Why Church Unity Is So Shallow These Days

A culture problem

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Years ago my parents, my siblings, and I vacationed through NYC, Philadelphia, and other East Coast tourist spots. I’ll never forget my mother, heavily steeped in southern hospitality, taking great exception with the locals’ mannerisms.

Where she would try to make small talk or exchange pleasantries while ordering food or shopping, they were often far more, um.. “brief” in their interactions. In a fast-moving environment, they’re accustomed to dispensing with the chit-chat and moving along as quickly as possible. “Don’t ask how my day is going—just tell me if you want onions on this cheesesteak or not.”

Mom acknowledged why they might act that way, but she didn’t have to like it. To her, the whole way of life was unfathomably rude. Now, she wasn’t right and they weren’t wrong, and vice versa. It’s just how she is, and how they are.

In a word, it’s a matter of culture.

The way we interact, the words and sayings we use, the things we prioritize and endorse, the values we hold, the structure of our homes, and the way we live in general are all factors that make up our culture.

And as varied as these cultures can be even within a day’s drive in America, they differ even more from country to country and continent to continent. There are matriarchal cultures and patriarchal cultures, capitalist cultures and socialist cultures, formal cultures and informal cultures, workaholic cultures and slower moving cultures, strict cultures and lenient cultures, and so on.

I say all that to raise two questions:

1. Does Christianity create a culture?

2. And if so, what are the hallmarks of that culture?

Another way to put question one is, if every person in a given geographical area converted to Christ, would you expect a distinct look and feel that separates them from the towns around them? (Think the Amish, for a real-world example.)

To answer the first question: yes. Christianity creates a culture—or at least it should. And it should be highly distinguishable from the world around us.

Unfortunately we live in a time of theological minimalism. As I’ve written here, there’s a strong incentive to stay out of teaching the Bible’s specifics. Doing so keeps the numbers up. The less you teach, the more people there are who can agree with it.

This is how you end up with a Christian literally telling me it’s “heresy” to say that marriage and childbearing are normative principles for the large majority of Christians, with dozens of others handwringing that anybody would dare say anything beyond “let everybody do what they want.”

And this is why you see big churches, influenced by the likes of “successful” megapastors like Tim Keller and Andy Stanley, jumping through all kinds of hoops to make people of all kinds of political and moral persuasions comfortable in their buildings.

Once again, we’ll leave it at “love God, love others” and avoid the specifics.

You can sit next to someone on a given Sunday who disagrees with you on marriage, children, economics, race, politics, men’s roles, women’s roles, sexuality, dress, the value of human life, and basically anything else that doesn’t directly impact what you do at that Sunday worship.

Some view this as a picture of the beauty of the church’s unity. I see it as two people who can’t possibly work in the same direction on anything - “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” (Amos 3:3)

And more importantly, I see it as the church reassuring both people that Jesus doesn’t care about their beliefs on any of those things. He has no intention of exercising Lordship in those parts of their lives.

Is Christ Lord of all, or Lord of a little?

Does His Lordship impact the way you live your life?

Without practical, meat-and-potatoes teaching on such matters, you can’t have a shared culture.

And without a shared culture, you can’t have anything beyond the shallowest of unity.

Literally the only thing holding you together at that point is a few shared beliefs about baptism and the Sunday morning worship hour. In other words, Christianity has been compartmentalized into one tiny box - placed high on a shelf with a strip of masking tape that reads “the religious part” - and the rest of your life has been left up to you.

So, to sum up question one, I would say that yes, the Bible gives us sufficient teaching to create a distinctly Christian culture.

As for question two, the hallmarks of such a culture…

Well, that’ll have to wait for next week.

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For more on church unity, check out my book Church Reset: God’s Design for So Much More