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It seems that the more I talk about unity, the more people come up to me and say I agree with you but. There always seems to be a but. Although we have our differences, as the people of God we all have the same mission. That mission was given to us in the Great Commission. We are to go and make disciples. The unity of the church is based on the essentials and there are not that many of them.
Believe in God.
Believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God who died for your sins.
Believe that Jesus Christ will one day return.
These are the things that are essential to salvation. Everything else is a nonessential. The nonessentials are where we get the but’s. Why does this happen? It happens because we are so invested in our theology and our own opinions. We should be willing to correct our brothers and sisters when we think they are in error. What we should not do is say that we are not willing to work in unity to achieve the mission that God has called us to simply because we have a theological difference. I know that it can be hard to work with someone that sees the world differently than you do. It can be hard to understand why some people have a different theological interpretation than you. The bottom line is if we all agree on the essentials, God expects that we will get past the disagreements on the nonessentials and get to work. The Disciples did not always agree yet they did what Jesus told them to do. We are not going to always agree yet we need to do what God has called us to do. We need to work as one body. NO MORE BUTS. NO MORE WHAT IFS.
the essentials. Now I’ll tell you to this day I strongly believe that there are some issues where this pastor is in error, but when it comes to the essential we are on the same page. If I had focused on the non-essential some of the positive steps that we were able to make in ministry would not have happened, and I would not have grown as much as I did because of that experience.
When I talk about unity I am not talking about conformity I’m not talking about friendship. I’m talking about fulfilling the mission of the church. When this life is over, and we stand before God, we are all going to find out there were some things we spent a lot of time and energy on that we shouldn’t have. We are also going to find that there were somethings that we should have spent more time on. We have to be careful not to be so sure of our own righteousness that we shun those who we think are in error rather than working with them and trying to correct the error. What will you say to the Lord when you stand before him if he asks you, did you give your best effort to maintain unity within my church. Let us strive for unity and let’s have No More Buts.