It is a pointer that all is not well when we start discussing the need to fostering practice of unity in the church in that the church, being the body of Jesus Christ (with the head being Jesus, Himself) is expected to be a perfect composition of believers.
The church is a divinely orchestrated assembly of people who profess faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. It is divinely orchestrated because Jesus made a declaration in Mat. 16:18 saying, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it”.
It should be noted that while there is a need for convergence, the place of worship is not (ultimately) the church, rather, believers who gather in a place of worship are, together, the church.
After all, when the corona virus (COVID-19) was raging between 2019 and early 2021, necessitating governments all over the world to enforce lockdown and limit convergence in public as well as worship places in order curb the spread of the virus – the church did not stop holding services.
It was during the lockdown that many streaming platforms sprung up and got some shares of the market within the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry because the church took Sunday and mid-week services online.
When John the beloved received his vision of the book of Revelations from the Lord on the isle of Patmos, the language of the letter written to the seven churches reveals that the recipients are humans and not the object or place of worship.
For example, in Rev. 3:1-3, the Bible says, “To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2 Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. 3Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you”.
Howbeit, the place of worship for the Christians (those who confess and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour and practice His teachings, Acts 11:26) can still be referred to as the church not because the building itself is the church but just for the sake of identification.
The word ‘church’ may also mean an organised Christian denomination with its distinct doctrines and forms of worship.
Like in Nigeria, there are: The Redeemed Christian Church of God, The Foursquare Gospel Church in Nigeria, Deeper Christian Life Ministry, Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministry, The Apostolic Church of Nigeria, Church of the Living Faith Worldwide, Dome of Glory (Dunamis), Christ Embassy and the Church of Synagogue of all Nations – all, together and individually, may be referred to as Nigerian church or churches in Nigeria.
Each church, within the rights of its leadership, may formulate doctrines, patterns of worship and conducts that are unique to the values of the leadership and each of the churches may also decide to borrow some beliefs considered relevant to Christian faith and Bible teachings from the other.
The arguments above, notwithstanding, it should be noted that the word ‘church’ is more about the believers who come together to observe worship rites to God through Jesus Christ.
At the same time, the basis of the need to fostering unity in the church lies within the uniqueness of each church denomination as well as their independence of one another which, usually, brings about differences of values, beliefs, religious practices and (sometimes) interpretations of the Bible.
Why fostering unity in the church when it (as the body of Christ) is one?
It is true that the Bible describes the unity of the church using the allegory of the body, whereby, each part cannot tell the other to get away.
Unfortunately, human beings who make up the church are susceptible to error and can offend one another. Members of the church may have misunderstanding along personal divides but when that happens there is always a need for amendments in order to ensure continuous and cordial relationships among brethren.
Fostering unity in the church is, therefore, important to prevent the devil from tearing the church apart. This is because disunity does not bear positive results and the devil uses it to prevent the church from fulfilling its mandate of kingdom expansion.
The devil understands the explanation of the Lord, Jesus Christ, as contained in Mark 3:24-25, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand” and attempts to use this tactics against the church because people (who make up the church) are imperfect beings who can make mistakes).
The early apostles did not escape this force of darkness, either. There were divisions among them from time to time but they overcame division each time by bringing themselves under the influence of the Holy Spirit through the word of God and spiritual admonitions.
For example, some apostles once came from Judea to preach circumcision according to the Law of Moses (in addition to salvation through) to believers in Antioch but when Paul and Barnabas got to know of it there was a sharp disagreement with those apostles to the point a council was commissioned to discuss the development so that the church leaders could take a biblical stand (Acts 15).
At a time Apostle Paul had to write to the Corinthian church, appealing to them to put aside division and quarreling among themselves while embracing unity. Paul needed to also make them understand that their varying choices to either follow him, Apollos or Cephas do not matter because none of them (apostles) but Christ died for the salvation of the souls of men (1 Cor. 1:10-13).
There will always be the need to foster unity in the church since the church is made up of human beings.
Barriers to unity in the church
The primary barrier to unity in the church might be as a result of conflict of interests of individual worshipper and decision makers within the church. This is so because every person has his/her biases towards certain issues as well as preferences towards some individuals which may negate those of others.
Eric, Dennis and Carolyn in their article titled ‘Evaluating Conflict of Interest Theory: Western European Cabinet Coalition, 1954-80’ which was published in the British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 14, No. 1 (in Jan, 1984) referred to Robert Axelrod’s assertion on the theory of conflict of interests.
They noted that Axelrod has defined the degree of conflict of interest in terms of the incompatibility of actor goals (e.g., policy preferences), thus, driving the expectation that forming coalitions will minimize the degree of preference disagreement among their members…
At the same time, Eric et al., affirmed that conflict of interest in a society on a given policy dimension is the average conflict of interests between a pair of people as each of the pair takes position’s frequency in society, as a result, the more dispersed the population becomes on certain policy continuum, the greater the conflict of interest among members of the population.
Another barrier to unity in the church is conducts under the influence of the flesh. In this case, the flesh means living without the Holy Spirit, whereas, the Bible affirms “This I say then: Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” – Gal. 5:16.
The lust of the flesh overpowers many in the church because they are not living in personal consecration by power of the Holy Spirit, as a result, many result to fighting, quarrelling, and keeping of malice or even causing dissension in the church.
Sadly, some church denominations fight other church denominations within their vicinity and unknowingly project the body of Jesus Christ in bad light to unbelievers.
Yes, superiority complex may also be responsible for disunity in the church. This happens when a church leader wants to be seen or heard at all cost with the aim of overshadowing other church leaders so that the former individual could be perceived as more authoritative and highly anointed than others.
This superiority complex is why a minister will condemn the messages of another minister with outright guts, whereas, every minister of the Gospel will give account (only) to the One that called him/her as much as the minister is not trespassing to the law of the country in which he/she operates the ministry.
How the church can achieve unity among all denominations
For the records, there are classifications of church according to their practices. There are the Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Protestants, Orthodox and the Indigenous Churches (popularly known as the White Garment Churches or Ijo Aladura).
Each categorisation reflects in the mode of worship, values system as well as doctrines of each of these churches with tendencies for declassifications along beliefs, doctrines and value system.
The obvious problems, notwithstanding, for the church to achieve unity – it must begin from the leader of each denomination who will have to preach and exhibit tolerance and church relationship to his/her members.
In this instance, we are postulating leadership by example. Each Founder or General Overseer of every denomination must take relationship with other churches as important as the command to love God and one’s neighbour (Mark 12:30-31) for until then can the existing disparity along doctrinal principles among church members of different denominations come to an end.
There is also the need to indoctrinate church members with values for peaceful coexistence. Enough of all the preaching of hatred and segregation that makes church members look down on worshippers in another denominations. This will, in turn, boost cordial relationship within each local church and everyone will become his/her brother’s keeper in the process.
Benefits of unity in the church
As we already pointed out above, a house or kingdom divided against itself will come to a sudden ruin but the opposite will be the case if the church could embrace unity among itself and shun declassification (which is the segregation of churches along doctrinal beliefs and practices as inferior to certain church denominations).
Unity in the church will, further, empower the church and gives the church the needed voice and advantage to expand the kingdom of God on earth.
It will encourage unbelievers to want to really share in the brotherly love that will now replace dissension and, as a result, the church will record landslide victory (of harvest of souls) from the kingdom of darkness.
The church will also become formidable against the whiles of the devil and his agents in that the unity of the church will make the church stronger to counter every attack from all fronts. As the Bible says, “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” – Eccl. 4:12.
It will be practically impossible for the devil to use any means to weaken the church that exists in unity regardless of denominations, doctrines of practices.
Conclusion
While each church denomination is answerable to the constituted authority over it church leaders must bear in mind that they are answerable to God who put them in their various positions and that God is expecting Christian leaders to represent Him well in all they do.
Whatever anyone does on earth will be accounted for on the Day of Judgment: it should, therefore, be noted that God is more interested in the expansion of His kingdom on earth than multiplications of local assemblies by each church denominations.
Although, church growth and church planting are good, they cannot substitute for quality interdenominational and intra-denominational relationships as this is the only proof that believers are true children of God, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” – John 13:34-35.
