This past Wednesday, I talked about the importance of unity in a church.  

Every church has its struggles with maintaining a spirit of unity because every church is filled with imperfect, sinful people.

However, Paul calls us to passionately guard and protect the unity of the church (Ephesians 4:1-3).  This is Jesus’ prayer for the church as well (John 17:20-22).  

So, how do we do it?

We must have an others first mentality.  For unity to happen, we have to humbly put others ahead of ourselves. This is a non-negotiable.  We can’t make church all about us.   And of course, this also means…

We must waive our own personal rights.  If unity is going to take place in our church and others, then the people who make up the church have to set aside their own personal wants, needs, and desires, for the sake of the greater good, namely, the Gospel.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be guilty of getting in the way of what God wants to do by demanding that the church does what I want it to do.  Finally…

We must make allowances for other’s shortcomings.  There all kinds of people in our churches, and we have to not only tolerate them, but we have to accept them, shortcomings and all. Unless that happens, unity won’t either.  

Unity is so crucial to a church’s health and to allow or contribute to disunity in your church is to be at odds with what God is trying to do in your community.    

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 10:28 am and is filed under Teaching Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.