My Experience with Divisions in the Church

I have had more than a few personal experiences with division in the church over the course of my six decades of life. I am regularly reminded of the apostle’s appeal that “all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose” (1 Corinthians 1:10, NRSV). I have heard a myriad of reasons over the course of my life for why we cannot pursue unity. At its lowest common denominator all Christians must admit that their own church ought to experience unity but few really do and most make this goal relatively unimportant to their mission as a congregation. My own life experience revealed to me how tragic this failure really was and still is today. I talk about this in another of the video interviews I did for my book Your Church Is Too Small.

What is your experience of disunity? Can you relate to my story? I am guessing that many of you can and that this is true whether you are my age (or even older), or whether you are much younger. One thing I am quite sure about regarding younger Christians today—they long to see the scandal of disunity addressed honestly and seriously by all of us who have any influence in leading the church community to be more like her Lord. What are you doing to overcome the disunity you see in your local community? What do you do on a daily basis to change the pattern that we have all come to accept as normal when the Scripture makes it so plain that it is completely abnormal?