We would all love to know the answers to questions such as: ‘What is the New Testament model for church leadership (or ministry structure, or conflict resolution, or mission, or worship, or . . .)?’ ‘What are the New Testament principles for healthy church life (or for mediating divisions, or planting new churches, or . . .)?’ Or perhaps: ‘Why can’t we just be like the New Testament church — united and of one mind?’

The problem is that such questions assume there are one-dimensional answers to these questions to be found in the New Testament (the answer, rather than several answers), and that the church in the earliest times somehow provides us with a perfect blueprint to follow.

Rather, precisely because the Bible is God’s inspired word, the biblical stories reveal the struggles of God’s people, warts and all. They are texts of truth — in all its dimensions. That means we need to balance our perceptions of a wonderfully united early church with the stories of tensions and disputes that Acts also tells us about. Healthy churches do not deny the reality of such tensions — nor even that sometimes divisions are unavoidable. Instead, they find a way through, or around, or even to part company, that still enables the transforming work of God to continue. The Bible tells us so . . .

Reading the New Testament with rose-coloured glasses

If we are reading the Bible selectively and choosing only the uplifting bits, we can romanticise the early church and give ourselves the feeling that it has all been downhill ever since (except perhaps for a brief resurgence in Reformation times). This is bad biblical interpretation and bad church history, and it does not make for healthy churches today. As they say, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, and those who read only the ‘nice bits’ in the Bible are ill-prepared to avoid repeating the ‘bad bits’, where the consequences of human failure are made clear.

For every sermon on the wonderful words of Acts, ‘they were of one mind’ (4:32-38; see also 1:14; 2:42-47; 9:31) there should be another on the ethnic tensions of Acts 6:1-8 (between the Hebrew/Aramaic-speaking widows and the Greek-speaking widows); or on Acts 11 (and the Jerusalem church struggling with Peter eating with the uncircumcised); or on Acts 15 (the same problem, but with Paul and Barnabas, or the ‘sharp disagreement’ and split between Paul and Barnabas in 15:39); or on Acts 21 and Paul’s ‘conditional’ reception in Jerusalem (‘go and purify yourself in the Temple, Paul — and pay for these four too’!!), and the even more mixed reception he received in Rome (in Acts 28, ‘for two years, at his own expense’).

We could go on to describe the problems we read about in Galatia, and Corinth and Thessaloniki, not to mention the tensions between the letters of 2 John and 3 John and within some of the seven churches of Revelation. We don’t have to read between the lines to see that all is not rosy in the early church. The wonderful moments of unity in mind and purpose seem to be overwhelmed by the stories of dispute, division and struggle.

Some may ask why we should focus on all this ‘bad news’ in the New Testament and seemingly highlight the failures of the saints as much as their successes. The answer is simple: the saints themselves have recorded these stories (at some cost to their own egos) for our edification. We should note them well, and not be so disappointed when the same sort of disagreements and schisms occur in our churches today. We followers of Jesus have always been passionate people who care deeply about what we stand for and how we live — it is not at all surprising that we should disagree passionately about these things from time to time. That is not unhealthy in itself — it is how we hold these differences that is important!

Reading the New Testament with 3-D glasses

Actually, I’m not a great fan of the 3-D movie glasses myself, but I hope you’ll get my meaning anyway. Because we’re reading letters on a page, we can often limit our understanding of the Bible to a two-dimensional dialogue (Paul and his churches, for example, or the Bible and our church today), seeking that one-dimensional answer that we can use as a quick-fix to our problems. We need the third dimension — an appreciation of their culture, world-view and politics, and of ours — in order to understand the depths and riches of the Bible read in its own context first, and then what it might still mean in ours.

This doesn’t mean that we need to be ‘academics’ to understand the Bible, or to study history first — but just that we need to read imaginatively and sensitively, and to enter the ‘world of the text’ to hear something of what it means in its own context before we apply it to our own. Of course it helps to have some people in our Bible discussions who have studied (whether formally or not) some history, literature, Greek and so on — but more important is the ability to ‘hear the other’, to imagine cross-cultural worlds, and to be open to ‘yet more light and truth’.

Naturally, we need also the fourth dimension — the Spirit to lead us into truth and understanding as we read God’s word together — but we mustn’t use this as a cop-out (‘just pray and God will tell us what it means’) to excuse us from doing some hard work and study on the Bible.

So let’s remind ourselves that the New Testament documents come out of tiny, oppressed communities (sometimes actively persecuted), dominated by patriarchal networks wielding power through patronage in an honour-shame culture. The ekklesiai of God (‘gatherings of God’, as Paul calls them), have no hope of influencing Roman Imperial policy on ethnic issues, slavery, treatment of women, marriage laws, or justice in the legal system. Nevertheless, they dare within their gatherings to model a new community where ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female — all are one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). Were these signs of health and hope in desperately oppressive times? You bet — but no wonder they sometimes struggled with each other and with the surrounding culture.

When we read these texts today at the other end of Christendom, from positions of relative power, wealth and dominance, we can construct very different meanings — and sometimes unhealthy ones — especially if we read only with the ‘winners’ in the Biblical narrative, and ignore the texts of struggle. The triumphant steamroller of faith can sometimes be used to squash all perceived opposition within a church or even in the wider culture, and our gatherings can become places of welcome only for ‘people like us’ — with the marginalised (the widow, the orphan, the refugee, the eunuch . . . ) again excluded from the hospitality of God’s table.  This is not healthy.

When vision fails altogether

So what do we do when all our attempts to deal with conflict fail to achieve reconciliation of any kind? Do we wind up the rhetoric further and judge our opponents even more strongly? Do we argue over whose side God is on?

Whose side was God on when Paul and Barnabas had their disagreement over John Mark, angrily parted company and went on separate missions (Acts 15:39)? Whose side was God on when Paul publicly labelled Peter a hypocrite in Antioch (Galatians 2:11-14)? Whose side was God on when the Greek-speaking Jewish followers of Jesus (the Hellenists) were persecuted and had to flee, whereas apparently the Apostles could stay behind in Jerusalem (Acts 8:1)? Whose side was God on in Corinth — with the followers of Apollos, of Cephas, of Paul, or of Christ — or was Paul adding a few factions there just to stir them up?

Of course, we must take very seriously the ministry of reconciliation to which we have all been called, and for which we have been gifted and equipped (2 Corinthians 5:18-20), but sometimes even the most saintly reconcilers fail to bring opposing groups together. Depending on how we read 2 Corinthians 10-13 (as Paul’s final words to the Corinthians? as part of an earlier ‘letter of tears’?), it may well be that Paul himself, after writing so profoundly about reconciliation (in 2 Cor 5), was unable to achieve it with the Corinthians. So we also might just have to admit failure sometimes, and move on — hopefully in a way that leaves God’s future open to all parties involved.

When that happens, let’s agree to disagree and part company with as little rancour as possible, and before the integrity of both sides is threatened. Whose side is God on? Sometimes the passing of time makes this clearer — sometimes it seems that both parties have flourished and brought glory to God. Rather than ask: ‘Whose side is God on?’ it might be better to consider who is on God’s side — the God of love and justice. That is healthy!

Transforming churches?

Healthy churches are transforming churches, not perfect churches. Transforming churches are both being transformed and also transforming the wider community — they breathe in, and they breathe out. They take note of the various models and arrangements for leadership and governance in the New Testament, and learn from the history of the church since then, to embody ways of being and doing that keep them close to the Way of Jesus.

Healthy churches can continue to thrive when differences are expressed passionately by their members. The whole point of the ‘body of Christ’ image (1 Cor 12-14) is that we are one body, but all different, and each and every one gifted differently for the benefit of the whole.

Healthy churches do not decide things based purely on rule by the majority and formal business procedures. Democracy in itself is not a Christian form of governance. It may be the best we have for our Nation and States, but Christian communities are the body of Christ, and 51% of Christ cannot tell 49% of Christ they are wrong. Rather, we Baptists agree to act on the basis of consensus — by overwhelming, if not 100%, majority. That may take time and a lot of praying and talking to achieve, and so sometimes we use the 67% majority as a guide. So be it.

If in the end a small minority is to be overruled by a large majority, the arguments and objections of the minority should be recorded clearly in the record of meeting. It may well be that the words of such prophets provide the foundation for the subsequent reconstruction of the community after the majority have been proved wrong. Thus it was for Jeremiah, that great prophet in the shalom (= health and wholeness) tradition of Israel, and we should always be ready to acknowledge that possibility when we face stubborn resistance within our own community of faith.

It may even be that we part company on an issue, but hopefully in doing so, we can agree that ‘Paul should go to the Gentiles, and Peter to the Jews’, or ‘Barnabas and Mark to Cyprus, and Paul and Silas to Galatia’, and thereby the transforming mission of God to all humanity can benefit regardless.