More Than The Essentials

We (Church of Christ/Christian Churchers) take pride in the fact that we only take a stance on the essentials. "In essentials, unity. In opinions, liberty. In all things, love." It is a great slogan, but, as is the nature of slogans, it fails to capture the complexity of the situtation. (Whether we really only take a stance on essentials is up for debate.)

On an individual level, the slogan works. We do not need to walk around judging other people based upon non-essentials.

The problem is that the church has to deal in and have unity in non-essentials. We have to agree on music style, times of our gatherings, what church finances will be used on, language of worship, whether we will celebrate our temporal kingdom on national holidays, what missionaries to support, and a multitude of other things. In order to be healthy churches, we must agree on non-essentials. The form it usually takes is that we do not struggle through the issues and just do what has always been done. This causes a church to begin doing what is not best for the community, although it might be what is most comfortable.

Every church, when it was planted, went through the struggle of making decisions on every non-essential. After five years, the unhealthy church fails to revisit those essentials while the healthy church evaluates and makes sure that they are still doing the non-essentials in a way that is best for bringing about the kingdom of God. It might be exactly the way it was five years ago, but they would have made the conscious decision to do things the same way.

We might agree that essentials are all that is necessary for salvation, but focusing solely on the essentials leads to a minimal Christianity and is impossible once we start to be involved with a community of believers. Let us get past thinking we only take a stance on essentials; in reality, we take stances as a community of believers on so much more.