-cultural, but services were held segregated from other language groups, the whole body seldom exposed to each other except a once-a-year big rally.

"Honesty, it seems a bit contrived," he admitted. "Don't get me wrong, I've been on staff long enough to know the motives and hearts of the pastors. They really want to do and be God's people to their world. They are constantly teaching and preaching how inclusive we are in the Body of Christ."

I decided to jump in and get both feet wet. "It sounds like they are trying to CREATE unity in the Body by preaching their Mission Statement."

He thought for a second and nodded in slight agreement.

"Could be" I said, "they are trying to do the work of the Holy Spirit and not doing it very well."

He looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"They're preaching unity, but you've got different language groups isolated from the other members of the Family of God. You have a disconnect between the children and the adults, then suddenly expect the same children to know what faith and worship is like when they turn into teens and young adults. And they have to advertise and gin up interest in someone's good idea mission project to keep that global label."

"Pretty much." he said. "But we're a huge organization. We've got to have something for everyone."

"Or is it you're trying to keep everyone busy? You see, NO WHERE in Scripture are we told to establish or achieve unity in the Body of Christ. That is a natural by product of the presence and freedom the Holy Spirit."

Unfortunately, this is all too common practice in many churches. The moment you put a parentheses around what God and his Spirit is and isn't allowed to do in your church, a barrier is erected which grieves the Spirit. He will not violate our road blocks of doubt and doctrine. Despite the full blessings, unity, and freedom He wants to release, a Spirit of Religion seizes control in an effort imitates the work of God by busyness, guilt, and legalism.

Paul the Apostle said in Ephesians 4:3, "Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Endeavoring comes from a Greek work "make haste or to hurry" and keep is "to guard." He telling us to be in a hurry to guard against anything that comes to interrupt that unity the Holy Spirit makes in the heart of fellow believers.

Is it possible to have a church with the cross-cultural, inter-generational, diverse congregation and a global outreach without preaching it into existence?

I'm happy to say, YES. For more than five years I've watched a median-size congregation, in an out of the way Texas town, walk in this kind of unity.

It began when, as a congregation, they made the decision to no longer pass judgement on anyone who walked into the sanctuary. They responded to the Spirit's call to be "God's emergency room" rather than His museum of show-off saints. Leadership and congregation, alike, decided to remove the parentheses from what they were afraid God might do in their lives.

The by-product of these decisions has been the unity, diversity, and an outreach with has touched lives from the orphans of AIDS victims in Africa to transformed drug cartel members in Latin America.

It's amazing what will happen when we're brave enough to scrap our best schemes, get out of the way, and let the Holy Spirit do what the Business of Religion struggles so hard to accomplish.

Business of Religion - Forced Diversity (Part 6)