LIE: Churches must be named

Lie:      Churches must be named.

Truth: Naming churches divides the body of Christ.

Where I live four churches lie within a quarter mile or less on the same street, each with its own designer sign. To get to my church I have to pass two of them. Something is wrong with this picture.

We’ve grown accustomed to the thousands of denominations that dot the landscape and even consider it normal. Most of the Christian church in America believes that our churches – to be a legitimate church – cannot exist unless they’re identified as separate entities, separate from any and all other named churches, even those closest to it. Those churches conduct their outreaches, programs and services completely independent of one another. And they do it never considering that, more than likely, most of them really want to accomplish the same fundamental thing – to make disciples of Jesus. Something is definitely wrong with this picture. The only name that should be prominent is THE Name — Jesus!

The very word denomination means ‘of names.’ At its heart, the state we’re in today, is a complex taxonomy of churches, sub-churches, conventions, denominations, sects, etc. No one relishes this state of affairs and wishes it could be otherwise, but the real problem is that most in the body of Christ have capitulated and accepted this fragmentation as something normal. Even those churches who call themselves ‘non-denominational,’ form de-facto denominations, proliferating them even more. They are those who actually further fragment the body and insist on creating their own special brand.

By its very nature, naming separates and creates distinct identities that then, by default, positions churches to tacitly strive with each other, even though they may not intentionally do so. A low-grade angst infects  many believers and church-goers today; they wonder if or when people in their church will become discontent enough to seek out and leave for other ‘competing’ churches. This ought not to be.

The only naming of churches in the New Testament was when the writer distinguished them by their locality: Here’s a sampling:

City centers:

• church of God in Corinth – I Corinthians 1:2
• saints in Colossae – Colossians 1:2
• saints in Ephesus – Ephesus 1:1
• church of the Thessalonians – I Thessalonians 1:1

Regions:

• churches of Galatia – Galatians 1:2
• churches of God in Judea – I Thessalonians 2:14
• churches of Macedonia – 2 Corinthians 8:1
• churches of Asia – I Corinthians 16:19

The church as we know it today is a patch-work quilt with each patch trying to distinguish itself, even to market itself by its ‘distinctives.’ But instead of focusing on peripherals, it would be better for the whole body to focus on the core – Jesus Christ and his gospel. To have unity we don’t need to agree on everything – we could never do so anyway.

“But,” you say, “ideally that may be true, and it’s unfortunate that the body of Christ is so fragmented, but what can we do? It can never change.” To that I say: yes, to make a wholesale, overnight change is unrealistic, but we can move in the direction of unity; there are things that we can do. But first let’s go back and see how we got here.

The Tower of Babel Syndrome

To name a church is to commit the same error as the Tower of Babel builders. Though the plot is sketchy, in essence, the builders wanted to build an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind edifice – an actual, physical ascendancy – to scale to the top of the heavens.[1] Why? To ‘make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the earth.’

Buy why? why did they not want to be scattered? and what’s so wrong with that? What does it mean? What was really motivating them? The answer: in short, their desire, though not ostensibly wrong, was missing the core of life: God himself. They did not include him in their equations. They instead had put their trust in Man with a capital M – Mankind, as a harnessed collective of structured, organized, pyramidal, and self-ascended men. This was equivalent to believing the original lie spoken in the Garden of Eden when the serpent said: ‘You shall be like God . . ’

But it turns out that God actually was in their sights – it was in their desire to ascend and to transcend their God-given, but broken humanity, by storming the throne of God as Lucifer had done before. Here are Isaiah’s words describing Lucifer’s (Satan’s) ‘ascent’ (which also was thwarted by God himself). Listen to his five ‘I wills’:

‘How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’ — Isaiah 14:12–14

“But,” you say, “Really? are you really saying that churches are little ‘towers of Babel’?!” Actually no. What I’m saying is that the modern practice of naming churches as separate, and individual churches carries the same idea in seed form.

Let’s compare the two:

Scripture	Tower of Babel	Named churches
Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. — Gen 11:3	Attempted to create a completely manufactured reality.	Try to make ‘church life’ happen exclusively inside the four church walls.
And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens . . .” — Gen 11:4a	Unified around the city and tower.	Trust in their unique church culture identity to unify and prevent scattering.
	Built an extraordinary city and tower complex (partially due to God’s judgment)	Build extraordinary structures and complexes.
. . . let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”  — Gen 11:4a	Wanted to make a name for themselves.	Use sophisticated signage and advertising to make a name for themselves.
And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. — Gen 11:6	Used their unified language and culture to do the impossible.	Seek to artificially create a singular church ‘culture.’

Now contrast the Tower of Babel story with the story of Abram. Listen to God’s I wills:

I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing. — Genesis 12:2

Also compare Hebrews 11:8–10

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. — Hebrews 11:8–10

Abram, soon to be Abraham, the Father of Israel, left everything, and in the process became vulnerable. But he did not put his trust in trying to build permanent structures. The only permanent structure he was looking for was the city of God. God himself built the nation of Israel over time and through divine multiplication – family. Abraham believed, even in his and Sarai’s advanced age, to obey God’s mandate to ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’ This command was given to both Adam (Genesis 1:28) and to Noah (Gen 9:1).

Spiritually then, this is how God multiplies his church: not by the inward concentration of scale, but through the outward-facing dispersion of multiplication – branching, not building. This is the very pattern that Jesus himself followed in discipling the twelve men who then were sent to teach others.

History of schism

This process of naming ourselves or taking our leaders’ names, began early on. Paul recognized it and called it out in his letter to the church of Corinth:

Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? — I Corinthians 1:10–13

Since that time the church has gone through various forms and degrees of division, schism and faction, as well as reunifications, cleansings, etc. The so-called Great Schism fell in the eleventh century when the eastern and western church split over the Filioque clause[2] of the Nicene Creed and over papal primacy. Then in the sixteenth century, when Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle, the Protestant era began. But what may have looked like division in the Catholic Church, actually was God restoring truth and order.

By the time The Reformation happened in the 1500s, the church had gone so far astray from the truth that it could not be restored with a single movement. What’s happened in church history is a slow series of singular reformations, each restoring singular truths. The problem happens when those groups ‘camp’ around them as possessions, often making the dividing issue of primary importance. (Some denominations have existed so long, that their parishioners have forgotten why they needed to separate in the first place!)

Once Wycliffe translated the Bible into the English language of the commoner, the truth of the scriptures could no longer be concealed. This coupled with the invention of the printing press and the resulting growth of literacy accounts for much of the new movements, awakenings and restorations of the church. The Spirit of God used men and women to challenge the status quo, and in the process many new movements were born: Presbyterianism, Pietism, Baptists, Reformed churches, Anglican, Calvinism, Plymouth Brethren and many more.

So the history of the church is bitter-sweet: on the one hand, different named movements have benefited the church by restoring truth, order and practice, but on the other hand, those and other movements have only drawn the church away into further divisions.

My own church originated out of the larger Restoration Movement which sought to restore and unify church teaching and practice using the pattern of the early church as set forth in the New Testament. Much of that was good, but such a noble and ambitious goal actually produced a deep spiritual pride. This pride worked to deceive us into thinking that, practically, we alone had the answers and the purest spirit, doctrine and practice. Yet humility should have taught us that no one man or woman or group can have all the answers – we all know and see in part. We need to trust each other to see what we cannot.

You could say that the history of Christianity is a history of schism. As we’ve seen from the quote above, in the first century, Paul encountered and dealt with it forcefully. And not only did he encounter it in the Corinthian church, he also encountered the Gnostics in Colossae:

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. — Colossians 2:8–10

. . . and the Judaizers in Antioch:

But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, “If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews? We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified — Galatians 2:14–16

But false doctrine is not the primary way that factions form; they don’t grow out of whole cloth. Paul shows that factions actually grow out of personal and relational issues. They are works – that is, products or results – of the flesh – our natural, sin-infused habits of self.

A progression to factions

Various words in the New Testament are used to describe aspects of division which are still very much at work today. Let’s spend some time going deeper into the meaning of these words and then tease out some of the ways they work.

I’ll use a portion of Galatians 5:20 because, in this passage, it seems Paul gives us a snapshot of how divisions form. It’s an anatomy of the progressive stages of division in terms of the sins and the works of the flesh that move it along. Here is the full passage with the words we’ll study in bold type:

Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.. — Galatians 5:19–21 (NRSV)

Stage	Word	Meaning	Application
1	hatred (enmities) [Gk: echthrai]	enmity, hostility, or alienation.	A feeling of ill-will towards someone; perhaps lingering wounds (plural) or disappointments from the past.
2	contentions (strife) [Gk: eris]	quarreling, a readiness to quarrel, an affection for dispute	The wound takes outward shape in a particular point of disagreement.
3	jealousy [Gk: zelos]	an eagerness, zeal, enthusiasm; feelings of jealousy or rivalry	The point of disagreement becomes heated.
4	outbursts of wrath [Gk thymoi]	just as it sounds	The heat of zelos manifests in multiple (plural) outbursts of anger, each of which further cement the growing sense of division between the two parties.
5	selfish ambitions [Gk: eritheiai]	the seeking of followers and adherents.	The strife become obvious; people start taking sides, at least in their minds; the primary leaders become politicians, thinking they need to shore up their base of ‘followers,’ assuming the church is following a man, not Christ himself.
6	dissensions [Gk: dichostasiai]	a standing apart, division.	At this stage people feel compelled to publically take sides, declare their ‘loyalty’ to a man or a group.
7	heresies (factions) [Gk:haireseis]	where we get our word heresy. It means a self-chosen option or a sect or faction; it does not mean false doctrine, though ostensibly it may be about doctrine.	At this final stage, the contentions and dissensions have bloomed into a full-blown church split, a completely separate group that determines it must worship separately and be known as a separate group, taking a different name with its own particular ax to grind or issue to emphasize.

Paul calls this process, these stages, ‘works’ – from the Greek word erga, ‘products,’ that is, ‘results’ – of the flesh.’ These ‘works’ originate in the unresolved hurts and wounds in the body of Christ; they develop and grow in the ‘product’ of unresolved, protracted arguments and contentions which are allowed to fester. They flower when men and women assume it’s about their own leadership and their ‘following.’

All of this wrangling could be diffused if leaders would do what Paul advocated:

If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. — Romans 12:18

and also:

Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them. — Romans 16:17

and:

with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. — Ephesians 4:2–6

When churches need to ‘split’

That said, believe it or not, sometimes churches need to ‘split,’ but only to expose what really goes on under the surface. Listen to Paul’s words to the Corinthians, the same ones whom he rebuked earlier for harboring cliques around Paul, Apollos and Cephas:

For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you. — I Corinthians 11:18–22 [emphasis added]

Here, Paul describes how the Corinthian church ‘came together as a church’ and ‘came together in one place’ – meaning they came together ostensibly as a unified body, but in truth, under the surface, subtle divisions were forming.  But they were not dividing over doctrine; in this case, apparently it was the rich not waiting for the poor, who ‘took their own supper’ separately, so that ‘those who had nothing’ went away hungry. Paul strongly rebukes them for this. And taking the occasion of a growing division, he helped the church recognize what was really going on, who was approved and who was not.

Sometimes these factions operate under the radar; and the longer they’re allowed to fester in secret, the more damage they can do. So they need to be called out and consequently, this may cause real division – factions or haireseis (heresies).

But sometimes, even after all efforts to maintain unity have been exhausted, it’s simply not possible to live in peace with all men. Sometimes even the most holy and anointed among us part ways. This happened to none other than Paul himself:

Then after some days Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us now go back and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they are doing.” Now Barnabas was determined to take with them John called Mark. But Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia, and had not gone with them to the work. Then the contention became so sharp that they parted from one another. And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus; but Paul chose Silas and departed, being commended by the brethren to the grace of God. And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. — Acts 15:36–41

This is descriptive, not prescriptive – it happened and was recorded for our learning, not for our example. Could this ‘sharp contention’ have been avoided or resolved? Maybe – maybe not. And again, the disagreement was not over doctrine, but over a ministry worker. The point is, it can happen to anyone, yet God is bigger and the work of God goes on. Eventually we know that Paul changed his mind toward Mark and wanted to be reunited with him:

Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry. — 2 Timothy 4:11

Breaking down divisions

All this describes the problem, but what about solutions? What can churches do to break down denominational and cultural barriers? to foster unity in the body of Christ? Here are just a few suggestions:

• Make church more about your locality, not your separate named entity. Ask: ‘Who are the people in our immediate area and what do they need?’
• Abandon all marketing, logos, slick advertising, ‘messaging,’ etc. It’s not about your identity or brand.
• Find out what other fruitful churches in your area are doing and serve them. Don’t worry about losing members in this process.
• If you’re a pastor or a leader, seek out another pastor or leader in the area and get to know him or her. Start praying together for your joint mission field.
• Start a neighborhood Bible study where you live.
• Seek out an ethnic church, that is, a church made up primarily of immigrants, refugees and non-English speakers and partner with them.

In the end, the prayer of our Lord will be answered.

“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” — John 17:20–23

Woe to those who oppose him and his work by exalting themselves and their own identity; but blessing to those who work to bring the body of Christ together by building bridges and exalting the living Christ Jesus.

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[1] Whether or not they could have reached the firmament is a moot point that we will never know. But the fact is they apparently thought they could and also God apparently thought so too since the apparently impossible was within their reach. He said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they do will be withheld from them.” – Genesis 11:6

[2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque