SPEAKER_00: 0:03

Welcome to the Church Renewal Podcast.

SPEAKER_03: 0:06

I'm Matt. I'm Jeremy.

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Differentiation doesn't mean isolation. In this episode, Jeremy and Matt explore how individuality and unity can coexist in the body of Christ. They examine the pressures of fundamentalism, group identity, and surrounding togetherness, showing how churches often confuse uniformity with biblical unity. Drawing from Romans 14, systemic theory, and practical church examples, they argue that differentiation permits true community by giving space for difference while preserving love and gospel fidelity.

SPEAKER_03: 0:40

Matt, welcome uh to another episode. You and our listeners of the Church Renewal Podcast. Glad to be here. I'm glad that you're here with us. Today, uh, let's dive into what might, I guess, be a delicate conversation for some people, perhaps. Setting the table here, when we think about the church, the church as a religious institution has norms, values, mores, expectations. From the Lord to the church, yes. Absolutely. And we have already described surrounding togetherness pressure as an outside force pushing people to conform to norms, values, identities.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22

Oh, the system. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24

Uh-huh. There might be conflict there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:27

It might be possible to get that wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29

Let's discuss that. Sure. There's a lot of conversation in society currently about political impulses and the approach to standards, regardless of where you are on a political spectrum, that can have very profound impact on how you identify as a group, the uh definitions that you hold for membership within your group, and the expectation that as a group member, you are held to belong. We had talked a little bit about this earlier. Fundamentalism as a topic is something that has to be spoken about in the context of this conversation.

unknown: 2:06

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 2:06

So can you unpack for us, as you think about this topic, how do you tie in fundamentalism either as a thought group or as an action and the the way that it interweaves with this conversation?

SPEAKER_01: 2:23

Yeah. So in terms of fundamentalism, we're not talking about uh the formal movement from the early 20th century that insisted on you know things like the virgin birth and the miracles of Jesus and the true physical resurrection. Uh, Jared and I are believers in the five fundamentals that gave rise to the name fundamentalism. We're more concerned about the way that fundamentalism operates as a sociological group. Okay, that makes sense. Uh, it's more the way that it functions when it's a group of fundamentalists in a church together. And the way that that can sometimes end up is with something that is gathered around a set of convictions that are the all the same between people. The the quip when I was coming up was um don't drink or chew or smoke or go with girls that do. And that little ditty tells you a lot because actually the scriptures encourage dancing in the old testament, the Lord calls drink a measure of his blessing, and the best I can tell, if you're not addicted to tobacco, um, it's okay. And so, what's interesting about that diddy is that it was actually accurate to the way that people thought, but they'd taken things that were very far down in terms of the priority of things to be believed, you know. So if you're thinking about primary things, which would have been like the five fundamentals, would have been primary things, but where that devolved into is that things that are third and fourth and fifth level, you suddenly had to agree on those in order to stay a part of the group. And there was a very strong surrounding togetherness pressure that you can form. But we're trying to pull the lens back and go, that's like a that's a mindset, not just some individual decisions. You get that kind of sociological togetherness pressure if you're in a group of progressive friends. Sure.

SPEAKER_03: 4:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 4:25

If you're in a group of conservative friends politically, so we tend to very narrowly construe the posse that we're with or that we're a part of, and groups like that tend to exercise a lot of surrounding togetherness pressure for people to conform.

SPEAKER_03: 4:44

And you're not saying that's a bad thing, that's a necessary thing to have an identity that can be shared.

SPEAKER_01: 4:50

Yeah, I think that a group has to have an identity, but if you look in the New Testament at the way that congregations are supposed to be, right? Um, and you go to something like Romans 14, where Paul describes how he wants to influence uh the Roman church to think about when there are differences between them that are debatable, where there's gray, where there can be differences between people that the Lord is not upset about. We can't definitively tell whether it's supposed to go this way or that way, um, because we are limited creatures who are also sinful, and we bring different things to the table when we look at the Bible together. And I'm not arguing for flexible morality or anything. That is not the kind of argument that I'm making here. What I'm trying to argue is that if the apostle Paul can say that there's a way that you ought to live with each other where you don't pass the heading, at least it's written in the ESP, is do not pass judgment on one another, right? Then uh certainly the biblical authors were okay with there being degrees of difference in belief and practice for people within a single congregation. And this push towards uniformity, not unity, but uniformity.

SPEAKER_03: 6:21

What would define the difference there for us?

SPEAKER_01: 6:23

Yeah, so I think that people I think what the apostle Paul was going for in this in Romans 14 is a unity of one body without there necessarily needing to be uniformity.

SPEAKER_03: 6:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 6:35

Um, so let me read this. Um, this is Romans 14. As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. You're not welcoming him in to convince him of your position. Right? One person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains. So there's the judgment, right? This is a very strong word. Out of conscience, one's abstaining, you're not supposed to judge them. Okay. Let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats. So it's not supposed to be judgment either way. Why? For God has welcomed him. So the main thing about my unity with other people in the body of Christ is what I have in common with them, that we're creatures, that we're fallen, that we need Jesus, and that we're repenting and believing on a daily basis and trying to walk with Jesus. That commonality that we have should be way, way bigger and way, way more apparent to us than something very small.

SPEAKER_03: 7:32

The context here that Paul's talking about, too. I mean, it's even it even goes beyond what you've just said to the fact that we're united in Christ. He talks about this in Ephesians. Yep. He talks about this one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Many parts of the body, one head. He's torn down the dividing wall.

SPEAKER_01: 7:50

Yes, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 7:51

So there's there's an even a greater sense of belonging here, a greater sense of oneness in the fact that we have been our identity has been baptized into Christ.

SPEAKER_01: 8:03

We're welcomed into the family of God. Yeah. Um, Paul goes on at Romans 14, and I think that this is the bottom line for bodies that exert this surrounding togetherness pressure inappropriately. But who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? So when we try to conform somebody to something that is not obvious in the Bible, obvious for everybody, obviously clear, we're effectively judging them. It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. Some people argue there's kind of like, well, yeah, but he identifies who the weak person is, so we know who the person was right. Well, keep going. One person esteems one day is better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. Paul was willing to live on minor issues, third, fourth, fifth level issues, with differences with gray, that it was possible for a group to experience unity without uniformity, as long as everyone was living out their conscience before the Lord. Right. So Jared and I don't agree about the uh subjects, the proper subjects of baptism, but we're unified in the body of Christ, right? Because we both recognize that it's a third-level issue, that objects and and the mode, even and so we try and live this out, Jared and I do, and I think that Christians who actually are much, much closer to each other in their belief system sometimes really struggle with this, and it's too bad. Wait, Jared, why do you think we tend towards imposing surrounding togetherness pressure on others? I think the the basic reason comes down to identity. Okay. Talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_03: 9:59

If I know who I am, I've defined myself in a particular way, different from you, different from other things. Right? If I turn out to be wrong, there's uh what I feel as an existential danger to my personhood. And well, you know, how do I demonstrate that I'm right? Well, I have a whole bunch of people that agree with me. I must be right. Obviously, I'm right. All these people do what I say, all these people follow the same thing. I I can make that kind of argument to authority, argument to to the pe argument to the masses, but at the at the at the bottom of it is this sense of who I am, that I am defined by these particular parameters. The problem comes in in that I'm I'm my name's Jeremy. Uh that's what my name tag says. It doesn't say Yahweh.

SPEAKER_01: 10:58

Yeah. You're not the master before whom all stand or fall.

SPEAKER_03: 11:03

Uh I have tried to be. Yeah. And I've caused a fair bit of wreckage in doing so.

SPEAKER_01: 11:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 11:12

And I you know, I make a joke about it, but the truth is it it's true. I have. And that's called idolatry. It's it's called narcissism. You can there's a bunch of labels I can put in it. What I run up against in this is that I have to be willing to say it is in fact the creator and the master who both defines and approves of his creation. And since that's not me, I don't get to say anything he hasn't said.

SPEAKER_02: 11:40

Right.

unknown: 11:41

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 11:41

When I do, and we've talked about this before, that was what Christ was talking about as he talked about the Pharisees. The problem wasn't that they had rules.

SPEAKER_02: 11:52

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 11:53

Rules, limitations, definitions, identity markers, whatever you want to call them, they kind of play in the same sandbox. The problem was, in order to stay safe, there were a whole bunch of other rules that were created around them. Out of it, probably a good meaning heart.

unknown: 12:13

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 12:13

A heart to protect, a heart to care for you.

SPEAKER_01: 12:15

Maybe even uh seemingly to love God. Absolutely. Right.

SPEAKER_03: 12:19

If God said that it's not good to eat rice on Monday, then you know, maybe 12 o'clock at all. 12 o'clock midnight, no sooner, maybe 12.01 is probably. Let's let's just push that back. 12.05. Let's say no earlier than 12.05, okay?

SPEAKER_01: 12:34

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 12:34

And and that just starts to move further and further because if a little bit of safety is good, then a lot of safety is probably better.

SPEAKER_02: 12:42

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 12:42

And when I, as you said, I take these prior these prioritized issues of truth as God has revealed them, and I start taking the things that He hasn't said a lot about, and I start making them central, and I start distinguishing between you and me based on those things and demanding that you come to my way of thinking otherwise, it's not just that you're wrong. I I don't know if you love God. I don't know if you've really been washed by the Bible.

SPEAKER_01: 13:10

Are you really are you really committed?

SPEAKER_03: 13:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 13:12

Sure. Are you because if you were then and that's where the the sometimes it's a new rule, and sometimes it's it's just a very tweaked out, very far down the food chain kind of thing. Like um, you know, you can't walk more than a day's journey on the Sabbath, right? You know, so the Pharisees, they were the experts in this, right? You know, they took the Ten Commandments and they turned them into 605, and Jesus comes along and says, Let's clear all this up. Says, how about if we just bottom line this? How much you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you love your neighbor as yourself. How are you guys doing with that? And everybody goes, they start shuffling their feet because they realize that maybe you could keep the regulation about your toothbrush, right? Um, but you rather surely knew that you didn't love your neighbor as yourself, and that was Jesus was much more important. You you tithe mint and cumin and and um time, good for you, but you neglected. No, so it doesn't say you're an idiot, it it is something along the lines of like good for you. So Jesus is he is interested in obedience, but not to the exclusion of love and mercy and justice.

SPEAKER_03: 14:34

So let's let's swing this pendulum the other direction then. Because I assume that you're not saying that it's hey, come one, come all, doesn't matter what you do, how you dress, or what you say, Jesus is a loving God. He loves people, you're a person, so come on in. You don't need to do a thing.

SPEAKER_01: 14:54

So I think that when we differentiate things between primary, secondary, tertiary, and lower kinds of issues, uh, the gospel call to repent and believe is as obvious as it on the face of the New Testament as you can find, right? Actually, you could say everywhere in the scriptures. That's why John the Baptist could preach it, right? And so something like the terms under which God receives people is so plainly obvious. But can you rescue an ox out of a ditch on the Sabbath? The Pharisees said, eh, and Jesus says, uh, yeah, because that's actually mercy to a creature. So when we start taking some of those things that are debatable between us, and that the way that I put it is that Jesus is not looking down and going, boy, I really wish you got that right, because it's not as available. I have a little theory about this, that some of our push towards this fundamentalist mindset is actually our discomfort with being creatures.

SPEAKER_03: 15:58

What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01: 15:59

Well, it's our discomfort with gray, with unknown, with ambiguity when there are degrees of that that'll still exist in the new heavens and new earth because we still won't be unlimited. We'll still have things to learn.

SPEAKER_03: 16:15

So you're you're saying that's a discomfort with the fact that we're not God.

SPEAKER_01: 16:18

Yeah, yeah. And a discomfort with I think an idolatrous sense, yeah, we'll discomfort with that we're not God, but I think also a discomfort just that it's uncomfortable to be a creature now because we're also sinful. I don't think we'll still be limited to the new heavens and new earth, but I don't think we'll be uncomfortable with it. Uh, our discomfort with it is, to my read, is actually part of our rebellion. That we wish to be like God. We we still hear that siren call that Satan spoke in the garden.

SPEAKER_03: 16:53

If you just, then you won't have to depend on this relationship for which you were created.

SPEAKER_01: 17:00

So I think that part of our erasing any gray ambiguity um is actually in an evidence of the fall, it's a proof that the fall's there. And that discomfort, we want to try and take it away. And I just don't think that it's available now. And humility would be more like, okay, this is not a primary thing. You could believe your way, I could believe my way, we'll both still end up in heaven, and either we'll know for sure or we won't care when we get there. And being able to be in unity with people who differ from us slightly. I minister in a medium-sized Protestant denomination, and uh everybody who is uh a pastor in our denomination agrees on probably 98 and a half percent of everything.

SPEAKER_02: 17:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

And everything that's absolutely important in order to end up in the new heavens and new earth is shared in common between all of us. And yet we end up in situations at times where we're deeply divided between each other over relatively small things in comparison to who's Jesus, and that we come by repentance and faith, and we're changed by the Spirit, and He takes up residence in us. We're far, far, far down the food chain of things that divide us. And I'm all for having opinions. I think to have an opinion is to be human, um, but it's it's what do we do with that, and what do we do with that tension that I think is can be very difficult. So remember, um, we're so we're talking about differentiation, we're trying to talk about the relationship of individuality and community. Differentiation gets a good hearing in the West because we like individuality. Uh, we even say that to become a whole on like Matt Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Which is totally pagan, but it's it's it's individuation. There's some good observation there, but he certainly was not a Christian. And we say that you know, individuation is to come to maturity, and there's a sense in which that's true when we're in dysfunctional families and things like that, where the individual is not allowed to be their own person, right? Uh super, super important. It's actually what Jesus wants for you.

SPEAKER_03: 19:18

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 19:19

So differentiation gets a good hearing in the West in our individual cultures. What we struggle with is um, how do we then take that group of very radically individualistic people and put them in a community with each other without them making that community distort around them? Forcing every cult out of it. What's that?

SPEAKER_03: 19:40

Make a cult out of it.

SPEAKER_01: 19:41

You make a cult out of it, exactly. Yeah. So remember the definition I just use Jackson Thomas because I think that the most helpful and differentiation is that I hold on to my own goals and values while staying emotionally connected to you. And I give you the freedom to disagree with me. So that's human dignity. Um, I give somebody an unbeliever the freedom to disagree with me about the terms by which uh we can come to God. I say it's repentance and faith and declare that, and they say, no, I think God receives everybody a loving way. Okay. I'm not gonna coerce you to believe what I believe, I'm gonna tell you what I think it is and pray that the Holy Spirit will change your heart, but I'm gonna give you the freedom to disagree and dignify you with that as a fellow human. In the body of Christ, we want to do the same thing. When we get to, I want to say third-level things and lower. I I'm gonna want to give a wide latitude to people to believe differently than me because I think that's modeled in the scriptures. That's living out this emotional maturity that we find defined as differentiation, is that I'll hold into my stuff, but I'll let you hold into your stuff, but I'll still be friends with you and love you, despite that we're not uniform with each other. That unity does not require uniformity.

SPEAKER_03: 20:59

There are places where uniformity is required, but you're saying they are the smallest portion.

SPEAKER_01: 21:08

Yeah, they're they're very important, but they're not that they're not that many of them.

SPEAKER_03: 21:12

Jesus gives the parable, right? He says a guy throws a feast, he it's a wedding feast, he invites people to come. Some people come, he says, if you're gonna come, I've I've given you a robe, put the robe on and come on in.

SPEAKER_02: 21:26

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 21:27

And one guy's like, I'm gonna come on, coming in anyway. Yeah, I've got my own duds, I don't need your duds, and he gets thrown out. And the the description that Christ gives there is he goes to hell, he goes to that place of fire and gnashing of teeth. Why? Because there was an identity that was given rightly by the person who had the authority to do it. Yeah, to come in and be a part of this, you had to come in through that door. But he didn't say everyone has to wear this robe everywhere they go.

SPEAKER_02: 22:01

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 22:01

He didn't say when you leave here, you've got to take this with you. He said for this, for this one thing, this is what you have to do. And the the obviously the parallel there is we have to receive Christ. Scripture is very clear about this. Yep. As a pastor, I can't pull back from that. I can't be like, well, you know, maybe this is not and be faithful, you can't be faithful.

SPEAKER_01: 22:22

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 22:22

This is what it says, this is what the man said, and he wrote it down here. I didn't write it. If you have a problem with this, it's not a problem with me. Here's where I differentiate, right? I don't try to take God's anxiety onto myself, I don't try to be the Holy Spirit and convince you that it's true by guilting you or twisting your arm.

SPEAKER_02: 22:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 22:39

I say this is what it says, and I have to affirm this because I'm of this. But it doesn't say that you can't wear jeans to church. It doesn't say you can't wear flip-flops on Sunday, right?

SPEAKER_01: 22:54

Or you have to wear a tie if you're a preacher or whatever. And I think that we get twisted up in knots, we end up with congregations that are uncharitable, unloving, which is which is very unfortunate because of course Jesus says the the one thing that Jesus says will mark you out to unbelievers is the love you have for one another. Not the uniformity that you have with one another, but the love that you have for one another. So that coming to love one another within the body of Christ, it's it's the apologetic that Jesus gave us. And so it's the thing that we need to seek. And if we make errors in differentiation, we're thinking the only way that I can love Jared is that if we agree in lockstep about everything. Um it's just not true. It's it's not required, it doesn't have to be that way. Um, I don't have to be right if I have Jesus. If I don't have Jesus, if I don't have an identity in him, then man, I gotta be right because I gotta feel okay about myself. And the way I feel okay about myself is if I'm right. Um and that means that this is actually interestingly, um, is a gospel issue. Right? It's an issue about how do I believe and uh live out the implications of the gospel and how do I do that in community with you, um, knowing that we may never agree and Jesus could be okay with that. He certainly was in Romans 14. And that goes to a whole host of issues in our culture. I think the ones that we see uh a lot in our work with flourish, we see um differences in in politics, which is very polarized as we're sitting here at the table recording differences in schooling choices between conservative Christians, whether it's uh equally permissible for conservative Christians to you know send their kids to public school or private school or homeschool. Right. Um, and that produces divisions between people. And I think even one of the things that I actually like about the PCA quite a lot is that you just have to be an evangelical believer in Jesus to be the m to be a member of a PCA church. You don't have to agree with our theology until you're at the point where you want to consider being an officer. I think that's actually really that strikes a good line, right? You don't have to be uniform in order to be a member of a PCA church where I'm ordained, but you need to have unity around basic uh evangelical features of the gospel.

SPEAKER_03: 25:26

You know that right now my kids are at home being babysat by their older siblings. I left my kids at home, I left one of them in charge, and that one is responsible to make sure that the instructions I left are followed and the rules that exist are observed. You know, kind of Joshua 1A kind of thing, right?

SPEAKER_02: 25:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 25:49

When I go home, one of the questions that I will ask my younger kids is did you have any problems? And one of the things I'll be looking for is did the child that was in charge start flexing this muscle of authority in a way that goes beyond what I set in place? Because what when I made the child the babysitter, the overseer, I didn't say, and that means you're now the parent. Make any decisions you want about the raising of my kids. Right. I don't say that to anyone. My wife and I don't say that to each other. We're like, hey, limited delegated authority. I'm very, very invested in my kid here. So are you. We're gonna have to work through these things. Right. Certainly with a babysitter, it is here's the parameters.

unknown: 26:32

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03: 26:32

This is what I expect you to stay within. It it is no different in the church. Christ has given us through the Holy Spirit the things that are essential. And everything that he hasn't given us very clearly, I believe the call to us is do as I did, get up every morning, go talk to my father and ask him. And then only do what you see him doing, and only say what you see him saying, just as I did. Because his purpose in making us was not to give us a rule book and then pat us on the bottom and say, No, get her done. Right. It was come walk with me. And it was a relationship with me. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of different things we could talk about where churches have gotten this wrong. Um, I I think this is a necessary conversation to have in the midst of a a larger discussion on FST because there is a a seeming contradictory, paradoxical force at play here where we do have to have identity.

SPEAKER_02: 27:35

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 27:36

We do have identity that we received, and yet we are also called to walk with God in fear and trembling for ourselves. Yeah. And churches and church leaders are stewards of that um that protection. And you've seen people get it wrong, I've seen people get it wrong, we've seen people get it right. There's not a there's not a freedom here to go and create at will as however I see fit. But there's also not a freedom to change it if God's given it to me clearly.

SPEAKER_01: 28:14

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 28:15

Um So maybe that's where we leave for today.

SPEAKER_01: 28:18

I'll give you maybe listeners uh your first line that you wrote for our theme. Differentiation doesn't mean isolation. The point in Matt's way of describing that, the point actually of differentiation is that it permits good relationship. It permits community because it assures that even as we're together that I maintain who I am and you maintain who you are. So this is actually the call uh into community to, but it's a call into healthy community.

SPEAKER_03: 28:47

Yes, it is. For the sake of I can do it.

SPEAKER_01: 28:56

Jar is looking at his phone for something he'd like to read to you.

SPEAKER_03: 28:59

No, Jared doesn't want to read it to you. Jar can have the phone read it to you, or Matt, or you know, some AI voice, but not Jared. Here. Here's a poem that when we recorded this episode the first time we read this. When we didn't record it, I'll I'll put my wife out there and say I appreciate her poetry skills. This is a poem that my wife wrote that uh I think underscores the point you just made.

SPEAKER_01: 29:20

So this is a poem by Hannah Seferati, who you've you've been listening through. Um sometimes she's in our uh promos for uh if you've been wondering who the female voice is, that's Hannah's. Uh and this is a poem uh by Hannah Seferati. Uh to be a hermit is the title. I thought you need a mountain's top, but to be a hermit, you need only stop.

SPEAKER_03: 29:48

Something to think about. Thank you for joining us today. We'll talk to you next time.

SPEAKER_00: 29:52

Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal podcast on Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever. God has called them. We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned. Jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy. If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. For more information, go to our website, flourishcoaching.org, or send an email to info at flourishcoaching.org. You can also connect with us on Facebook, X, and YouTube. We appreciate when you like, subscribe, rate, or review our show whenever you're listening. It can be hard for churches to ask for help, so when our clients tell us who referred them, we'll send a small gift to say thanks. A huge thank you to all our guests for making the time to share their stories with us. We are really blessed to have all these friends and partners. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was directed and produced by Jeremy Sefferati in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you. Bye for now.