One but not the same

G’day,

I have taken this week off to begin writing a new book about what it actually means to live in one-but-not-the-same community. I have learned from my last couple of books that they take a lot longer to write and involve the help of many more people than you might imagine.

So I have a question… Can you give me a hand over the coming weeks?

I will post bits and pieces and I would love your feedback. I expect that what I post will change a fair bit before it makes it into the book.

The working title for the book is ONE: but not the same

Below I have pasted what is effectively the introductory chapter.

I’d love to know what you think and any suggestions you might have.

regards
Matt

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I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

John 17:20-21

The verse above is unambiguous. This is Jesus praying for us, his church. His prayer is simple. He wants us to be one, and somehow that oneness will help the world know who he is. 

Did you hear that?

Jesus wants his church to be one. What does that mean?

We have two options. Either we can find some way to write off what Jesus was saying (there have been many creative options presented by various authors and theologians), or we can review how we are currently approaching life and church and seek to change.

For many years the need for the church to change wasn’t so great. We were in a fairly comfortable position with significant social influence.

On Saturday 15^th August 1953 Melbourne’s preeminent newspaper, The Age, ran a story titled “Minister at Football” on page 16 which detailed the fact that Rev. Sir Alan Walker was being invited by the Essendon football club to speak at halftime to the gathered crowd as part of his mission to the nation outreach.^[1]

In 1953 the vast majority of Australians (89%) identified as Christian.^[2] Most people in the Western world had a largely common worldview, and concepts like “sin”, “repentance” and “redemption” were widely understood and Christian education was part of most state schools. 

Christianity was part of the culture and that meant it was kind of like the air we breathe. It was very hard for Christians in the 20^th Century to separate what was cultural and what was actually Christian.

The fact that the church wasn’t one as Jesus prayed it would be was largely overlooked. We have also sadly seen that many other things were overlooked as a tragic history of abuse, institutional racism and sexism in the church have really only come to light in the last 20 years. 

There were other problems in the church that were more obvious in the church at the time. In 1954 more than 1 in 5 Australians were Catholic and the divisions between Protestants and Catholics were deep and real. While this was a direct affront to Jesus’ prayer many on both sides saw the other as not truly Christian in the first place, which made it easier to justify divisive attitudes and behaviour.

These systemic issues were easier to avoid because we preached a gospel that was primarily about the personal forgiveness of sins and being welcomed into heaven when you die. This kind of preaching meant we didn’t have to face the uncomfortable questions that Jesus’ prayer raised for anyone who bothered to read it.

While there certainly were attempts to build bridges across denominational divides, these were mostly done at a high level through bodies such as the World Council of Churches, which itself was regarded with great suspicion by protestant Christians who saw it as a foretaste of the one world government they were sure would herald in the reign of the antichrist. 

Things are different now. 

This graph shows the seismic change over the last 30 years in my own state, Tasmania.

The line heading downwards reflects the number of people who consider themselves Christians, while the line heading upward reflects the number of people who say they have no religion.

That same newspaper (The Age) wrote quite a different kind of story about the Essendon football club’s relationship with Christianity on 6^thOctober 2022 titled “Conflicts were too great for Thorburn to keep both jobs.” 

This story detailed an ultimatum that Essendon’s newly appointed CEO was given to either step down from the board of a local Anglican church or step down from his role as CEO because a perceived conflict of interest. Our society has moved to a point where the beliefs and values of a football club are no longer compatible with the beliefs and values of a local Anglican church.

Andrew Thorburn’s firing was characterised as a question of religious freedom, which was debated by some (including the Age’s correspondent in the quoted article^[3]), but there is no question that the incident demonstrated that traditional Christian understandings are now clearly at odds with those that Essendon perceives as the dominant societal expectations of our day. 

Many Christians are still in shock that they don’t have the same influence in society that their parents had. Many churches are still trying to win people by using the techniques that worked 30 years ago and frustrated they are not working.

As Christianity increasingly becomes a minority in society it is time to pay attention to the parts of the bible we have ignored, and in particular to the parts of Jesus’ teaching we have avoided.

There is simply no way around it. Jesus’s heart for his church was that we would be one.

Jesus wasn’t so much talking about a high level oneness between leaders of different churches, like we might see at a council of churches or ministers fellowship. 

He was talking specifically about the relationships between church members of all ages and stages within a local congregation. 

One of the things that stands out in Jesus’ prayer is that the kind of oneness he is talking about is a reflection of his relationship with the Father. He expected the pattern of his relationship with the Father would be the pattern of our relationship with each other. The early church fathers wrestled with what that pattern actually looked like and they came up with the word “perichoresis”, which was a picture of one being ‘in’ the other, but neither losing their distinct identity. In Bono’s words they are “One but not the same.”

And that’s the kicker. Jesus was envisioning a different kind of church congregation than most of us experience on a Sunday morning, as sadly many of us go to church with people who are like us racially, financially, educationally, and culturally. 

As Martin Luther King jr. said

“I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hours, in Christian America. I definitely think the Christian church should be integrated, and any church that stands against integration and that has a segregated body is standing against the spirit and the teachings of Jesus Christ, and it fails to be a true witness.”^[4]

While MLK was talking about America and primarily talking about racial integration, it is clear that the church of Jesus Christ is meant to be made up of people who wouldn’t ordinarily associate with one another in the general community. It is this kind of group that actually requires a miracle of the Holy Spirit to be one and is actually able to be a true witness and reflection of Jesus’ prayer. 

This book is for anyone who wants to wrestle with what that might actually look like.

This isn’t a superficial question for me. I have a love/hate relationship with the very idea of the kind of community that could be described as being “one”

Over the last fifty years I have spent much of my adult life in different expressions of intentional Christian community. 

In each of those communities a group of followers of Jesus had chosen to share life by living in proximity to one another and living from a shared set of values. I learned a lot from each experience, but the overriding lesson from all of the experiences was that whether it was a dairy farm in rural Victoria, a repurposed convent in Broken Hill, a couple of houses or a farm in Hobart, an old officers mess beside the beach on the outskirts of Melbourne, or a whole village in the heart of Tasmania, attempting to “be one” with other people is profoundly difficult and can even cause significant harm. I write as one who carries emotional scars and even some level of trauma from times when community went wrong.

I also write as someone who carries sadness that I’m not currently experiencing some of the best moments that seeking to be “one” offers.  In each of the communities I mentioned there were moments of profound connection and beauty that I have not experienced anywhere else. 

I’m a Pastor. I love our church, but the truth is that we are still very much on the journey toward the kind of oneness that Jesus talks about. We still have quite a way to go.

I have read a lot of books, been to conferences and heard many podcast episodes about what the church should be and to be honest I’m a bit sick of new ideas. I am pretty sure that what the church needs is not a new idea, but to take seriously a very old one. 

Taking Jesus prayer seriously means doing much more than thinking in new ways. Jesus expects us our behaviour to change to such an extent that people outside the church will notice. 

I hope that by the time you have read the last page of this book you will be disturbed and inspired enough that to actually take next steps.

In the first chapter we will explore where Jesus’s prayer fits in the big story of the whole bible, and then in subsequent chapters we will get practical by letting Jesus himself challenge us directly.

As our church began to discuss what it would look like for us to truly be one, I asked them to identify why we aren’t. In five minutes they came up with a pretty comprehensive list in a colourful word cloud.

The way a word cloud works is that the more people who use the same words the bigger those words appear. 

We all know and experience the complex reality of trying to work with others on a daily basis. We all know and experience the pain behind these words as a normal part of life. It is normal, but I think we can all agree that its not healthy.

We all live in the tension of knowing the kind of relationships we want and the things that get in the road of those relationships happening. We cope with the tension of this by believing that’s just the way it is, and that some things will never change.

The truth is, however, that ever since Jesus cast his vision for community we have known very precisely how that community was possible, because he told us.

The book of Matthew has five distinct blocks of teaching, each one focussing on a specific question or theme. Matthew chapter 18 is one of those blocks, and the whole chapter is Jesus’ “community prescription.”^[5]  It is his outline for the kind of life his followers would need to live if they sought to be ‘one-but-not-the-same’.

What stunned me was that as I prepared to teach on Matthew 18, and started at the wordcloud it became clear that in one chapter of the bible that Jesus spoke specifically to every word on that list. He literally gave us a prescription for the kinds of ways we would need to act so that love and not the words in the word cloud would define the church.

Like I said, I don’t think we need new ideas for the church. Jesus invites us to live the kind of one-but-not-the-same life that demonstrates the truth of who he is to people outside the church. 

He gives a very clear plan for how that is possible.

If we ever get to a point where we feel like we have fully understood and implemented Matthew 18 then perhaps then we can start exploring some new ideas for the church.

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^[1] The Age Sat 15^th August 1953 page 16

^[2]https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/636F496B2B943F12CA2573D200109DA9?opendocument Accessed 24 Oct. 22

^[3] https://www.theage.com.au/national/conflicts-were-too-great-for-thorburn-to-keep-both-jobs-20221005-p5bnez.html

^[4] Meet the Press 18 April 1960

^[5] Michael J. Wilkins Matthew NIV Application Commentary, Introduction to chapter 18.