Our world is divided. Political narratives are polarizing. Social issues are heated. Churches are splitting. Friends are “unfriending”. And we struggle to have a mature conversation about it. What does it look like to embrace church unity in a world of division?
I’m thinking of a driven German Nazi with a global vision. It won’t surprise you to learn that his name is Adolf. What might surprise you is that I approve of the global vision he pursued. I am thinking of Adolf Dassler[i], born 11 years after the other Adolf. His vision was to improve the world of athletics through better footwear.
Being drafted into WWI at 17 years of age did not cause Adolf to lose sight of his vision. As soon as his war duties were fulfilled, he began producing shoes out of his mother’s laundry washroom. Adolf was joined by his older brother Rudolf. They made a strong team. Adolf was quiet and passionately poured himself into design and production. Rudolf was an extroverted salesman who worked to build up the business.
In 1924 they launched the Dassler Brothers Sport Shoe Factory. Over the next 15 years their business grew beyond the laundry room and into the international market as athletes broke records and won medals wearing Dassler shoes.
Amid the success, that other Adolf was making things hard for the company. Adolf Dassler was forced to join the Nazi Party to remain in business. The business struggled after Adolph was drafted into the German Air Force in 1940. When Rudolf was drafted, in 1943, shoe production stopped so the factory could produce weapon parts.
Incredibly, both brothers and their business survived the war. Still, the company faced opposition. Their supplies were limited. They acquired leftover material from the war effort. They preferred leather, but they made shoes from aircraft fuel tanks, tent canvas, and rubber rafts. As Germany engaged in a process of “de-Nazification”, Adolf was identified as a party member. He endured an exhausting process of investigation before he was allowed to continue operating the business.
After surviving relentless threats of outside opposition, the Dassler Brothers Sport Shoe Factory was dissolved in 1948 by internal opposition. Adolf’s biography reports, “It was an irreconcilable break. Their differences in character and opposing views on how to run the business were counterproductive and became a danger to the company. After the bitter separation, the brothers never spoke to each other again.”[ii]
Adolf’s vision had survived two world wars. It had outlasted the other Adolf’s global vision of the Third Reich. The brothers had worked together for nearly 30 years and no outside opposition proved strong enough to stop them.
Disunity destroys mission at a level that outside opposition could never impose.
The Church has the most important mission on the planet. The gates of hell will not overcome it (Matthew 16:18). But much damage has been done from division within.
What does it look like to embrace church unity in a world of division? In John 17:20-23, Jesus shared his vision for church unity and revealed three truths that help us embrace unity today.
The character of God is the culture of His Church!
John 17:21 …that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you…
John 17:22 … that they may be one, even as we are one…
Unity in the Body of Christ is one of the Fundamental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. That statement of belief says, “This unity has its source in the oneness of the triune God”. God is perfect unity in diversity, three in one. The nature of God is the nature of church unity. We are one body with many parts.[iii]
God’s character is entirely counter-cultural. We are called to other-centered love in a world of self-ascendancy[iv]We are invited to experience the power of love in a world that is in love with power. We follow a God who humbled himself in a world that puffs itself up[v]. Jesus struggled to find a comparison for the Kingdom of God because there is nothing on earth that is like it.[vi] Because it’s a Kingdom not of this world, those who belong to it live counter-culturally.[vii]
Embracing church unity in a world of division looks like the character of God saturating our church culture!
The unity we need is only found in Christ!
John 17:21 …I in you, that they also may be in us…
John 17:23 …I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one…
When the brothers split, the company split and the town split. About two thirds of the employees stayed with Adolf and the rest went to the second factory, just across the river with Rudolf. The companies were big enough and the town small enough that at least one person from nearly every family was employed by one of the Dassler Brothers. They earned the nickname the “town of the bent necks” because they habitually identified their ingroup and outgroup by looking down to see what shoes the people were wearing. They had segregated stores, barber shops and bakeries. They had a common identity that should have superseded their brand preference, they were German. We have a common identity that should supersede our conflicting preference, we belong to the Kingdom of God.
God’s Church is not a “bent neck church” but a “bent knee church”!
We do not turn off critical reasoning for the sake of unity. We don’t have to compromise our differing convictions. We do need to put them in their place, under Christ.
Unity is in Christ, not in a shared human enemy!
Extremism thrives where there is a shared enemy. Posts expressing outgroup hate get 67% more clicks on social media than those expressing ingroup love[viii]. Having an enemy is appealing. We feel justified in overlooking our own faults and ignore our own issues when we focus on someone who we judge to be worse than ourselves.
Other people are not the enemy. The devil is.[ix] We don’t battle against flesh and blood.[x] If our group loyalties lead us to hate another person we have identified too deeply with the wrong group. The one common denominator of all the people you hate is that God loves them.
Many people find unity in a shared enemy, we find unity in Christ!
Unity is in Christ, not in a human leader, party or opinion!
We can live in unity with people who are very different than us because, in Christ, we have a prior commitment, a stronger allegiance, and a deeper identity.
We might be liberal or conservative. We might be Chinese or American. We might be democrat or republican. We might be vaccinated or unvaccinated. Before all of that, we are part of the Kingdom of God.
Adventists have long been aware of an end-time false Christian unity that unites under a religious/political leader. We can spot this and reject it when we are convinced that our unity is in Christ.
Embracing church unity in a world of division looks like having a deeply rooted identity in Christ and placing any other point of unity under our unity in Christ!
Unity in the Church is what makes truth believable to the world!
John 17:21 …may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me…
John 17:23 … that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
It is our mission that is at stake.
The world will not believe because of our talent, power, or wealth. These things are common in our culture. They will not believe because of our insistence that we are right. There’s enough of that. They will not believe through messages of fear. That’s how corrupt political agendas gain a following. People will be brought into God’s family when they see in the Church what is missing in the world, loving community. As love grows cold, unity is increasingly counter-cultural. Love is growing cold. As the world overdoses on division steroids the unity in the church will stand out as supernatural.
Our church has some strong critics. Most of their arguments go back to an arch-critic named D.M. Canright. He was in the church for 28 years and served as a pastor. What was it that causes him to leave the Church and become so hostile against it? Well, this is what he told us, “In our General Conference that fall[1886], a sharp division occurred between our leading men over the law in Galatians, one party held it was the ceremonial law, the other the moral law, a square contradiction. After a long and warm discussion, the conference closed, each party more confident than before. There was also much disagreement over other points of doctrine and a good deal of warm party feelings. This with other things brought up my old feelings of doubt and decided me that it was time for me now to examine and think for myself and not to be led nor scared by men who could not agree among themselves.”[xi]
When we fight wars, we suffer casualties.
Tragically, we have justified painful division by telling ourselves that it will protect our witness to the world. See if this sounds familiar. One believer chooses to disassociate with another because they don’t share the same interpretation of scripture on a few points. One church member judges and criticizes another because they don’t hold to a certain lifestyle standard. One elder spreads exaggerated gossip about another to silence their “dangerous” influence in the church. And all of this, so that our witness to the world will be pure. The world will not take an interest in right teaching when it sees the wrong ways we treat each other. Disunity in the church discredits God in the world.
Adolf Dassler had a global vision. He wanted to make the best sport shoes in the world. When the Dassler brothers split, Adolf, who went by Adi Dassler, called his company Adidas. Rudolf named his company Puma. The mission statements of both companies make clear that they want to be the global leaders in sportswear. Both companies are almost there. Here’s the list of the top three sportswear companies in the world:[xii]
- Nike
- Adidas
- Puma
The Dassler brothers’ companies are both in the top three. If they would have chosen cooperation instead of competition, they would very likely have that number one spot. We could have all been wearing Dasslers. Disunity destroys mission at a level that outside opposition could never impose.
Embracing church unity in a world of division looks like people believing the truth about Jesus!
[i] Details from the story are taken from https://www.adidassler.org/en/life-and-work/chronicle
[ii] https://www.adidassler.org/en/life-and-work/chronicle
[iii] 1 Corinthians 12:12
[iv] The Worldly spirit of self-ascendancy is seen in Isaiah 14:13-14. God’s nature of other-centered love is seen in john 17:5.
[v] See teaching on this point by Ty Gibson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJtd3yyqMSg
[vi] Mark 4:30
[vii] John 18:36
[viii] https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/group-think/
[ix] 1 Peter 5:8
[x] Ephesians 6:10
[xi] Canright, Seventh-day Adventism Renounced: After and Experience of Twenty-eight years. P. 156
[xii] https://www.alltopeverything.com/top-10-sportswear-brands/