Are There Biblical Reasons for Breaking Fellowship with Other Christians? (Section B)
Part 5 of series: The End of the Presbyterian Church USA?
Posted for Monday, June 26, 2006
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In Saturday's post I began to examine biblical reasons for Christians to break fellowship with each other. They included:
1. Breaking Fellowship When Christians Persist in Sinful Behavior
2. Breaking Fellowship in the Case of Theological Disagreement About Essential
Doctrine
3. Breaking Fellowship for the Sake of Mission
The biblical ground for #3 came from the story of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 15, where these former mission partners split up over a practical disagreement. In light of this example, I suggested that sometimes Christians who are truly one in Christ are better off without being institutional partners. I illustrated this by talking about my close friendship with a Southern Baptist minister.
Yet breaking fellowship for the sake of mission is also something that I have to consider in my PCUSA relationships. For example, I have Presbyterian pastor friends who believe that gays and lesbians should be ordained if they are in lifelong, monogamous relationships. I disagree with these friends about this, even though we share the essentials of Christian faith in common. Now, if in light of the recent General Assembly action, my friends start ordaining gay and lesbian elders in their churches, I'm not sure we could maintain institutional connectedness, since I would not be able to accept these elders as co-leaders in our common denomination.
At this point my friends and I would face a choice: Spend the next thirty years as we have the last thirty, fighting with each other over the issue of gay ordination, draining our energy and distracting our attention from the gospel ministry. Or we could decide to separate institutionally, so that we might be free to lead our churches according to our differing convictions. We could still get together to build a Habitat for Humanity house, or to join in corporate prayer, or whatever. My friends and I could still enjoy true fellowship in Christ. But we would not be continually duking it out to preserve a tenuous and enervating institutional unity.
A denomination is not the body of Christ. It's not the church of Jesus Christ. Scripture refers to the church in local terms and in global terms, but not in denominational terms. A denomination is a practical, functional institution, one that is meant to support and augment the ministries of its churches. When a denomination accomplishes this goal, it has obvious value. But what if a denomination begins to get in the way of ministry and mission? What if denominational connections hinder rather than help us fulfill the Great Commission? Is it time for new denominational wineskins?
My relationship with the PCUSA has been both a help and a hindrance. So far, the pluses have outweighed the minuses. I've received strong support from my local Presbytery (regional body), and I'm in a great covenant group with several PCUSA pastors. The PCUSA has been the denomination that ordained me and in which I've served two churches.
Yet I've found that, increasingly, my PCUSA connection often hampers my ministry. I've spent literally hundreds of hours in the past 20 years dealing with unfortunate actions of our General Assemblies and other gatherings (pro-gay ordination votes, Re-imagining Conference, Israel divestment vote, etc.) The countless hours that I and my fellow leaders at Irvine Presbyterian Church have put into cleaning up PCUSA messes have been, quite frankly, a big waste of time.
Moreover, I've found that the "Presbyterian" label is sometimes more of a minus than a plus for outreach. People "out there" tend to think of the Presbyterian church as confused, liberal, and dying, largely because we make headlines that confirm these perceptions. Why would anybody want to come to Irvine Presbyterian Church if it's confused, liberal, and dying? So I find myself in the position of having to explain that thought we might be confused sometimes, we aren't liberal and we're in fact growing.
Furthermore, in the last ten years I've had to deal with dozens of people who believed that the PCUSA endorses homosexuality, and for whom this is a reason not to get involved in the PCUSA church. When I've explained that we do not approve of gay ordination, some of these folks have been willing to give us a try. Others have remained hesitant because they've seen too many negative news stories. Now I'm going to have to tell people that our constitution calls for fidelity and chastity, and that Irvine Presbyterian Church affirms this completely, but that our denomination allows some people to do what our constitution forbids. This isn't exactly going to make people want to join a PCUSA church.
If churches exist to do the mission of Jesus Christ, which I believe on biblical grounds, and if denominations exist chiefly to support and extend that mission, which I believe on theological and historical grounds, then when denominational help is outweighed by denominational hindrance, it may be time for a church to disengage from a particular denomination, and to seek out more edifying connections. This should never be done impetuously, however, since God's concern for unity must be given due weight. But God is also concerned for mission. When denominational unity, something that is not directly addressed in Scripture, gets in the way of mission, something that pervades Scripture, it may be time for new denominational wineskins.
But if this is such a time for biblically-committed Presbyterians, then we must engage in careful, prayerful, corporate discernment of God's will. I'll say more about this in my next post in this series.
