Practicing Unity

27 November 2018

This post is part of the November Synchroblog on church and national unity. See the bottom of this post for a link list of other participating blogs.

The prompt for this month’s Synchroblog framed the quest for unity in terms of politics.

Well, the elections are over … but not really.

As I write this, counting is still going on in various states, and lawyers are setting up battle lines. Newly elected officials are heating up the rhetoric, and protesters are starting to lash out.

What is the role of the church in all of this?

It goes on to ask some bigger questions.

How can we work toward unity in the Body of Christ?…Does unity mean uniformity? If not, then how can we get along? And beyond unity in the church, how can we show the world the path toward peace and unity?

At the policy level, those are some tough questions. At the level of national policy especially.

To address those questions at the policy level, the level of presidents and congressmen and archbishops and general secretaries and such folk…jeepers. You would need a strategy that would unite the vast majority of all Christendom. As things stand now, any council with sufficient authority would never agree on a strategy.

But what makes us think we have to solve the problem from the top down? Top-down solutions are convenient, because they mean that most of us don’t have to do anything until the higher-ups get their act together. That shows no sign of happening anytime soon…so we don’t have to do anything, and it’s all conveniently somebody else’s fault.

That convenience ought to make us suspicious. Jesus rarely leads us by the convenient path. So what if He’s calling us to solve the problem from the bottom up?I think He is, and I think any straightforward reading of John 17 and Ephesians 4 confirms it.

What would that look like? Well, let me tell you what it looks like in my life right now. I’m not using myself as an example to say, “hey, look at me, I’ve got this thing knocked” — not a bit of it. I have a lot to learn. But I’ve also come a long way. What I have now? The man I was 15 years ago didn’t believe any of this was even possible. But it is.

I’m part of an interdenominational pastors’ prayer group in Englewood, Colorado. We meet once a month, and the pattern of the meetings is simple. We’ll go around the circle and check in with each other, and then we pray for each other. The check-in consists of three questions:

  1. How’s your ministry doing?
  2. How’s your family doing?
  3. How’s your walk with God doing?

That’s it. Brevity is valued — the goal is to answer all three questions in 3-5 minutes per participant. (Of course, we’re all pastors, so we don’t always make it under the 5-minute mark, but we try.) In a normal meeting, we’ll pray for each other, celebrating victories and blessings, and lifting up needs. When something unusually difficult is happening, we may abandon. The format entirely. There have been meetings where we put a chair in the center of the circle, sat our wounded brother in it, laid hands on him and just prayed for him for half an hour.

Nondenominational, Southern Baptist, Anglican, United Methodist, Assemblies of God, Messianic, Dutch Reformed…all of these are regularly represented, and over the 8 years I’ve been part of this group, we’ve also had Missouri Synod Lutheran, Grace Covenant, Vineyard, independent Baptist, a Navy chaplain, and many others. We don’t need a denominational commission to sign off on this; we just do it. We do it because Jesus told us to love one another. We do it trusting the Scriptures, which tell us that the Spirit makes the unity (not us!); our job is just to steward it (Eph. 4:1-6). And it works.

I’m also part of a ministry to the homeless of our city called Giving Heart. Come into Giving Heart when it’s open, and you’ll meet volunteers from all kinds of different churches — any of the ones above, and then some. You’ll also meet people who don’t go to church; some of them don’t even identify as Christian. They just want to help their city’s poorest and most vulnerable residents, and this is where it’s happening.

Giving Heart began 7 years ago with the realization that most apartment-dwellers are sorely lacking in community life. It started as a privately held community center serving a big multi-housing complex. The goal was to provide a third space where people could meet–host dinners, movie nights, parties on the holidays, and so on. It worked to an extent…but the open door turned out to be a magnet for the local homeless population. When we didn’t turn them away, more came. We didn’t have a lot to offer back then, but someone gave us a big popcorn machine. So if we were open, you could come by, get a bottle of water and some popcorn, and take a load off for a few minutes. Many did. A bottle of water led to conversation, which led to sharing life together.

Over time, the apartment ministry dwindled and the homeless ministry grew. Today, Giving Heart has grown into an access point to medical care, job training, transitional housing, counseling services, resource navigation assistance, and much more. Along the way, my business partner Joe Anderson was able to lead the pastors’ prayer group into a partnership with the city that birthed Change the Trend Network. Change the Trend is a partnership of city government, police, healthcare providers, Giving Heart and other ministries like them. Together, the network’s member agencies provide a road map out of homelessness, and the wrap-around services that getting out of homelessness requires.

Again, none of this came from a fancy council of archbishops, general secretaries, and so on, nor is it sustained by such people. It was birthed by local Christians working together to help the people right in front of us, because that’s what Christians do.

When we do what Christians do together, we minister healing to the sick and freedom to the captives. We proclaim the good news of Jesus to the poor and broken. We seek the Kingdom of God, and God is pleased to give it to us. As we do this together, the unity of the Body is a daily practical reality.

You notice I haven’t said anything about the elections. You know what? The people I rub shoulders with…some of them voted Trump, and proud of it. Some of them are “I’m with Her” folk. Some of them only voted for Hillary because Bernie wasn’t an option. Some of them held their nose and voted R or D; others held their principles and voted third party.

We’re just not that susceptible to the Facebook-meme level of political discourse, where you either voted like I did or you’re literally the devil. We already know better. We laugh together, cry together, pray together, work together to care for the people we all love. We have that basis of positive experience; we already know that our fellow workers who voted for those people are–however inexplicably–really decent human beings, definitely among the good guys.

So when the time comes to have hard conversations about politics, we have the relational and spiritual capital to handle it without demonizing the people who voted differently. We have a reason to actually listen to other points of view, because we already trust each other.

And the brutal truth is, we will not get to a solution any other way. If we can’t love the people right in front of us–the faces we see at home, at work, at church, on the street–then we will not become the sort of people who can handle bigger conversations and bigger issues. Conversely, if we will simply do what Jesus said — love our neighbors — we will find that the Spirit has already given us unity, and we will become the kind of people who steward it well.

Then when the time comes for the archbishops and general secretaries to do their thing, they won’t be trying to manufacture unity out of whole cloth. They will be seeking to steward  the unity their people already have. And that’s the way it should be.

***

Here is the list of other writers and authors who contributed to this month’s Synchroblog. Go read them all to see what others think about church unity.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Household Codes

18 August 2018

I’ve been blessed to share a number of different living arrangements. Like most, I started as a child in a household. During college, I was in a dorm, then shared an apartment with three other guys, and started grad school with a similar arrangement. Later in grad school, I moved into a small apartment attached to a single-family home. I spent several months before I got married renting a bedroom from a couple with grown children. Since marrying Kimberly 15 years ago, it’s just been the two of us. (In case anybody’s wondering, I like the last one best.)

As I’ve put down roots in my community, I have also become an “associate member” of three other households. I don’t spend the night there, but I come and go without knocking and frequently take part in the family life. Two of these households have kids, and recently I’ve been reflecting on what it takes to be a good member of those households–places that are filled with children, but they’re not my children.

As a starting point, here’s a quick comparison and contrast between the roles of child in a family home, a member of a unigenerational household (like a house of grad students, for example) and an adult member of a multi-generational household.

Household Codes Chart

Unigenerational households and multigenerational households operate very differently. Unigenerational households tend to be fairly democratic; multigenerational households can’t be. The tiny barbarians lack the skills and impulse control to function in the world apart from adult support. As a result, there’s a much higher degree of planning and coordination, and a great deal less spontaneity than in a unigenerational household: all the adults can’t leave the house at the same time, food has to be prepared at specific times and in specific ways, the house needs to be quieter at nap times, and so on.

Childcare responsibilities are not equally shared among adult members of a household, for reasons that start with basic biology: women get pregnant, and men can’t breastfeed. Taking one thing with another, responsibilities that involve leaving the house for extended periods of time will fall disproportionately to the father, and responsibilities that can be done at home with children underfoot will fall disproportionately to the mother. (Technology mitigates, but does not eliminate, these effects.) But the sharing extends beyond just the parents. While the parents have primary responsibility for the children, and other adults correspondingly less responsibility (at least in our culture), there are spill-over effects on the other adults who live in the household.

The parents’ greater responsibility means they get—and deserve—a relatively greater precedence; there is a real hierarchy here. Other adult members of the household are expected to plan their use of common resources (cooking, laundry, and bathing facilities, for example) around the needs of the parents and children. This would be grossly unfair in a unigenerational household, but where the welfare of children is at stake, it makes perfect sense. Two quick examples here:

  • When the children are brushing their teeth and making their last trip to the bathroom before bedtime, no adult has equal claim on the toilet. Getting the kids to bed on time is important, and disruptions in the routine tend to balloon out of control quickly. So the routine is maintained, and the adults can hold it.
  • When the small children are down for a nap and that’s the mother’s one opportunity that day to get a shower, nobody’s claim trumps hers. The other adults can shower earlier or later; she can’t.

Which brings us to the subject of how to be a good “associate member” of a household with children. Every household is different, so the particulars will vary a bit, but here are some general principles to work from:

  • Know your strengths. Botching a messy diaper change makes more work for everyone. Know what you bring to the table, and what you’re better off letting someone else take care of.
  • Generate surplus. Food, time and effort, emotional labor, childcare–there are a lot of areas where you can contribute. Bachelors can afford to just break even (not that there’s any future in that, even for them), but adults who live with children cannot; kids are a net drain on the community resources for years, and the adults around them have to make up for that. If you want to live like a bachelor, move in with bachelors. If you’re going to live with a family, live up to the company you’re keeping.
  • Be good with the kids. That will mean different things in different households; make a point of learning what it means to the particular children and parents you’re dealing with.
  • Plan your use of shared resources around the needs of the children and the parents. You have less responsibility and more flexibility; use it.
  • Learn how to provide emotional support to the people around you, including the short barbarians. It might be a pat on the head, a listening ear, help with a frustrating toy, babysitting while Mom gets a shower, or bringing home a bottle of wine for the parents. Pay attention to what they need, and as you’re able, be intentional about adding value to their lives.
  • Short of debilitating injury, don’t put all your needs on the parents. Parents already have their hands full, and the children’s needs will always trump yours. Build your network and find other people to rely on. If you fall down the stairs and shatter your femur, of course the parents will do their best to help you, but even then, the children have to be cared for. Of course friends look after each other’s needs, but friends also understand one another’s obligations; no good friend thinks their own needs trump the children’s.
  • Know when to disappear. You are part of the household at some level, but you are not part of the family, and that matters. There are times the family needs their space, and at those times, the most valuable thing you can do is back off.

Parents, feel free to weigh in here. What am I missing?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Practical Unity

9 March 2018

I want to speak a little on practical unity.

You reap what you sow. If you sow constant conflict about ever-finer distinctions, you reap that. If you sow into the little common ground you have, you reap more common ground — some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred-fold.

I haven’t given up on doctrinal precision. I still talk theology with people, and I still seek to come to one mind with my brothers and sisters as we can — which is our Christian duty (Phil. 2:1-4). But I find that tangibly loving each other while we work together is the context within which those conversations happen productively.

“I’ll work with you if we can come to agreement on doctrine” is an approach that has not profited those who have been occupied with it. Scripture teaches us to notice that. (Hebrews 13:9)

I find it fascinating how often theological conservatives respond to my pro-untiy sentiment by tossing out a scenario like “What if a liberal lesbian Methodist minister who thinks Jesus is just a good moral teacher wants to work with you?”

It’s a good question, and it’s come up every now and again. The answer is that it depends on what we’re doing. Volunteering for the Chamber of Commerce golf tournament? No problem. Lobbying the city to get off our backs and let us feed homeless folks at the park? Sure. Introduce people to Jesus together? Of course not — we’re not talking about the same person. She’s talking about a Ghandi-type figure, and I’m talking about the Lord of the Universe in flesh.

But this isn’t an issue that crops up often, and I find it fascinating how often conservatives will use this supposed “nightmare scenario” (which isn’t that hard to deal with, actually—it’s just an awkward conversation) to avoid driving 4 blocks to establish a relationship with the historically orthodox church right down the street. They won’t take the low-hanging fruit, for fear that if we start picking, there might be a rotten apple in the upper branches. So there might, and we’ll handle that when we get to it.

But in day to day reality, there’s plenty of people who know and love the same Jesus we do — they baptize babies (or not), believe in real presence at the Lord’s Table (or not), expect a pretrib rapture (or not), celebrate Lent (or don’t celebrate Christmas, as the case may be), think too highly of Calvin, whatever. But they are our brothers and sisters, and we know it. We refuse to meet them, learn their names, start tangibly loving them…why?

1 Comment | Ecclesiology, Unity and Community of Christ's Body | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Mere Supernaturalism

12 August 2012

As I have discussed my transition away from cessationism with various people, it has become clear that there are actually two related issues entangled together. In my life, they came as a set, but there’s no reason why everybody’s experience would be the same as mine.

The first issue is the question of whether certain miraculous spiritual gifts ceased operating as individually vested gifts after the initial launch of the Church. This is the issue around cessationism proper. Many charismatics don’t understand this, and thus are confused when a cessationist professes to believe that miraculous healings still happen today, that God answers prayer today, and perhaps even that God can still speak through visions and dreams today. The issue in cessationism is not healings, but a particular person having the gift of healing; not someone hearing from God in a general sense, but a particular person having the gift of prophecy. (Generally. This distinction does not hold for tongues — every cessationist I know says it’s over and done with, period.) So with cessationism vs. continuationism, we’re talking about whether the Spirit continues to dispense all the biblically attested spiritual gifts in the present day.

The second issue, although related, is distinct from cessationism: the expectation that God will intervene supernaturally. From the Red Sea to the present day, God’s people have struggled with the temptation to forget that God intervenes in the world. We tend to think of this as a peculiarly modern temptation, but a quick look at the Exodus generation shows us this is not the case.

Hold that thought a moment.

***
In eschatology, the wide dividing line has typically been between premillennialists on the one hand, and post- and amillennialists on the other. That’s where the bright political fault lines have been drawn. I want to suggest that this is a mistake.

The lines ought to have been drawn between those who look to the future with hope and expectation, and those who look to the future with gloom and the spirit of Chicken Little. This is the difference that makes a difference. I’m an optimistic premil (or if you like, a dominion dispensationalist), and I have much more in common with a patient postmil than I do with either my doom-and-dystopia premil brethren or most amil folk.

This is not to say that the theological question of when Christ returns relative to the millennium is unimportant. I believe it is an important question, and one which Scripture plainly answers. What I am saying is simply that optimism or pessimism about the future is vastly more important. We who can look at the nations raging, laugh at them with Yahweh, and seek first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness on earth as it is in heaven — we are one breed. The Chicken Littles are something else, and whatever their doctrinal statements might say, their spirit of fear and their little pronouncements about “polishing the brass on a sinking ship” are not from God, because He doesn’t give that spirit or talk that way.

***
In similar fashion, I believe that in the battles over the charismatic movement, evangelical Christians drew the bright political line in the wrong place. I know folks who are charismatic in their theology, but day in and day out, expect no divine intervention in their lives. I also know charismatics who go to church, belt out a couple of paragraphs in tongues, and go home — but don’t pray with authority, don’t seek to hear from God, and don’t seek to minister to others in any supernatural way. By the same token, I know rock-ribbed cessationists who believe God speaks in dreams, pray for miracles, and trust Him to supernaturally order their affairs and relationships.

We drew the political line between those who practice all the biblically attested spiritual gifts today, and those who do not. However, the far more important issue is whether, on either side of that line, a person will seek to resolve his problems through doctrine alone, or whether in his daily practice he will also expect God to intervene supernaturally.

I’m open to suggestions for naming these positions, but for our present purposes, I’d like to call them doctrinalism and supernaturalism, respectively.

Two points of clarification. First, I’m talking about habits of practice, not talking points. I know lots of people who on paper, and when pressed will admit that it’s possible God would intervene miraculously today, but in practice, from day to day, they rely on doctrine alone, and they teach their followers to rely on doctrine alone. These people are doctrinalists, no matter what they say.
Second, I am not setting up an either-or situation here. It’s not either doctrine or supernatural intervention. I am talking about people who rely on doctrine alone versus those who look to doctrine, but also seek for God to intervene supernaturally in the present.

Again, I am not saying the cessationism question is unimportant. Not at all. I think the stakes are very high in that conversation. In the interests of full disclosure, let me just go ahead and spill the beans: I believe that most cessationists and most charismatics have one critical thing in common: an allergy to biblical discernment. I believe that the Church will not grow into health and maturity unless she employs all the biblically attested gifts (cessationists, I’m lookin’ at you), and she employs them with testing and discernment, as Scripture requires (charismatics, I’m lookin’ at you too), and all of that in the context of loving God enough to take His Word seriously and be visibly united with His people. So yeah, I think it’s an incredibly important issue.

However, supernaturalism/doctrinalism is a much more important issue. The question of whether God will intervene through the gift of healing is important, but the question of whether God will intervene at all is obviously an even more important question.

I would contend that in most ministry venues, supernaturalists — charismatic or not — are natural allies. Doctrinal statements can create a barrier where no biblically founded barrier exists, of course, but those who look for and appreciate God’s intervention can work together, if they’re allowed to — or if they simply choose to move forward no matter what their more sectarian brethren might prefer.

And then later, over a bottle of wine, they can argue over whether the miraculous healing they just prayed for, and received, was the result of the gift of healing, or whether it was simply an answer to prayer.

5 Comments | Ecclesiology, Functioning Supernaturalism, Meditations, Person/Proposition | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

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