One Size Fits All

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to fill the pulpit in a sister church. From the external perspective, this church could not have been much more different than my home church. The size was different. The demographics were different. The music was vastly different. The entire feel of the church was different. I am certain that some of the people from that church would be uncomfortable in my church and vice versa. It would be very easy from the appearances to assume that we had little in common. However, nothing could be further from the truth. While the appearances of the two congregations were vastly different, the heart was the same. The doctrines were the same. The Word of God was the same. There was diversity in the surface elements, but unanimity in the essentials.

How strange that is in our day. We live in the age of the franchise. You can go into a McDonalds in Montreal or in Vancouver and you will find a striking similarity in appearance. The same is true of churches. They now bear the trademark of their licensee. Is it a Harvest Fellowship or a Saddleback or a Willow Creek? Enter any church in the franchise and you will be struck by the external similarity. The look and feel will be the same from outlet to outlet. If your church is not part of the chain, then someone will be glad to point out how much better you would be doing if only you bought a franchise.

How sad. We serve a God who delights in revealing His power through diversity in the externals. He works through an emotion-driven Samson and also an intensely logical Paul. Jesus heals a leper by touching him, but heals a group of lepers by telling them to go see the priest. God has even made a donkey talk and a big fish swallow a man in order to accomplish His will. I am convinced that style really is the least of God's concerns.

The irony arises from the fact that churches can look and feel very different and yet be in complete agreement on the essentials of the faith. Alternately, churches can have the market cornered on style and be totally lacking in the true message of the Gospel. We are demanding agreement on music, service format and preaching style while at the same time allowing complete disagreement on the heart of Christ's message. Pew research just came out with a poll that revealed that 57% of Evangelical Christians in the USA believe that Jesus is not the only way to heaven. What good is the fact that we all are singing the same choruses if we can't even agree on such a basic truth of the Scripture?

The joy of fellowship does not come from the fact that we all look and sound the same. The joy comes from the amazing truth that we all look and sound different yet because we all have one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Father and God we have fellowship because Christ has broken down the walls between us. We are different on the outside, but the same in heart because of Christ's redemption.