I read this post on Fran­cis Chan’s blog today: http://francisupdates.tumblr.com/post/8762288953/i-gave-up-on-unity

As com­ments are dis­abled on his blog and I have no idea how to get in touch with him, I fig­ured that I might as well throw some thoughts in response up here on the blog and see if they help any­one out.

Fran­cis wrote:

“[…] Until this recent study, I hadn’t noticed the deep con­nec­tion between the cross and unity. Our one­ness is far more than a “nice idea” we should pur­sue if we can find the time. It was a moti­va­tion for the cross.”

In Matthew 18 there’s this really neat sec­tion in verses 15–19 where Jesus is teach­ing his dis­ci­ples and teach­ing about con­flict res­o­lu­tion within the Church. It’s a very corporate-minded teach­ing, and Jesus talks some about the author­ity and power that the Church has. He says in clos­ing in verse 19:

“For where two or three have gath­ered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”

I wanted to take some time to talk about this verse in par­tic­u­lar, as it’s one of those much-abused verses. I have read about and heard many peo­ple claim­ing this promise, “because we are here together in His name, He is here with us!”

It mys­ti­fies me how peo­ple take the same tra­di­tions and meth­ods of mod­ern Chris­tian­ity, mix and match them in dif­fer­ent ways, and expect to get dif­fer­ent results.

I’ve met peo­ple who are tired of the tra­di­tions of ‘insti­tu­tion­al­ized’ Chris­tian­ity. They’re tired of doing the Bible stud­ies, Sun­day ser­vices, youth groups, Sun­day school, etc., but when and if they leave that sys­tem, more often than not they end up doing the same types of tra­di­tions out­side the sys­tem. It’s easy to become yet another denomination.