Anyone who has spent a few minutes on Christian social media knows it’s not the best place to look for answers to Jesus’s upper room prayer: “may they be one.”
Rancor and division abound. Perhaps less obvious is how much division characterizes our church services themselves—not the social media division of argument and backbiting, but the division of mindlessness and neglect. We talk plenty about our own church’s programming, but how much do we pray for and talk about God’s work in other churches?
Compare that to the New Testament, where the churches regularly greeted one another (Rom. 16:16, 1 Cor. 16:19), shared preachers and missionaries (2 Cor. 8:18, 3 John 5-6), supported one another financially (Rom. 15:25-26, 2 Cor. 8:1-2; 9:12), and prayed for one another (Eph. 6:18).¹
What we need is a better evangelical catholicity: an understanding of our partnership with churches everywhere. If we did a better job here, Christian social media might even look better.
How can we better foster an evangelical catholicity? As a Baptist preacher who cannot help himself, let me offer several “C’s” for a path forward.
CONFESSION AND CONVICTION
In order for evangelical catholicity to be truly evangelical, we must be able to faithfully
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