The Bride who Beats her own Body

There was once a man marrooned on an island. Years passed by and he eventually gave up on being rescued and began to make a new life for himself. One day a cargo ship was passing by and saw the distressed man on the beach and came to rescue him. As they took care of the man, found him some clean clothes and cooked him a hot meal, the captain looked around and noticed that there were three buildings on the island. He asked the marrooned man, "Are there more people on this island?"
"No," replied the man.
The captain was curious, "Then why do you have three houses?"
He said, "Oh that! Only one is my house. The other two are churches."
Well, now the captain was truly puzzled. He asked the man, "But if there is only one of you, then why do you have two churches?"
The man explained, "That church over there is the one I attend. The other one is where I used to attend, but I left because of doctrinal issues with the pastor."

I heard that joke today. It made me laugh but only because I didn´t cry. It was told in the context of a man describing his distress on going to a small island that weekend with only 600 people. And it had six different churches. Then he went around on Sunday and didn´t see more than 30-50 people in a single church.

I used to be a youth minister in a small town in Northeastern Oklahoma. The year I was there, they had one of the biggest graduating classes they had had in years--18 kids! However, the town had five different churches.

I went to college in the town of Joplin, MO. It´s a town of 48,000 people. And it has 221 churches! During my final year at college, there was a church plant started in Joplin (not the first one in my five years in Joplin). The church´s arguement was that after you factored in the number of churches and then found the average number of seats and then added that together, the number was smaller than the population of Joplin. So the obvious answer: plant more churches! Despite the obvious fallacy of adding together averages or the fact that many of these churches have multiple services, I know for a fact that most of these churches are dying and empty. Why not start with the wounded and bring healing before giving up on them? Should we treat churches like horses, and pull out our shotgun after it breaks a leg? Why do we insist on starting over? Why do we insist on competition instead of working together for the same cause? Why are numbers more important than making sure the people we already have are in authentic relationships with Christ?

I come from the Independent Christian Churches. We are part of what is called the Restoration Movement, a movement that was started as a movement to create unity within the Church. And out of that moment sprung (at least) three different groups of churches. Recently there has been a lot of celebration in our churches that we are amongst talks to recconcile differences between us and the non-instrumental Churches of Christ. And as wonderful and beautiful as that is, that isn´t a step forward. That is just recovering from one of our steps back. We should be on the forefront of creating unity amongst the Bride of Christ, but instead are just another unhealed wound, a surface ulcer on the her skin.

Brothers and Sisters, we have a lot of work to do. But I don´t want this just to be a rant pointing out another bruise on the Beloved of Christ. This is a very important issue. So much so that on the night before our Savior died, he prayed for unity amongst his future believers. He was well aware it would be a problem. But Jesus never prayed without thinking an answer would not be possible. If faith can move mountains, maybe we can act like we are related to our brothers in sisters in Christ. As a mother says to her fighting children while she tries to take a picture of her squirming loved ones, "Act like you love eachother!" So my question is what are you doing to bring about unity in the Church or what would you like to do? Let me know your ideas. Let´s move from talk to action.

Love and Blessings,
Mateo

"For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: ´Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.´" --1 Cor. 1:25-31