Can Christians who believe
different things work together on similar things? Even when they belong to
dissimilar churches? Or they have some very dissimilar ideas about doctrine?
Yes, if they will draw the right lines for the right situations. And those lines will necessarily depend on the scope of the work. Let me say it this way. If the mission is broad, the lines are narrow. If the mission is narrow, the lines are broad. And that’s a good thing. It is a good and necessary distinction. And more people ought to get a hold of this, and save themselves the frustration of wondering why we can’t all just get along. We can, if we draw the right lines.
So, let me do the work of explaining what I mean by that.
The members of a local church will need more areas of agreement than the members of a parachurch ministry. This is because a church will participate in a broader spectrum of life and ministry than people who come together for a particular parachurch ministry.
Churches will draw different lines than parachurch ministries. A church will have certain doctrines and emphasize certain positions. Still, a church can work together with another church to accomplish some common goal. Even when they are not in the same “group” or denomination. Because they don’t have to agree on every doctrine to agree on a certain ministry mission. It is a limited partnership, and therefore it requires a more limited number of agreements.
For example, there can be a lot of different churches who work together to provide disaster relief. Or who work together in a serving line for a soup kitchen. Maybe they come together for a season to advocate for a new Christian clinic.
Now that’s church to church. Of course, inside a single local church, the lines are drawn differently. In a sense, more narrowly. Full cooperation within a church will require adherence to certain standards. The number of common commitments will be greater than with a parachurch ministry because the fellowship is more central, more pervasive, more permanent. The idea is not to make a church unique, and so narrow that no one can fit in. However, the teaching of certain distinctives will not be able to be avoided.
In a parachurch ministry, those distinctives are less necessary. The amount of non-negotiables will be less. The lines are broader, because the mission is narrower. A parachurch ministry is usually devoted to a more singular emphasis, something specific, a more particularly focused mission. Therefore, it will be more limited and minimal in its formal positions. And so, there is room for people of different opinions on secondary matters to work together towards that mission, unless their practice of those opinions hinders that mission.
For example, a counseling ministry wouldn’t be addressing young earth vs. old earth creationism. That would be irrelevant to accomplishing the mission of the ministry.
Another example would be that a Calvinist and an Arminian, or a Cessationist and a Continuationist, or a Pre-tribulation dispensationalist and an Amillenialist, these can work together in a homeless or rescue mission, unless one or the other “pushes their brand”, trying to prove their position and focusing on those things as essential to the mission. They are not.
A third example would be that of a Christian K-12 school attached to a Pentecostal church. They teach biblical lessons, but they don’t focus on teaching students to speak in tongues, and they don’t require teachers to be Pentecostal. And those teachers who aren’t Pentecostal don’t teach against it. Rather, the school and its teachers focus on academics. And as far as religious instruction, they focus on the Gospel, the existence of God, and the authority of the Bible – God is real, the Bible is true, Jesus is the only way. Societal and political issues may be touched on in clear cases. The point is that it is a K-12 school, not a denominational seminary, and not a church.
Christians can work together, between the lines, in the same place, if they will do the work of drawing the right lines in the first place.
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