Stuff of the Past

Last week, churches in our area were subjected to an e-mail expressing concerns about the direction of an Area Wide Worship event planned in Greater Cincinnati every year. In the e-mail they also labeled the speaker for this years event a "false teacher."

Before I comment on that let me start by saying that the Area Wide Worship event - which I help to plan - is an event that is striving to promote unity within the churches in the Greater Cincinnati area. Representatives from any area congregation are invited to attend our planning meetings. Each year however "leaders" from some congregations would rather sit back, do nothing to promote unity and attempt to shoot down the good faith efforts made by many. In so doing they continue to damage the fragile connection that we share between congregations of the Churches of Christ in the area. I speak from experience when I say that efforts for unity are so difficult to build up and so incredibly easy to tear down.

In this individual's ill conceived communication he used phrases like "warn you" and "mark this man as a false teacher" and "contend for the faith" to simply mean, "I don't agree with some things he has said or I don't like what others have said about him". I remember a lot of this mean spirited, accusatory slander that went on when I was growing up. I also worked amidst a lot of it in the Pittsburgh area where a few ultra conservative church leaders aggressively policed the other churches in the area and were quick to use "disfellowship" and "marking as false teachers" as a weapon to assert their control and impose their views on other area congregations. Their definition of truth was "anything with which they agree," and their view of sound doctrine was "any view of scripture they hold." A false teacher was anyone who failed to pass their litmus test of doctrine (sometimes a literal 'test' in the form of a questionnaire sent out to area ministers that had questions worded to 'trip up' anyone who saw things differently than they). When they sniffed one out (and apparently, I were one) they would ring the bells of alarm far and wide sending out letters warning the 'faithful' (i.e. those who cower before their spiritual bullying) to stay far away.

I just want to say...I'm so tired of that. These tactics - largely employed for one individual or a group of individuals to gain control of people who in their opinion shouldn't be thinking for themselves - are nothing but a Pharisaical attempt on the part of those who use them to convince others of their own self importance. They are not contending for the faith, they are campaigning for a broader acceptance of their own views and bullying those who may see things differently.

I for one am so glad we don't see these tactics used much any more. That is not the way of church Christ began (see Eph. 4:1-16 -esp. v.3- , I Thess. 4:11 and Phil. 2:1-2) and not something I want to be associated with. I hope we are moving forward as a church to a time when we can disagree and still promote unity in love. I hope we can all see in our humanness the propensity to be wrong and we respect the faith of those who see things differently even if we may seek to lovingly influence change. I hope we can learn to work with each other around the periphery of points where we may disagree and celebrate our unity around the core of Jesus and his love. I hope we continue to move away from the stuff of the past to be more like Jesus in the future.