Every Flippin’ Effort

I have walked you though the last few blogs on our history of unity because, in this last blog on the subject of unity I want to show you that it has to start where we are, the reformation of the church has to begin somewhere and Paul’s plea to the Ephesians gives us no opt out clause for it not beginning with us now:

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 

Eph 4:3

“Every Effort” is just two words but a massive two words and two words which have largely been ignored by most Christians for the last two thousand years. Actually the two words are only one Greek word, “Spoudazo” which literally means ‘to use speed’. A modern day rendering might be, ‘put your foot on the gas pedal’ or ‘pull your flippin’ finger out!’ 

My question is "Have we?"

A consequence of the 16th century reformation was that protestant Christians had Roman Catholic Christians hung, drawn and quartered and Catholic Christians had Protestants burned at the stake. Men and women were killed on the slightest pretext, some only differed on bible translations or minor points of doctrine or churchmanship. Now I know that there was politically more going on than a reformation of the church, but nevertheless they do seem to have missed the implication of Ephesians 4:3.

One of the phrases I use with church leaders is:

"relationship matters more than doctrine". 

In a way, it’s my paraphrase of Ephesians 4:3. Don’t get me wrong, I love doctrine and spend a great deal of my time trying to get to grips with it, but if I allow my understanding of theology to cause me to disrespect another human being, especially a fellow Christian, I am stamping on the brake and not putting my foot on the gas pedal.

One of my deepest sadnesses about the church today is that most church leaders are so occupied with keeping their small fellowships going that they have no time for the city/borough/town wide church. It is very difficult to get church leaders to come to a weekly meeting, let alone begin to look at our responsibility to be elders at the city gate. Many denominations move their clergy far too frequently leaving a startling statistic that the average tenure in the UK is 4 years. Some premiership football managers last longer than that!

If the church today is to become the one that Jesus is building then we must face up to a reformation. Not a reformation that will blow the church apart, but one that will take seriously Jesus' prayer in John 17 and Paul’s plea in Ephesians 4 and become a church for a city, an ekklesia that the gates of Hades will not withstand.

Flippin’ Ecumenism.

After World War Two the ecumenical movement in Europe began to take steps towards more church unity, but it was a top down movement involving Arch Bishops and senior theologians across nations and denominations. Whilst we need that level of interface, the real unity needs to be grounded in a city where elders sit at the gate, where apostles lead ekklesia to change the culture of that city, and where a house of God can be built for that city. This is a huge task, but could it be that God is already at work bringing this about in our day?

The old ecumenical instruments of church councils in cities or churches together movements in towns are really struggling. Many are too consumed with their lengthy constitutions, layered committees and shortage of willing officers to even keep going. I have been to meeting after meeting of ecumenical groups at all kinds of levels over the last 15 years and found that they are all in their last days. However, something else seems to happening. 

Ten years ago when we were gathering churches together to pray for Croydon we were told about a couple of other London Boroughs (Harringay and Newham) who were doing similar things. When we went to Manchester to meet with Debra Green at Redeeming Our Communities we heard of lots going on which was similar up there, but we still felt that in Croydon we were unusual. About four years ago I was even indulging in the sin of pride (What you? Well I say that in all modestly of course) in believing that we were uniquely pioneering something. Then I had a call from a wonderful man of God, and not even a church leader, called Matt Bird. Matt invited me to a small meeting over coffee with other leaders of church unity in four London Boroughs. The stories these men told were amazing and spookily similar to ours. We agreed to try to find a unity network leader from every London Borough and bring the 30 or so people together for a lunch. Matt served that team brilliantly and it wasn't very long afterwards that 23 leaders of borough wide networks turned up for our first lunch and guess what, their stories were all staggeringly unoriginal. It became apparent that, independently of one another, we had all begun to take unity seriously and brought the church together for relationship, prayer and action in our towns. This network of networks, as it has been called, continues to meet 3 or 4 time a year just to stay in touch, pray and see what God is doing in London.

You would be forgiven for thinking that although this is good news it isn’t really a sign of a reformation, but who in 1521 thought that Martin Luther nailing his thesis to a tree in Worms was an epoch? 

However, I am not bold enough to declare a reformation has begun on the strength of the London network of networks alone. In February 2011 I heard of another new initiative called ‘Gather’. A Manchester church leader and Evangelical Alliance ambassador, Roger Sutton, began to link up unity networks across the UK which resulted in a three day conference in February 2012. Around sixty town and city wide unity movements were represented at that conference at Swanwick in Derbyshire and yet again, their stories were amazingly alike. Churches in these towns were beginning to come together to serve the local people and to pray and regard themselves as the church for the city. No way could this be because we had all read the same book or been to a stimulating conference, this must be a move of God’s Spirit across our nation. But that isn’t the end of my observation. Later that year Roger Sutton asked me to go with him and another unity leader from York (Graham Hutchinson) to an international conference on unity in New York, USA. Over a week in September 2012 we met with nearly 100 unity movements from the US, Canada and New Zealand and their stories were just the same as ours and all of us were amazed that there were so many other places doing these things when we thought we were the only ones. Jehovah Sneaky didn’t get his name for no reason. I fully expect to be invited to the intergalactic church unity conference any time soon.

So God has begun the reformation in our life time and it is thrilling but what do we need to do in response?