Luke 9:49,50: Be wary of criticism.(please click here for todays passage)

There are people doing good work for Jesus who do not belong to our particular sector of the church. Fancy that!

When the young, teenage, Spurgeon wrote home to tell his parents that he was going to be baptised by full immersion, his mother wrote him back to the effect that whereas she had prayed for his conversion she had not prayed that he would become a Baptist! (They were Congregational by affiliation). With his characteristic humour evident even then, Charles replied to the effect, ‘Ah mother, the Lord in His bounty has done far more than you could ask or think!!’

Writing in 1991 Dallas Willard said, ‘In previous times, to be a Protestant and to be a member of a particular Protestant denomination was a very serious matter. On occasion it had been, as history shows, a literal matter of life and death. People were persecuted and even killed over differences of denomination, and those of one denomination rarely held out much hope either for the moral decency or the eternal prospects of those from others. As late as the forties and fifties of this century, intermarriage was strongly discouraged and deep friendships rarely found across denominational lines’

Thankfully, he could go on to add, ‘In the sixties and seventies, by contrast, such attitudes effectively disappeared from the American scene…it is a fact that during the last two decades we experienced the complete trivialisation of sectarian dogmatism along denominational lines.’ (‘The spirit of the disciplines’, p21.)

The same thing can also be said of the UK. We recognise across the Bible-believing churches that we have much more in common than things that cause us to differ, and the differences tend to be about secondary matters.

Eugene Peterson writes about how for many years, in his town in Maryland, he was part of what he calls ‘the company of pastors’. They met in his study at 12 noon every Tuesday and came together to help and encourage each other in the pastoral task. Most of them were following the same lectionary, so they would talk together about the text for the following Sunday, and try to give help with exegesis and illustrations. They would discuss how to apply this Scripture passage to every aspect of their week.Not every minister in the town joined them, but many did. I understand that today, probably more than 40 years after its inception ( and long after Peterson moved on) the ‘company’ is still going. It sounds marvellous and something I would love to be part of. We have so much to learn from other believers of different stripes.

It remains the case of course that we have a duty to guard the gospel, and not compromise by our associations. But let’s be wary of judging others, and keep clear of dismissing people whose methods and views may differ from ours in some ways. God has the right to use people I don’t like; those I might disagree with. There are many doing good work for Jesus who don’t belong to my ‘church’. God bless them I say!

Remember this dictum: ‘In essentials – unity; in non- essentials – liberty; and in all things – charity.’

Prayer: Lord give me a big heart towards all who own you as Saviour and Lord, and a willingness to learn from all my brothers and sisters in Christ.