This Sunday The Louisiana Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church will convene at Centenary College in Shreveport. It will be a time of worship, conferencing, fellowship, and study. It will be a time to celebrate what God is doing in the world through the body of Christ we call Methodist. It will also be a time to study the art of “disagreeing well.”
It is difficult to point to a time in which the Church was of one accord. Some would say Acts 4:32 points to when the disciples were all of one heart and soul. Some are skeptical, at least they certainly didn’t agree on all things under the sun when they walked with Jesus. James and John desired to be ranked ahead of the other disciples. Simon the Zealot wanted to overthrow the government for which Matthew the Tax Collector worked. Peter and Paul disagreed on how to include Gentile converts. Later the church fought about how best to understand Christ begin fully human and fully divine. Then there were fights about the nature of the Trinity. There were talks of whether the center of the church should be Rome or Constantinople or Alexandria . . .
My point is, we disagree. We disagree a lot. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again. Church is not about agreeing, at least, it’s not about agreeing on the temporal. Our unity is in Christ, and because our unity is in Christ, our temporal disagreements should be steeped in grace, humility, patience, and love.
With that said, there are reasons to “fight the good fight.” The Lord requires that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly. Doing justice means we stand without threat of persecution. We radically love the unlovable. We walk with Christ so that our feet fit inside his footprints leaving only one holy divot on the way which leads to life.
So pray as we gather as a Church. Yes, there will be times of great joy as we shed tears of awe in wonder of how God is transforming our lives. Yes, there will be heated disagreements which leave us exasperated. We are a family united in the blood Jesus shed while looking at crowd saying, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” How true grace is . . .