Our Unity: Both a Gift and a Goal

One of our key values as Better Together is the unity of the church. As one of our subscribers, we trust you deeply value the unity of your own faith community. Yet, too often in our context we’re told that unity is impossible; that our world is too divided; that your church is too divided; that no other denomination has maintained unity in the face of disagreement on non-salvific issues, such as same-sex marriage. Sometimes these voices are strong.

And yet as Better Together we believe that ultimately our unity isn’t up to us. We believe that our unity, as members of the family of God, is a gift we receive. We’re not alone in believing this - in fact this truth is claimed by the Christian Reformed Church itself. This idea that our unity is a gift is woven into the denomination’s very own ecumenical charter. Together we proclaim: 

“The unity of the church is a precious gift. The biblical challenge is to treasure, preserve, deepen, and demonstrate this given unity. The unity of Christ-followers is flesh-and-blood testimony to God’s reconciling work in Christ.” (1)   

The reality is that our unity is not something we’ve created. It’s not something that was formed years ago by a previous synod. Our unity is not a creature of our making. Rather, it is a precious gift from God that testifies to the reconciling work of Jesus. If this is true, as we claim it to be, then the unity of the church is a beautiful invitation to join, rather than a responsibility to establish… 

Moving forward, the ecumenical charter then describes that our unity is not simply a gift, but it is also a goal. We receive it and we are invited to see it flourish. Together as the church we recognize: 

“For the church in the New Testament times, the summons to unity had a different ring that it has today. In the New Testament context, it was a call to be more fully what we are - one in Christ. However, once the divisions which Paul could not so much as contemplate (“Is Christ divided?”), fractured the body, the call to unity has taken on new and painful urgency. In the midst of today’s disunity, the call to be one requires that we pray and work to overcome the scandal of division. Divisions among Christians and churches are a stumbling block to our witness to the unity of the being of God. Division contradicts the good news of reconciliation in Christ. The call to unity is a summons to manifest the unity of God himself and the reconciling power of God’s love in Christ.” (2)

We as Better Together echo this “new and painful urgency… and [we are working] to overcome the scandal of division.” And as the charter claims, these divisions, this divisiveness, are a direct threat to our ability to witness to the redeeming and reconciling work of Jesus. Whether it is in Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17 or the vision of the wedding feast of the Lamb in Revelation 19, the testimony of scripture is a union and re-union of God’s people as one body giving praise and glory to God. 

With this ultimate end in mind, we might then echo the fact that Jesus invites us to join him in this task of building up unity in his body. The charter puts it this way:

“The ecumenical task is the responsibility of the church at all its organizational levels. This task is especially important at the level of the local congregation, for it is there that the witnessing power of visible unity - and the counter-witness of division - is most vivid. Local congregations should seek to worship, witness, and work with neighboring churches that are part of the Christian community and unequivocally witness to Jesus Christ (see Belgic Confession, Art. 29).” (3)

In all of this we see that our very own ecumenical charter - our document that lays out how we should build unity across disagreement - calls us forward as individuals, leaders, local churches, classes, and as the denomination as a whole. This is a call we echo and it is a vision that stretches from the width of denominations down to the very depth of local congregations and personal relationships. 

So, when you encounter the argument that unity is too hard, that divisions run too deep, that it cannot be done, we invite you to reflect on these truths. We invite you to trust with us that our unity is not our own, but it is a gift given by God and it is a goal set for us to follow. May it be so for our churches and denomination. 

*Note: Here at Better Together we recognize that we are walking together with grace and we are striving for a posture of humility. Therefore, as you engage in our blog and the writings therein we confess that at times the views expressed may challenge us. The expressions of this blog do not represent a final and fully agreed upon position of all of us. But we do hope to be able to engage with each other respectfully and with an aim toward the promotion of unity and mission in the church.