Weird Ideas: One ChurchSample

Here’s a weird idea. There is one Church. Weird, because as anyone can tell you, there’s a lot of different churches all around. Black churches, white churches, Hispanic churches, and churches made up of every other ethnic background. Mega churches, micro churches, mid-sized churches, and house churches. American churches, Canadian churches, Korean churches, African churches, and churches to be found in every other country speaking every language imaginable. Modern churches and traditional churches. New churches and old churches. Churches meeting in city cathedrals, steepled white-framed buildings in the country, and converted box stores in the suburbs. Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Anabaptist, and non-denominational churches. Even Coptic and Assyrian churches. One estimate says there’s over 350,000 churches in the US alone and 45,000 denominations worldwide!

Not all of them get along. Not all of them seem that interested in connecting with each other. Sometimes these churches seem more interested in tearing each other down than building each other up. Not all agree on every tenet of the Christian faith, let alone how best to put it into practice. They have different values, priorities, and visions. Some seem to be in competition with each other. Most feel tribal.

The church looks divided, marked by distinctives and denominations. Some non-believers even see this as a reason not to become a Christian. “How can I know what to believe if the Church itself can’t figure it out!” And into that the Nicene Creed states: “I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” We’ll pick up on the concepts of “holy,” “catholic,” and “apostolic” in future weeks. This week, let’s focus on the weird idea that the church is one.

The New Testament envisions one Church. Just as Israel was one, despite having different tribes scattered over the land of Canaan and later dispersed around the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, so the Church is one despite its different denominations and expressions around the globe. When writing to different churches, Paul does not call them by separate names or affiliation. Most of the time it’s simply the Church in Corinth or the Church of the Thessalonians. As though all these believers gathering together in different cities are nothing more than an extension of one true Church.

This is Jesus’s vision. This is his prayer: “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:20-23 NIV).