Denominational loyalty. Virtue? Or vice?
Like national patriotism, denominational loyalty can engender sacrificial service and arm-in-arm teamwork.
Like national patriotism, denominational loyalty can blind us to our own ignorance, to our glaring mistakes, and especially, to the value and needs of those outside our circle.
On the other hand, denominational disaffection can launch outside-the-box missional creativity. And it can unleash a scorched-earth destruction of vital ministries and of tenderfoot believers.
Funny, but I don’t remember our Savior calling for us to be denominational loyalists. But he did seem to promote loyalty of another kind.
One for all and all for one.
No gospel writer penned those words. Novelist Alexandre Dumas used them to describe the code of three musketeers. They do get to the heart of what Jesus was promoting when he said, “They will know you are my disciples if you love one another.”
They summarize Paul’s point about the interdependence of the parts of the body of Christ, particularly about the eye needing the hand and the head needing the feet.
Dumas’ words get to the heart of what many of us have come to appreciate about most of the rest of us: that we are better together. We have developed a loyalty–a genuine loyalty–toward each other. I feel deeply loyal and am intently committed to the missionaries sent by our General Assembly. I feel loyal to those presbytery, synod, and GA staff members I know to be persons of deep faith and sacrificial service to our Lord.
I feel an even greater loyalty to another kind of person: you. I am committed to you, the reader of The Presbyterian Outlook. I must hasten to add that, along with you, I feel deeply loyal to those who don’t read the Outlook. That is to say, I feel a deep loyalty toward all Presbyterians.
I’m also loyal to Christians of other affiliations; together we comprise the body of Christ. But God called me 24 years ago into this fellowship. Through the intervening years, I have been enriched by the discussions and deliberations, the programs and partnerships, the associations and accountabilities I have shared with flesh-and-blood Presbyterians of all genders, nationalities, theologies, etc.
This kind of loyalty is not just an abstraction, as is the case of “denominational loyalty.” This kind of loyalty is dressed in human flesh. It speaks. It listens. It judges. It acts.
When that human person–you!– speaks, listens, judges, and acts, you impact the rest of us. Some of you test our patience. Often. Relentlessly! Some have become “high maintenance” and “EGR” (extra grace required) thorns in our sides. Nevertheless, our faith would be undernourished if you were to leave this part of the body of Christ.
In the light of that, it’s painful to hear the word of the eye to the hand, of the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”
As a local church pastor my greatest heartbreaks came when members decided to transfer to the megachurch up the street–or worse, when they dropped out of active church life altogether. Oh, I know that most all have remained believers. I trust we will meet again in glory. But the fellowship here has been broken. And their judgment upon those of us remaining has stung.
The Apostle Paul was expressing a similar dismay when he addressed the factionalizing going on in Corinth. It was bad enough that believers there had aligned themselves with groups that narrowed the church’s mission to a single model leader. Worse, they then declared to the others, “I have no need of you.”
Our Presbyterian community–imperfect and dysfunctional as it is in some respects–loses every time any one mutters, “I have no need of you” and walks out the door. We really are better together, in spite of the grief some of us are causing the rest of us!
So I say, forget the denominational loyalty. Cultivate a people of God loyalty. Cultivate interconnectedness. Cultivate mutual accountability. Cultivate shared mission. Cultivate filial love.
We have need of us.
