How to be Church and not a Sect

by

April 05, 2022

Real diversity within the Church of Jesus Christ requires that we take part in conversations that are uncomfortable and sometimes offensive and hurtful to ourselves and others. 

The reason for this is that the church is not a voluntary organization of like-minded people. It is, rather, the gathering of people called by Jesus Christ and not yet fully transformed by his love.  It is diverse because Jesus calls all kinds of people to himself and never asks whether they will agree with the others whom he has called. All he asks is that join their fellow disciples in following him.

This truth about the authentic diversity of the church is unacceptable to many United Methodists. For decades our church has desperately sought to manage diversity by mandating ethnic, age, and gender representation throughout the UM structure and creating ever more finely tuned mandates of belief and practice. 

But these mandates were always imposed on people who had already followed Jesus into our churches and joined our worshipping communities. They were always too late to keep us from uncomfortable and even hurtful conversations.

Real diversity is both unavoidable in real Christian communities and is one of their most necessary features. Real diversity is the sign that Jesus is doing the calling and not us. But it also poses a problem, a problem that emerges even among Jesus' first disciples. 

Real diversity can quickly become the excuse for, and center of a struggle for power. In the name of honesty, and backed by appeals to supposedly unassailable authority, ecclesiological bullies emerge. The wounded, the weak, the heavy laden whom Christ called to lay their burdens on him find that those burdens are cast back on them in the name of frank, open conversations about a diversity of beliefs and practices.

There are really only two solutions to this problem. One, which Methodists have pursued time and again, is to divide into internally homogenous sects. The leaders of the sect, rather than Jesus, then choose who is in and who is out. No diversity, no uncomfortable conversations, and supposedly no one hurt. A steady program of indoctrination and ever tighter membership standards insure that there will be no discomfort or offense, just agreement. For a while. 

The other solution is to commit to welcoming all those called by Jesus, and to then cultivate a culture of authentic dialogue. Such a dialogue culture is founded on the assumption that mutual understanding is more important than agreement, and that such agreement as emerges is primarily a basis for joint action rather than exclusion. Most importantly, such a culture of authentic dialogue must recognize that there are those who have been so wounded by rejection of their personhood, or their theology, or their spirituality that they cannot participate in dialogue without it becoming too painful to bear. 

So unlike a sect, which pushes all diverse voices beyond its well-fortified walls, a church must offer places of refuge within itself. It must offer places of healing away from the uncomfortable and hurtful conversations that are necessarily a part of the truly diverse community of faith called into being by Christ. A church, unlike a sect, trusts that God’s grace will, in the end, perfect all the followers of Christ. Thus the church, with due attention to protecting the innocent from harm, need not seek or demand perfection from itself or its members. It can find a place for those who have no place, but whom God’s love in Jesus Christ has drawn into its fellowship. It can offer refuge and healing even in the midst of what appears to be a civil war. 

The sectarian choice has always hovered around the Methodist tradition. Wesley himself created the conditions that would make it organizationally and theologically palatable. Yet we Methodists should choose the alternative, even though it will certainly lead to continued uncomfortable conversations, and with them some hurt and heartbreak. We’re big enough for that: to engage in both difficult dialogue and offer refuge to those for whom such dialogue is too difficult. We’re church enough for real diversity, and that must be our choice. 

The Rev. Dr. Robert A. Hunt serves as Director of Global Theological Education and Director, Center for Evangelism at United Methodist-related Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. This post is republished from his blog, The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture.