For that. Second question related to unity here is from Casey Burns. " Considering Jesus ' prayer recorded in John 17 for our oneness so that the world would know that the Father sent the Son, how can churches be planted in a manner that shows the world our oneness rather than increased division, but also maintains integrity of an obedient love faith relationship with Christ?
" Yeah, and you know I really appreciate this question as well because I think one of the things that we have to be watching for in church planting is the spirit in which we do it and is it done with a deep desire for unity? So I'll say just quickly a little story here. When I was much younger, when I was in my late 20s, I was very active in basically a Protestant evangelical house church movement. I used to go to the conferences. I was super involved there.
And I noticed something, which was that many people in those settings were there because they were anti wherever they were, wherever they were from before. And you would go and speak there and it's like, oh, I have a problem with this, no problem with that. And what bound people together wasn't a common vision, but it was that they didn't like wherever they were from. And people would always there talk about the institutional church and how evil and broken it was.
And what was so sad is that those churches, almost every single one, in fact, I only know of one exception disintegrated because that's not going to hold you together for very long. And to see how those groups would kind of almost smugly gather together in ways that just felt divisive, even in the meetings themselves. It was very, very ugly, very unpleasant. And so you know really what we're trying to do in church planting and discipleship is to call people higher into the unity of the Triune God.
And what we want to therefore do is not our goal is not to be casting stones at others and to be putting down this group and that group. And I just think we really have to watch our hearts in this. We really want to watch that we're not anti some other group, but that we're evangelists for Jesus, that we're pro-Jesus here.
And if we have that attitude and if we can truly even be grieved almost at the unnecessary divisions and just jabs that you hear often, I think that's the bulk of the right starting point is just having that right attitude and frame of mind. I really like that. I think that's for many of us that have maybe come from other groups is a good question to ask ourselves, how often do I speak negatively about the people that I've come from? Might be a good self-check.
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