Thursday, January 05, 2006

Unity (part 1)

January 2006 we begin a double issue on the theme of unity. We're going to cover this in ways you perhaps have never experienced. Some of the articles will rock all of our worlds.

One hundred years ago, the church that this magazine owes much of its heritage--churches of Christ--split with the Christian Churches and eventually and today there are three churches with Stone-Campbell or Restoration heritage: Independent Christian Churches, Disciples of Christ, and Church of Christ.

Several meetings are planned this year to reunite brothers in the various Stone-Campbell branches of the fellowship. The intent of most of these gatherings is not to try and melt all the churches back into one but to acknowledge that we are brothers and sisters in Christ and both lament our lack of unity and celebrate our common desire to work alongside one another for the "good of the world, to the glory of God," to quote the theme for the Tulsa Soul Winning Workshop, one of these meetings.

Wineskins wants to help prepare minds and hearts for these meetings. Further, we want to challenge the notion that we are only to be unified with people like us in the Restoration Movement. The idea that we are unified because of outward signs of our religious practice is problematic at best and awfully flawed and sinful at worst.

So we will explore the idea of being unified with people who are different from us but united under one God and one journey toward Jesus Christ.

4 comments:

Fajita said...

I cannot wait! This is the most important thing the Restoration Movement has sought to do since it began. In fact, it is what it sought to do when ot began - kind of.

salguod said...

There's 4th branch, the International Churches of Christ. Although I can hardly blame anyone in the other three for not acknowledging or remembering us, we've done a pretty good job of pretending that the rest of you don't exist over the years. There are some of us, however, who want to change that.

Here's to more unity and better cooperation in 2006.

KMiV said...

Salguod,
I agree. I am here in Portland and have spoken for Kip at a couple of the ICOC conferences. I have appreciated the discussions with ICOC folks and their/your struggle to heal and possible reconciliation. The online forums have also been interesting for me.

I have described our separating as a great divorce. However--we lost a lot in the separation and I hope that we will be called to better outreach and evangelistic zeal.

I continue to pray earnestly for reconciliation in this. Thanks for doing an issue focused on unity Greg.

Ron Clark

Anonymous said...

I am a member of the tricities church of Christ (affiliation with ICOC) in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I have been a member of ICOC churches for approximately 20 years, and having been baptized in a Canadian church of Christ in 1982! If possible, I would like to attend this workshop. Definitely a great looking "banquet"!!!!
DD