Uniformity And The Deep Blue Sea...

(Photo source: TKEC, teamkiaofelcajon.com)

This past Sunday Pastor Althea shared, and I paraphrase here, Diversity does not mean conformity or uniformity.

It is an important thought to keep in mind as we endeavor to live out our mandate for Bronx Bethany Church of the Nazarene to be "a Spirit-filled community of love where there is a place for everyone."

The temptation (when fishing for souls) is to aim to catch fish that are already scaled, cleaned, and cooked to our liking. But that is not fishing; it's more like shopping, or perhaps even shoplifting. Souls come to the Door raw: broken, contrite, and aware of their dire need of repair. There is a need for salvation, and also a need for healing, and also a need for deliverance. These processes are worked out, lovingly and intentionally, in the community of faith.

And, as this process goes forth from salvation and moves into the realm of discipleship, we must be careful not to persuade people by external activities. Certainly spiritual disciplines are beneficial, and church involvement is a necessary engagement, but our Lord takes particular interest in the state of our hearts: the inner life of thoughts and motives.

This is sometimes a tricky thing for we Nazarenes, because over time we have fallen into great concern for external conformity in the face of diversity: conform to attire, conform to worship style/mode, conform to the time allotted for service, conform to the dominant culture. And sometimes, in our zeal to see quick conformity, or because of our desire to force uniformity, we lose out on diversity. The proverbial fish, put off by our push of external conformity to culture above internal conformity to Christ, swims away to who knows where.

A cleansed extrovert is, in most cases, still an extrovert. Pastor Althea spoke of how the Lord brought her through a process of spiritual formation, yet in that process He did not remove her core personality traits. That is, to go back to the fish analogy, we know there's no real need to change a salmon into a seahorse... but for some reason we are tempted to try, especially if our local church body is ninety-eight percent seahorses.

Ah, thank God for Scripture. The Spirit of Christ has taken an interest in diversity, and He has demonstrated His interest in the way He equips of the body of Christ. The apostle Paul says (and I paraphrase):

"There are varieties of gifts... varieties of effects... the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues... and one Spirit, the Holy Spirit, makes the choice to distribute these varied gifts to individuals as He sees fit." (see First Corinthians 12:4-11) God has made us, and He has made us diverse. That is a good thing! Let's embrace His action plan.

We serve the Lord of Glory, who by His creativity has made His Church one body consisting of many different parts.