What's the minimum?

I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading and praying about a problem that is troubling me. Most churches seem to have large documents saying what they believe and what you have to believe to be a member. According to these documents I am not sure there is one church in our town that I can be a member of! I was becoming very negative and fed up with them all.

So in an attempt to be more positive, I decided to try to work out what is the minimum we need to believe to be a member of the worldwide body of Christ. From that I was thinking that if this could become the criteria for being a member of a local church maybe I would find a place I could call home here in Larnaka. This is what I came up with:

The early followers of Jesus called themselves followers of the way. This is based on Christ's words of 'I am the way, the truth and the life' [John 4:16], in other words, they are followers of Jesus. We can comfortably, therefore, call ourselves followers of the way.

From the beginning there were differences of opinion as to what being a follower of the way actually meant. These have continued and increased both in breadth and ferocity. The early followers of Jesus drew up a minimal creed to identify what is needed to be believed to be a follower of the way. We call this 'The Apostles Creed' and dates back to AD140:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary; crucified under Pontius Pilate, and buried; the third day He rose from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, from where He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy Church; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body and the everlasting life.

As far as the law is concerned Jesus was asked what was the minimum or most important part of the law. He replied:

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' [Luke 10:27]

Why not add to these? I was looking for the minimum in each case. If we want the maximum we would return to the legalism of the Old Testament. With these as a minimum all the debates about baptism, gifts of the Spirit, church management and leadership and whatever else we want to argue about can be relegated to differences of interpretation.

What I still don't know is how to resolve within a fellowship opposite interpretations - for instance when some believe that women in leadership is acceptable and some do not. For me, I look to the minimal and see if it conflicts. If not, then its permitted. This is similar to the problem the early followers of the way had with meat sacrificed to idols. Jesus summary of the law gives us the guidelines that Scripture then unpacks - yes, its permitted but not necessarily helpful within the fellowship.

The problem we face is that most churches do not allow for disagreement. So if we have a bunch of believers who claim that the modern state of Israel is the outworking of God's plan we can either join them or reject them. There lies the problem - I love the people but totally disagree with them over this. With each of the churches in this town there are problems I have with their belief structure.

Within any church there is a centre of power. That centre of power determines, as I said at the beginning, the belief structure of that church. It creates a very excluding structure. It makes people like me feel like outsiders. I believe this is the opposite of what Jesus intends for His body. I long for a church which I can call home...