Christians only, but...

"Christians only, but not the only Christians"

Strangely enough, this is a Restorationism I never heard growing up. Seriously, I attended three different churches of Christ in the Minneapolis area and never heard this one. It was only after I went to liberal places, like Harding University, that...OK, my Dr. Pepper just blew out my nose. What is funny is not the irony of calling Harding liberal, but rather that it was liberal when compared to my originination point.

Back on topic. When I first heard someone say, "Christians only, but not the only Christians," I immediately knew, from my childhood training, that this was someone's erroneous, intentionally erroneous, effort to muddy the waters of true faith. I wondered how these liberal people in the South could have strayed so far. I was the ignorant savage from the vast "mission fields" of Minnesota after all, so my ignorance was excusable, but these were people from the South where everyone goes to a huge Church of Christ with more than one front door and have the Bible memorized inside and out. I was somewhat unnerved that these liberals were not taken to task like my friend Terry, a new Chrisitan, who was thrashed for wearing shorts on Wednesday night in July. Man, when you're in Minnesota and it is one of those days you can wear shorts, you just do. It's like that one day in Houston when you can break out the sweater.

So I start hearing this young preacher named Mike Cope who cracked jokes in his sermons and kept me awake as I slouched in the balcony of College Church. He was a good preacher, but kind of dangerous. There was one phrase he said one Sunday during sermon that put me into crisis. Mike was saying that there were many differen kinds of people in this room. "Some people like old hymns while others like newer songs; some people (blah, blah, blah), and in a group this size there are probably some closet-charasmatics."

What the H-E-double hockey sticks is he talking about? And then he did not, as was the custom, go on to shame people who were charasmatics. No, he went on to affirm faith in its many forms. Christians only, but not he only Christians.

I remember being put into a crisis because I had always viewed those weirdo charasmatics as lost. Now there was this preacher I really believed in affirming them. I needed a crisis.

I really like the fact that there is much chummy conversation going on between Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. But the fact that this dialogue seems so momentous is only testimony to the fact that there is so much farther to go.

This is also what I like about some of the ideas coming out from emergent. The idea of a deep ecclesiology is so important. We are one deep down, though we are diverse on the surface.

Of all Restorationisms, this is my favorite. Christians only, but not the only Christians.