Our school song – one certainly not unique to us – began like this: ‘Forty years on when afar and asunder/ parted are those who are singing today/ when you look back and forgetfully wonder…’. Forty years on… that looks back to 1966.  To some of us 1966 recalls the Evangelical Alliance meeting in Central Hall, London, when Dr Lloyd-Jones famously issued his appeal for evangelicals to come ‘together as a fellowship, or an association, of evangelical churches’.  This was a time when ecumenism – the search for Christian unity – was all the rage and he looked upon it as an opportunity for evangelicals to think through and move towards a true ecumenism based squarely on fundamental biblical truth. The implication of his appeal meant that those in denominations which involved being ‘joined to and united with people who deny and are opposed to [the] essential matters of salvation’[1] should eventually leave them and it was this that caused great controversy.  But while the Doctor believed that this was necessary, his main concern was the unity of true believers at church level. Regrettably his positive message tended to be overlooked.  

It is also worth recalling that at much the same time, October, the Billy Graham Organisation was preparing the ground for another campaign in 1967.  It was to be avowedly inclusive, clergy and members from all denominations, evangelicals or not, were invited, indeed encouraged to take part. I became instantly unpopular by speaking out against this policy at a ministers’ breakfast, which led on to an hour-long discussion with Dr Robert Ferm of the Billy Graham Organisation.  At the same time too, Anglican evangelicals were preparing for the first National Evangelical Anglican Congress to be held at Keele University the following April.  When ‘Keele’ arrived any hopes anyone had entertained of Dr Lloyd-Jones’ appeal being taken seriously by Anglican evangelicals were blown away. In the words of Sir Kenneth Grubb: ‘The Congress has done three remarkable things.  It has given Evangelicals a justified sense of their standing; it has emphasized their loyalty to the Church; it has demonstrated that they have much to contribute, not only to individual faith, but also to the great spiritual challenges of contemporary society’ [2](italics mine).

How does Dr Lloyd-Jones’ vision look today? What he was concerned about, and arguing for, was that the spiritual reality of our oneness in Jesus Christ ought to be manifest and obvious. I don’t think he had any blueprint for this, simply that he wanted the Evangelical Alliance to put this high on their agenda and work out a way by which what is actually true should be seen for what it is. He looked upon it as a tragedy that true believers belonged to denominations where the need for conversion and the profession and preaching of fundamental gospel truth were not only downplayed but actually denied.  But in his eyes it was also a tragedy that those who were not in such denominations were nevertheless divided up into small groups so that their essential unity with one another was greatly obscured. Indeed, more than that, he maintained it was actually sinful: ‘for us to be divided from one another in the main tenor of our lives and for the bulk of our time, is nothing but to be guilty of the sin of schism. And we really must face this most urgently.’[3]  We must not think he sought unity simply for pragmatic reasons; he believed it was a biblical duty. It is true that Christian unity is essentially a spiritual unity and does not demand that we all think and act in identical ways.  But a unity that scarcely expresses itself at church level in any real way is not unity at all.

I believe that Dr Lloyd-Jones was right and that we have reached a point in history where this is one of the most urgent issues facing us. Since the Reformation the picture has been one of more and more fragmentation; an ever-increasing number of denominations, dividing over ever more detailed matters of belief or practice into smaller and smaller groups of churches. The problem has been at least in part one of methodology. Christians have gone to their Bibles and asked what it says about a church.  What about its governance?  What about baptism? What about spiritual gifts? What about its worship?  And when they come up with answers different to current church practice they have founded new churches to express what they have discovered and the process goes on and on and is likely to continue to do so. The goal has been to reproduce what are believed to be formally correct churches down to the small details.  One of the saddest things I find about using ‘Operation World’ is to see the number of denominations listed.  South Africa has 185 Protestant and 4,489 Independent denominations listed. The USA has 670 Protestant and 2,409 Independent denominations.  And a small Islamic country like Kuwait has thirty Protestant and 15 Independent denominations.

Numbers, of course, don’t tell us anything about core beliefs or spiritual condition.  Moreover they hide an unquantifiable, but probably reasonably large measure of co-operation that takes place beyond denominational life through bodies like the Evangelical Alliance or Affinity in this country, and much more ad hoc and local co-operative efforts.  

Suppose we take Dr Lloyd-Jones’ call seriously, what will it mean?  It certainly doesn’t mean doing anything precipitously.  We have to start from where we are; we cannot put the clock back nor do we want to ignore all that has been learnt from Scripture over the past centuries.  The question is how we integrate that into a principled unity with other churches whose understanding of some church matters is different from our own.  Dr Lloyd-Jones divided beliefs and practices into primary and secondary, as many others have done: unite on the primary, bear with others on the secondary.  Quite apart from the difficulty of agreeing on what are primary and what are secondary, even with agreement, how it all works out in practice is capable of a variety of possibilities.  We need, I think, to come up with a different and more biblically explicit way of proceeding.

Words like ‘unity’, ‘fellowship’ and ‘co-operation’ are all very well but do not indicate any precise action. While local churches think seriously about the implications of what the Bible says about unity and how it should be expressed, they can at least beware of being inward looking. Whatever else unity might involve it surely means churches acting in fellowship and love towards each other, encouraging and helping each other, specially where there is particular need.

1. Quotations from Evangelical Unity: An Appeal in Knowing the Times; Banner of Truth; pp.257,254

2. Quoted in Timothy Dudley-Smith, John Stott:, A Global Ministry; IVP; p.96

3. See footnote 1, p.254

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