This blog is a sympathetic response to Leslie Keeney’s “What to do when two people who love Jesus have two different points of view?”

If it is true that they will know we are Jesus’ disciples by our love for one another (John 13:35), then our ability to disagree and still love and respect each other comes close to the core of our witness.  Working as part of a diverse long-term ministry team in our city in China, I have had to wrestle with this issue a number of times.  As you say, on some issues it seems it is easy to always extend grace towards your colleagues and agree to disagree.  But these “easy issues” are different for everyone, and all too often Satan uses these differences both big and small to destroy the unity of mission teams around the world. 

We recently had a deeply upsetting dispute over the suitability of divorced and then remarried couples to join our field.  I will spare you the details of the debate, but our team split in two with one group of people holding that their position on this issue was a matter of holiness which left no room for compromise, while another group saw this as an “easy issue” and were hesitant to judge candidates on this particular issue when so many other areas of potential sin were left unchallenged.  Both sides argued responsibly from scripture.  Both sides held their convictions strongly and pleaded their case with emotional control and respect for all involved.  At the time, our organization had no official policy regarding remarriage—though we have people with us representing nine different sending organizations!  We are a fairly close and relatively unified field of thirty international workers, and yet some claimed to be constrained by conscience to the point of possibly leaving the field.  Hearts were breaking.  What to do?

Everyone prayed a lot.  Corporately and individually, we confessed our lack of unity and asked for the Holy Spirit to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.  We all read Ephesians 4 and Romans12 repeatedly.  We asked God to show us our own sin and erroneous thinking.  We kept talking to each other and we sought wisdom from outside our fellowship.  And yet neither side was convicted to change their view.  The final solution involved some bureaucracy and tight negotiations, as well as a fair amount of close procedural and language work.  I do think it reflected some fairly sophisticated and faithful theological reflection; but it was in the end a quite banal solution and perhaps not exactly what either party was looking for.  

And yet at the end we were in the deepest sense unified. What I recall most from the meeting where the final resolution came about was not the details of the decision, but rather the palpable shared commitment to maintain unity, coupled with a commonly felt love for God and for one another.  As the meeting began we all grieved together over our disunity and then afterwards we embraced each other in joyful thanksgiving for the work of the Spirit in tying us together.  The pain is not gone, and the issue may one day arise again.  But I know that the Holy Spirit works actively to keep His people together.

I do not have a quick answer for what to do when brothers and sisters disagree.  I do know that it will likely happen again.  I know also that in many cases who is right and who is wrong are not the most important questions.  This was a very painful six months—some of the most emotionally draining of my life.  It would have been far easier to quit, compromise, or just leave.  But through the suffering we found God to be faithful, and the testimony of how the Holy Spirit knit our hearts together in the midst of this disagreement will last for years.