David, these are so important questions…! Though my situation (still member of an orthodox reformed church in The Netherlands) is obvious different from yours, I really understand your concern.. wow – is this problem so worldwide and independant of country and language..? Makes me sad, and looking forward to the good things I believe God will do, just because the fact He Is..

Whew!…you sure ask hard questions. As it stands now, when someone enters a new church they become someone who needs to be ministered to rather than the wonderful addition to the group they might be. Evangelical churches come from the stance that you are not OK until you have fit into their mold. When the emphasis is constantly on our shortcomings our growth is stunted. You’re absolutely right…a healthy family promotes freedom…freedom to be who you are rather than having to be what someone else expects you to be. Any group has to have some standards, but they needn’t be so severe that they stifle. The question is, where do we draw the line? People need to be who they are, but what if who they are isn’t so pretty? or moral? and who decides what moral is? Sacrificing our children or ourselves to an institution is immoral…and it leads to deception and lies. I remember, many years ago, when I lived in R.I. of going to a conference in Albany. On the way back, another woman and I went to Tanglewood to hear the Boston Symphony. We couldn’t share this with anyone…it wasn’t Christian music. Another woman in the group who I knew as a rock singer(Christian of course), finally 30 some odd years later is pursuing a career in opera…I cried when I heard her sing an aria for the first time a few months ago…the church had told her that opera was of the devil…We need to learn to come together to worship…to learn…and in the process, become the best us we can be,not sacrifice our gifts and graces because an organization says we must.

NP you sure don’t know what family I grew up in. Church was a breeze after that! ;p

However NP I agree with you. Preacher Lady you hit it right on…
Fred I also agree with you.

Is it possible to love without sacrifice? The bible shows 2 types of sacrifices. One pleasing to G-d and one who isn’t (think Cain/Abel or Moloch vs. Abraham/Isaac). Jesus showed us what true sacrifice was. Normal parents make sacrifices for their kids. Sacrificing in an institutionional/political/patriotic context is one thing, in a relational context is another.

Scripture tells us to die to self or to lay down our life in order to get it back. I think some sacrifices make us grow and others kill us. Thanks for keeping me on my thinking toes NP!

“Can we be a collective, a community, a church, without requiring people to sacrifice themselves for it?”

Maybe we can’t require people to sacrifice themselves, but I agree with Louise, without sacrifice, we can’t exist as a church. We are called to die to self and to take up our cross. And Christ himself showed us what it means to sacrifice for the church.

Christians are not called to live for themselves, but for the Gospel that has been revealed to us, and we can’t do this without sacrifice.

Mr. Butler… I don’t know if I’m included in your remarks. Right now I have a beloved friend and sister in the faith who moved in with me due to difficult circumstances. I have a small place which I gladly share because I love her. OK so I’m sacrificing a wee bit of my comfort but I don’t mind. This is the kind of sacrifice I believe in and this is the kind of church I have – not a building not an institution – but years of relationships with people who have become closer than family. I consider myself blessed. No manipulation, no victimization, no guilt. Just love! You can knock at my door at midnight and ask me for a loaf of bread and I will will rise and give you as many as you need (Luke 11:5-8) with joy no less. Note this may explain why I am so poor!

Recommended read: “So you don’t want to go to church anymore” by Wayne Jacobsen

I’ve liked this post and the comments. This notion of the importance of sacrifice and freedom is interesting\challenging. I think the quality (ie. integrity and sincerity) of relationships in a gathering determine the quality (significance) of sacrifice and freedom that is experienced. I no longer identify as an evangelical Christian but its still fresh in my memory how quickly doctrine and dogma tend to eclipse or subjugate people’s actual ability to experience of each other as they are.

great post! we are called to live a self-sacrifical kinda of love that Jesus taught… as Kierkegaard stated a “self-forgetting love of God and neighbor.” how do we institutionalize this? i mean, we have to teach it to the next generation, but this style of love causes a great burn-out rate and puts most people who authentically follow it to death. i mean, Paul and Peter and most of the disciples didn’t have the “happily ever after” ending, did they?

good questions and considerations. great comments as well!

Dear AnneDroid (resistance is futile you will be assimilated) – ok your name got me thinking about the Borgs…
Just recently I wrote a piece in French along the same lines… Unity versus diversity – I propose that the many faces of Christianity attest to the richness of the faith experience and choose to see the multiplicity as a blessing. The RC has a magister and we don’t because… well.. protestantism protested against it! We are not part of a hive but free moral agents and the magister-less church is free to subdivide as many times as there are people in it. We cannot hope for dogmatic unity but unity in love despite our differences. I reproduce my French article below au cas où:

L’église divisée
Lors d’une visite récente dans un lieu de culte, un prédicateur déplorait le nombre de dénominations dans l’église protestante. Cela représentait, à son point de vue, le problème de l’unité dans l’église. C’est un thème récurrent et une préoccupation dominante dans les milieux chrétiens à savoir comment l’absence d’uniformité semble contrevenir à la prière du fondateur de l’église dans Jean 17/21 qui demande à ce que les disciples soient « un » comme le Fils et le Père sont « un » : « afin que tous soient un, comme toi, Père, tu es en moi, et comme je suis en toi, afin qu’eux aussi soient un en nous, pour que le monde croie que tu m’as envoyé ».

Une première constatation serait de distinguer entre différentes notions d’unité. La vision de l’unité la plus répandue dans les cercles évangéliques est celle où tous font partie de la même église physique, partagent les mêmes valeurs, les mêmes crédos, les mêmes opinions, les mêmes références, le même leadership. On parle alors de retourner à l’église du deuxième chapitre du livre des Actes. On se réfère à l’église primitive comme modèle idéal, voire utopique et on désire recréer le même contexte de foi avec des apôtres, des prophètes, des miracles, des guérisons, de la glossolalie, etc. On aspire alors à une église imaginée, on sombre dans le romantisme et l’irréalisable. C’est le mythe de l’éternel retour dont nous parle Mircea Eliade qui se résume à une interprétation cyclique de l’histoire – beaucoup plus proche de l’hindouisme que de la pensée sémitique. On met alors la main à la charrue en regardant en arrière et comme dans le cas de la femme de Lot, le sel de la terre se solidifie pour devenir un objet insolite dans le désert. Cela peut certes susciter une certaine curiosité mais hélas peu d’intérêt.

Cette nostalgie des gloires passées est non seulement incapacitante mais elle brime l’interaction avec le monde réel d’aujourd’hui. On entend souvent ses adeptes décrier combien les cœurs sont durs et difficiles à atteindre. Ces mêmes personnes qui ne croient pas en l’évolution, croient pourtant que la société actuelle est pire que la précédente. Or, il semble que la nature humaine soit restée la même en 2000 ans d’histoire. L’Église passéiste devrait pouvoir admettre que si le message ne passe pas c’est peut-être qu’elle a perdu l’aptitude à le diffuser puisqu’elle n’est pas en contact avec la réalité. Souvent, plutôt que de s’autocritiquer, ce type de milieu préfère se refermer sur lui-même et attendre l’enlèvement ou la fin du monde, trop heureux de pouvoir laisser derrière les infidèles à leur triste sort et d’entrer dans la félicité où enfin on est récompensé pour toutes les années où on a été incompris par les méchants « inconvertis »!

D’autres vont accepter les divisions historiques et géographiques de l’Église tout en souscrivant à une notion d’Église Universelle intangible, transcendant les courants politiques et les dénominations. C’est l’unité dans la diversité, on voit la multitude des communautés de foi plutôt positivement, comme preuve du foisonnement d’idées et d’expérience émanant du même évangile. Ceux-ci se font souvent traiter de libéraux par les milieux plus à droite et peuvent sombrer dans le syndrome du « excusez-moi, j’ai honte de mon Christianisme »! Ils dialoguent plus facilement avec les non-évangéliques mais ne font pas pour autant de nouveaux adeptes. Considérés traîtres ou rétrogrades par les « purs et durs », ils sont incompris autant à l’extérieur qu’à l’intérieur. Juste assez Chrétiens pour ne pas être dans « le monde », et juste assez dans « le monde » pour ne pas avoir l’air Chrétien – ils marchent en équilibre sur une corde raide – un pont entre deux mondes. Sont-ils les prémisses d’une Église émergeante?

Il ne faut pas s’étonner que le milieu fondamentaliste/évangélicaliste, qui clame son hyper authenticité, semble être plus divisé que le milieu traditionnel. Cela s’explique par l’absence chez les Évangéliques d’un magister, à savoir une autorité compétente et suprême pour réglementer l’enseignement de la doctrine. Pas étonnant, puisque ce rejet d’autorité absolue est la base du protestantisme qui a renié la papauté et ce qu’elle représente. La réforme a donné à tous le droit de questionner, protester, contester, diverger ad infinitam! Le résultat est une église qui peut dès lors se morceler autant de fois qu’elle a de membres. C’est le fruit de la liberté, de l’émancipation, de la libre pensée, de la critique. C’est aussi la base pour l’égalité, les droits de l’homme, l’autonomie, la révolution française, la libre pensée, le capitalisme et les libres marchés (selon Weber) et éventuellement, le féminisme et la modernité.

Pourtant le débat et la remise en question font parties intégrales du développement de la pensée sémitique (à l’origine du christianisme) et on retrouve une sorte de « refus global » au cœur du narratif biblique. Bon nombre de personnages bibliques contestent l’ordre établi et ressemblent plus à Che Guevara qu’à Jean-Paul II! Une lecture avertie de la Bible démontre qu’elle est source de dissension et d’anticonformisme. Faut-il donc s’ébaubir de la multiplicité d’interprétations et d’applications? Les milliers de variations sur le thème ne célèbrent-ils pas la complexité de la relation du divin et de l’humain?

Il faut donc se demander si on ne recherche pas finalement l’uniformité, la conformité et la standardisation pour des raisons de confort. Soyons honnête, la solidarité et la liberté d’être « d’accord de ne pas être toujours d’accord » ne sont pas choses faciles! De plus, les considérations politiques et économiques des structures ecclésiastiques se prêtent mal à un contexte flou et épars. Pourtant, si le moule est invitant et maniable, il devient vite une prison, voire un processus de dépersonnalisation ou de clonage. Est-ce possible d’avoir un seul cœur, tous en respectant nos différences? Est-ce que le modèle de la mosaïque pluriculturelle puisse aussi s’appliquer à l’Église? Sinon, courons-nous le risque de sombrer dans une forme de Talibanisme? Or, il ne faut pas s’inquiéter outre mesure qu’une standardisation ou uniformisation de la pratique évangélique voient le jour, puisqu’il n’y a nul pouvoir en place pour dicter une orthodoxie évangélique, outre le pasteur local ou le bureau chef d’une dénomination particulière. Donc ce n’est pas demain la veille que nous verrons apparaître une unité chrétienne digne des « Borgs », à savoir un collectif d’automates dont le seul but existentiel serait d’assimiler tous ceux qu’ils rencontrent. Au contraire on peut prévoir une évolution continuelle de l’Église qui se transformera et se divisera au gré des nouvelles idées ou interprétations de la Bible. Puisque qu’on a toujours la liberté de créer sa propre dénomination, l’Église se divisera plus qu’elle ne s’unifiera. Cela ressemble fort au modèle biologique ou organique de croissance cellulaire et est peut-être signe d’un organisme en santé plutôt que malade, un processus digne d’une Église bien vivante.

Il appert que le sujet de l’unité est loin de faire l’unanimité et que les prières et les cantiques invitant les adeptes du Christianisme à ne faire qu’« un » demeurent, malgré nos vœux pieux, vraisemblablement utopiques et concrètement irréalisables. Nous reste enfin de compte le choix raisonnable de voir l’Église comme n’étant pas intentionnellement divisée mais plutôt multipliée. L’unité réelle ne se manifesterait-elle donc pas par l’amour que les disciples du Christ ont les uns pour les autres, inconditionnellement, malgré les différences? Est-il exagéré de croire que la prière du Christ nous invite à vivre une unité relationnelle plutôt que doctrinale?

According to Google Translate here is the above in English (sorry Louise – haven’t studied French since 1982 and have forgotten too much).

“The church divided
During a recent visit to a place of worship, a preacher lamented the number of denominations in the Protestant church. This was, in his view, the problem of unity in the church. It is a recurring theme and a dominant concern in Christian circles to learn how the lack of uniformity appears to contravene the prayer of the founder of the church in John 17/21 requesting that the disciples are “one” as the Son and the Father are “one”: “May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in thee, that they also be in us so that the world may believe that you sent me. ”

A first observation is to distinguish between different notions of unity. The vision of the unit more prevalent in evangelical circles is where all belong to the same physical church, share the same values, the same creeds, the same opinions, the same references, the same leadership. This is called back to the church of the second chapter of the book of Acts. It refers to the early church as ideal, even utopian, we want to recreate the same context of faith with the apostles, prophets, miracles, healings, of glossolalia, etc.. It sucks when a church imagined, he falls into the romantic and impractical. This is the myth of eternal return in Mircea Eliade tells us that boils down to a cyclical interpretation of history – much closer to Hinduism than Semitic thought. It then puts his hand to the plow and looking back as in the case of Lot’s wife, the salt of the earth solidifies to become an unusual object in the desert. This can certainly generate some curiosity but unfortunately little interest.

This nostalgia for past glories is not only debilitating but it oppresses the interaction with the real world today. One often hears his followers decry how hearts are hard and difficult to reach. These same people who do not believe in evolution, however, believe that the company now is worse than before. However, it seems that human nature has remained the same in 2000 years of history. The Church should be outdated admit that if the message is not perhaps that it has lost the ability to distribute since it is not in contact with reality. Often, rather than self-critical, this type of environment rather close in on itself and wait for the kidnapping or the end of the world too happy to leave behind the infidels to their plight and to enter into the bliss where it is finally rewarded for all the years it has been misunderstood by the evil “unconverted”!

Others will accept the historical and geographical divisions of the Church while endorsing an idea of the Church Universal intangible, transcendent political movements and denominations. It is unity in diversity, we see the multitude of communities of faith rather positively, as evidence of the profusion of ideas and experience from the same gospel. These are often treated by the liberal circles to the right and may sink into the syndrome “Excuse me, I am ashamed of my Christianity”! They interact more easily with non-evangelical but are not as many new adherents. Considered traitors or backward by “hardliners” are understood both outside and inside. Just enough for Christians not to be in “the world”, and just enough in the “world” does not seem Christian – they walk in balance on a tightrope – a bridge between two worlds. Are these the beginnings of an emerging church?

It is no wonder that the middle fundamentalist / Evangelical, who proclaims his hyper authenticity seems to be more divided than the traditional environment. This is explained by the absence among Evangelicals a magister, namely, authority and supreme jurisdiction to regulate the teaching of doctrine. Not surprising, since the rejection of absolute authority is the basis of Protestantism, which repudiated the papacy and what it represents. The reform gave all the right to question, protest, deny, differ infinitam ad! The result is a church that can then be broken up so many times it has members. It is the fruit of freedom, emancipation, freedom of thought, criticism. It is also the basis for equality, human rights, autonomy, the French Revolution, free thinking, capitalism and free markets (according to Weber) and possibly, feminism and modernity.

Yet the debate and challenge are integral parts of development Semitic thought (originally Christian) and found a sort of “blanket refusal” in the heart of biblical narrative. Many biblical characters challenge the established order and more like Che Guevara than John Paul II! An informed reading of the Bible shows it is a source of dissent and nonconformity. Must s’ébaubir the multiplicity of interpretations and applications? The thousands of variations on the theme do not they celebrate the complexity of the relationship of divine and human?

We must therefore wonder if it does not look finally uniformity, conformity and standardization for reasons of comfort. Let’s be honest, solidarity and freedom to be “agreed not always agree” are not easy things! Moreover, the political and economic structures ecclesiastical not lend themselves to a background blur and clouds. However, if the mold is inviting and easy to handle, it quickly becomes a prison or a process of depersonalization or cloning. Is it possible to have one heart, all while respecting our differences? Is the model of the multicultural mosaic can also be applied to the Church? Otherwise, we run the risk of falling into a form of Taliban? Now, do not worry unduly that standardization or uniformity of practice are emerging evangelical, since there is no power in place to dictate an evangelical orthodoxy, in addition to the local pastor or head of office ‘a special name. So this is not tomorrow the day that we will see a fit for Christian unity “Borg”, namely a group of robots whose only purpose is to assimilate the existential everyone they meet. Instead there may be a continuing evolution of the church that will transform and will be divided according to the new ideas or interpretations of the Bible. Since we always have the freedom to create his own denomination, the Church will divide it more unified. This model is very similar to biological or organic cell growth and may be a sign of a healthy body rather than patient, a process worthy of a church alive.

It appears that the subject unit is far from unanimous and that the prayers and hymns urging followers of Christianity to do so only “a” remain, despite our wishful thinking, probably unrealistic and practically impossible. We rest at last account the reasonable choice to see the Church as not being deliberately divided but multiplied. The actual unit does not manifest itself not by love as disciples of Christ have for each other, unconditionally, despite the differences? Is it an exaggeration to believe that the prayer of Christ invites us to live a relational unity rather than doctrinal? ”

Interesting stuff Louise. More to think about!

Btw, your reference to the Borg reminded me of something: http://annedroid-annedroid.blogspot.com/2008/06/celebrating-our-borg-ness.html

For some reason, at my church they’re currently into the idea that we must ‘live for the next generation’. Why? Why do I have to live for a bunch of other people’s children? Has anyone come across this idea before? It seems to be taken from the fact that Moses didn’t reach the Promised Land, but the next generation did. At a service they spoke of anyone over 30 as being mothers and fathers to the people UNDER 30 which I find bizarre. Many of my close friends are under 30 and I don’t necessarily feel maternal towards them. They also spoke of us as having wisdom to pass on to them, but I don’t feel I have really. I find a lot of the younger people to have greater wisdom than the older ones and a lot more authenticity.

AnneDroid: “I find it incredibly sad (understatement) that there are so many thousands of denominations across the world. But moving out of the institutions, whilst liberating, is perhaps only moving even further away from unity.”

Maybe not? Since I’ve left the institution and have become part of a simple home church, I feel more one with the rest of the church (wherever they are) than ever. Though I do not enjoy many of the expressions of church, I know I am one with the body of Christ.

Anne Droid: “Each small group will inevitably define itself in some way, even if not in the formal way of a big denomination. That’s what we humans do, isn’t it?”

Exactly. And learning that therein does not lie the secret, truth of power, that it’s not all about that ‘awesome’ church experience, will help us lose some of the ballast. It’s good to realize we’re all losers seeking God. Especially me.

Dear Anne Droid.. thanks for the borg link… will read as soon as I can (am at work).

The google translation isn’t bad to give you the jist of things… but it also spurts nonsensical phrases…

I write articles in both French and English but don’t enjoy translating them. Sorry! My French readers complain I write too much in English! Vive le Canada and bonne journée!

Juste le français?