The Problem of Unity

Conflicts, church splits, people leaving churches, leaders resigning... I'm only twenty-five and I think it's frightening that I personally seen and experienced so many problems with church unity. (No, I won't bother with any juicy stories. I'm ranting here, not gossiping.)

When we talk about church unity, I most often hear references to theological/idealogical differences breaking churches up. In my personal experience, this has never been the case. The only source of church conflict that I've ever seen has been due to personal offence and that's it. Whatever the reason and whatever the circumstance, it becomes personal and people leave/get kicked out because someone was offended. Oh, the label we assign to it may be an 'issue' but it's deeper than that.

I don't know, I really don't get it. If there's a conflict, deal with it. If you're right, you still have to be mature. If you're right and mature, then maybe you don't need to be right (e.g. compromise). If I say that I'm mature but I haven't found a way to resolve an issue, the first place I look is at myself. No matter how perfect I may think that my decisions were, was there something more that I could have done?

To extrapolate, church unity is person-to-person, not person-to-church. If you haven't developed relationship with specific people, then you aren't in unity. A church isn't healthy if people have issues just hanging around between one another. It's like saying that a wooden table is solid even though the legs are not nailed to the tabletop. Sure, it may be able to support an huge Thanksgiving meal if you place the meal directly on top of it, but as soon as the family dog bumps into one of the table legs it all comes tumbling down. Each piece of the church needs to be nailed together.