CHURCH:
UNITY; CHURCH: AGE DIVISIONS

Now for the very reason that the church is one body anything that tends to introduce division is an evil, however harmless, or even useful, it may appear to be. Yet the average evangelical church is divided into fragments which live and work separate from, and sometimes in opposition to, each other. In some churches there is simply no time or place for the worship and service of all members unitedly. These churches are organized to make such unity impossible.

Any belief or practice that causes the members of a local church to separate into groups on any pretext whatever is an evil. At first it may seem necessary to form such groups and it may be easy enough to show how many practical advantages follow these divisions; but soon the spirit of separateness unconsciously enters the minds of the persons involved and grows and hardens until it is impossible for them to think of themselves as belonging to the whole church. They may each and all hold the doctrine of unity, but the damage has been done; they think and feel themselves to be separated nevertheless.

One place where the evil manifests itself is in the practice of dividing the church into age groups.…

This age-youth division has gone so far in some churches that the old and the young glare at each other from different parts of the church and can have no spiritual fellowship whatsoever. If all are true Christians the basic unity has not been destroyed, but the spirit of unity has, with the result that the Lord is grieved and the church weakened. Yet much current religious education aids and abets division.

Acts 2:42–47; 1 Corinthians 12:12–27; Ephesians 4:1–6; Colossians 3:12–14

God Tells the Man Who Cares, 50, 51.