1 Corinthians 13: 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
We don’t have all the answers! Costa Mitchell from Vineyard ministries shared with us about eldership yesterday and one of his final points was brought out by the above scripture. I had a discussion with my dad in law some weeks back about church unity and why it is that with people who say they love God (Christians) – these same people are unable to agree enough to just get on with church unity and being of one mind. We then had a discussion on elders and whether or not a church can have women elders.
I asked Costa this same question yesterday to get his response as to what the Vineyard church’s view on it is, and he shared a number of scriptures which they believe shows clearly that men and women can serve equally in every sphere of church leadership. For some churches the sacraments of communion and baptism are non negotiable, for others the issue of women leaders is non negotiable, for others speaking in tongues is non negotiable. So we are back to square one.
No wonder there is no church unity. We all believe we are right and we have the right interpretation of scripture based on our studies. And if that is so, we are right and “they” are wrong. But luckily we have this passage from 1 Corinthians 13. We don’t know it all, we only know in part.
Thank goodness for that. Now if we all agree on that point at least there may be hope for church unity.