Dealing with disagreements

One of the things we're not particularly good at doing in the Church as a whole, either at the personal or corporate levels, is dealing with disagreements. Witness the current debates in Anglican Communion about homosexuality or in the Church of England over women bishops. More recently there has been more heat than light generated over two other contentious issues in Evangelicalism; the recent NEAC 'consultation' and the current debate over a critical review of Patrick Sookhdeo's latest book.

When I do 'Marriage Guidance' with couples preparing for their wedding at St John's I always ensure that we cover issues of conflict and get couples to discuss their differing approaches to it in order that they can work out for themselves how to fight as friends. Something similar seems needed within the Church judging by the virulancy of some responses to Christian brothers and sisters over some of the above issues.

At St John's we have recently begun a Bible study series entitled 'Dealing with disagreements' in an attempt, which has not been without its own tensions, to find ways to discuss where and how we disagree within our own church family.

As part of this process we will take forward discussions that began at last year's PCC Away Day of two current controversial issues about which we need to be informed; the issue of responses to homosexuality within the Anglican Communion and the issue of transition in society from reliance on fossil fuels. Both have impacts for local churches and local communities and our PCC think that it would be helpful for there to be discussion at St John's about both topics.

That is not, however, where we are starting our discussions. Instead we are beginning by looking at two areas of disagreement that occurred in the early church (Romans 14 & Acts 15. 1-21). From these passages we are aiming to identify principles for dealing with disagreements that could be applied during our discussions of the two current controversial issues. The final session of the study will then help us reflect on the different ways in which the Bible has been used throughout our discussions and the extent to which our different ways of understanding scripture influence the positions that we take on controversial issues.

If this sounds of interest to you then you can follow a part of the debate online as one of our housegroups are posting summaries of their discussions on their blog. Their first two posts can be found by clicking here and here.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Elvis Costello - Indoor Fireworks.