Polarity In The Church

Polarity In The Church Polarity: the quality or condition inherent in a body that exhibits opposite properties or powers in opposite parts or directions or that exhibits contrasted properties or powers in contrasted parts or directions : the condition of having poles. From the Merriam-Webster Disctionary 1 Corinthians 1:10-15 Amplified Bible (AMP) 10But I urge and entreat you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in perfect harmony and full agreement in what you say, and that there be no dissensions or factions or divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in your common understanding and in your opinions and judgments. 11For it has been made clear to me, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions and wrangling and factions among you. 12What I mean is this, that each one of you [either] says, I belong to Paul, or I belong to Apollos, or I belong to Cephas (Peter), or I belong to Christ. 13Is Christ (the Messiah) divided into parts? Was Paul crucified on behalf of you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul? 14I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15Lest anyone should say that I baptized in my own name. One of the first sermons I ever wrote back in 2008 was about division in the church. At the time, my heart was heavy because someone I had always considered a good Christian man and friend had offended me by utterly putting down my home church at the time simply because it was of a different denomination than him. His words were That's no good. It's unsound doctrine. At that time I hadn't been attending church for very long and this did not help my longtime opinion of 'the church'. You see, I'd always had a relationship with God, but because of things I'd seen and experienced as a teen, I'd stay away from organized religion pretty much all of my life. Like many people, I'd had run-ins with some very judgemental and hypocritical Christians as well as having seen the church my parents attended split in two because of the pastor's greed. His contract was up and he had demanded a much higher salary to go along with being provided with a car and parsonage. Many members of the church had agreed with his requests, while others strongly protested. The pastor ended up leaving along with almost half of the congregation. After witnessing this, I decided that I wanted nothing to do with organized religion. Let's fast forward to 2012. In the past four years, my relationship with God has grwon by leaps and bounds, as well as my knowledge of the scriptures. I'm a member of a church that I love very much with a wonderful church, with a wonderful church family in my life. At my home church, I'm a Sunday School teacher, LaySpeaker, and member of the Administrative Council. Outside of the denomination of my home church, I'm also an ordained non-denominational Christian minister. Okay, that's enough about me. Now that I've given you some background, Lets get to the matter at hand. Once again, I come to you with a heavy heart. I continue to witness arguments between Christians over differences in denominational doctrines. Even worse, now I see more and more division among brothers and sisters within church congregations. Not to mention, the divisions we see between clergy and laity within our churches. First, let's address the denominational differences. Over the past few years, I've had the oppurtunity to worship with Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, Messianic Jews, Church of God, Pentecostal Holiness, and Presbyterians, as well as sevral non-denominational churches. I've had great experiences as well as not so great experiences. I've also seen the good and the bad in different churches as well. Though there are many, many doctinal differences, were are all parts of the body of Christ. We are all Christians. We all believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We also believe that God the Son came into our world, born of the virgin Mary, raised by her and her Jewish carpenter huband Joseph of Nazareth, preached of repentence and being born again, was persecuted, arrested, tortured, and took all of our sins upon Himself as he hung upon a Roman cross, died, and was resurrected on the third day. I know I'm leaving out a lot of the gospel, but you get my point. We as Christians all believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Beyond our belief in the gospel, we get into different interpretaions of certain scriptures, and into the doctrines of man put into place in our organizations that we call churches. Remember, the true church is the body of Christ of which we are all members. Denominations can be a good thing in some respects. As human beings, we are unique individuals. Some of us are more comfortable in more ritualized, orderly worship services, while others are more comfortable in less ordered, more spotaneous worship serices. Still other of our brothers and sisters enjoy very lively, charasmatic worship services, while other enjoy more contemporary, or modern services. There's nothing wrong with any of this as long as the truth of the gospel is being preached. There's a bad side to denominationalism though. We often times get into legalism, where some churches turn people away because of their appearance, or the clothing, jewelry, or music they enjoy. We also see the exact opposite where some churches have become so laxed that worship services look more like rock concerts or parties where the Word is just a sidenote. What matters about worship is that there is reverence toward God, praise is given to God, thanks is given to God, the truth of the Word is preached, and it gives glory to God. The 'style' of the worship service is what should be the sidenote. Can we not agree on that? Now, let's move on to polarity within single churches. One would think that Christians that are members of the same congreation would share similat values and views, but that is often not the case. Different views on social issues and politics cause strife within our own congregations. I've seen arguments over the style and location of the worship service within churches before, arguments over how church funds should be used, and so on. These disagreements don't bother me as much as the things I'm seeing in recent times. Social issues and people's views on them are tearing our churches apart. I would have to say that the issue of homosexuality is the absolute hottest topic in the church today. We are seeing many people, in sevral denominations pushing for the acceptance of homosexuals as pastors and in other leadership positions in our churches. We also see the push for the acceptance of same-sex marriage in our churches. This subject is dividing many congregations throughout the Unites States. We have members of our churches who are all for making people feel accepted at seemingly any cost, even by compromising the holy scriptures. We also have members who believe in upholding the teaching found in the Holy Bible. I am of this train of thought. When it comes to our pastors, would we accept a man who was living with his girlfriend out of wedlock to lead our church? Absolutely not! Then why would we accept someone in a relationship with someone of the same sex as a pastor? God clearly teaches us throughout the bible that homosexuality is unnatural and is a sin. Are we supposed to put aside scriptures in order to be more compassionate to people? Would we overlook someone's being a sex offender and allow them to lead our youth groups? I think not. Jesus calls for us to be compassionate to our fellow man, but He does not call for us to allow people who openly embrace sin to be our church leaders. We are to accept people dealing with all sorts of sin in the doors to hear the Word of God in hopes that they will take the Word to heart and make a change. We are not to tell them 'It's ok to live a sinful life', but we have church members whose views are polar opposites on this subject and are casuing rifts in our churches. Another division in the church today is the seemingly growing chasm between clergy and laity. We have a growing number of clergy who've developed a bad complex. They feel that they are above the laity, the people of the church. They believe that due to their degrees and other acheivements that they have all of the knowledge of divinity and that the congregation knows nothing. This is a shame. On the other side of the coin, we have laity who feel that since they give a certain amount to the church, that the pastor is their puppet to goad into managing the church 'their way'. This is equally destructive to the church. We must remember that the bible calls for all of us to be ministers of God, both the clergy and the laity. The pastors are called to be shepherds or overseers in our congregations, not dictators who believe thaey hold all of the knowledge and power. As for the laity, they are to be ministers of the Word in their own right, taking care of most of the functions of the church, not dumping all of the responsibility on the pastor and certainly not trying to influence the clergy for their own agendas. All of the above examples shed a bad light on our beloved church. When we are constantly bickering, involved in power struggles, and compromising our own beliefs we are acting exactly like 'the world'. Is it surprising that so many people are turning away from the church today when we can't even get a long with each other? Why would anyone want to be a part of a group that doesn't even practice it's own beliefs? The scripture I quoted at the beginning of this writing tells us to be of like mind and asks that there be no divisions among us. Well my friends, we are letting our brother, the Apostle Paul down and more than that, we are letting Jesus down. We've gotten so far away from the teachings in our holy scriptures and so deep into the doctrines of man that we have lost our way. We must get back to preaching the truth of the gospel and living by it. We've got to stop accepting doctrines and church by-laws that are contrary to God's Word. It may seem over simplified and idealistic, but it is the only way to bring back unity to the church. We cannot continue to allow compassion lead us into conforming to the world instead of us transforming the world through the Word of God. I know that this writing will probably stir up more arguments than it will settle. I know that this is just one point of view on the state of the 'modern church'. I stand on my view of the matter though. It all comes back to looking to the truth of the Holy Bible. We cannot continue to twist some scriptures to serve our own purpose or ignore some scriptures in order to make certain sins acceptable. We must believe in the whole message of the Holy Bible or not at all. God bless you my friends.