There were two churches in the village where I spent my teenage years, one on Church Street and the other on Main Street.  To any tourist passing through our little town they would have looked almost identical, these modest wood-framed buildings with stained-glass windows and tin-clad steeples.  When the church bells clanged on Sunday mornings and the roadsides near the churches filled with parked cars, when well-scrubbed families filed through the double doors and organ music wafted from the windows, an outsider could be forgiven for imagining that these two congregations were laboring and worshiping in synchronicity.  But we knew better.  Our church, the one on Church Street, was faithful to the Bible.  That was something we would NEVER say about the Other Church.

To be honest, we doubted that the townspeople who attended the Main Street Church were actually Christians.  The denomination to which they belonged was obviously deluded on crucial points of doctrine, and some of their practices, we knew, were weird.  In matters of religion, Those People spoke with a vocabulary and tone that were different from ours — not in ways that would be obvious to a reporter from the New York Times, perhaps, but as distinguishable to the practiced ear as a Scottish brogue or a Texas drawl.

Yes, we all lived in the same town and went to the same public schools and always said hello to each other in the post office.  But underneath all of this small-town civility, we were like Shi’ites and Sunnis.

Our church belonged to a nondenominational denomination, a network of like-minded congregations that had survived the wreckage of a revival a few generations earlier.  Our churches, which were scattered over a radius of 300 miles or so, were in turn connected, albeit very loosely, with other churches in distant parts of the country and with missionaries around the world.  These were the Christians we knew.  We “fellowshipped” with our spiritual relatives at regional youth camps and men’s retreats and missions conferences, or on visits to the Bible School from which most of our leaders had graduated. Our family would drive for several hours to attend one of these reunions, but never, as far as I recall, did we even think about walking two blocks to visit the Other Church.

Over time, even our denominational events became strained.  Tensions were probably always present, but not until I was old enough to interpret the interactions of grownups did I start to see the signs of internecine strife: the strategic seating, the sidelong looks, the elliptical sermon references that bore no relation to the text.  And then there were the mysterious absences.  We would arrive at an annual convocation to find that friends who had been fixtures at those gatherings for years had suddenly disappeared, without a word of explanation, as though they had never existed at all.  Only later, when I was finally admitted into adult conversations, did I hear about the battles that had been waged for righteousness, and the casualties that our side (the right side, naturally) had sustained.

Here’s a staggering statistic: there are now approximately 41,000 Christian denominations in the world.  That’s right, 41,000 separate and distinct groups of churches, each with its own organizational chart, its own doctrinal priorities, its own style.

This diversity is nothing new — nor, for that matter, is it necessarily bad.  Archeologists and sociologists tell us that tribalism is universal among humans and practically as old as humanity itself.  The Bible describes the Children of Israel whom Moses led out of Egypt as a very diverse population — twelve distinct tribes, each a collection of multiple clans — whose calling to be the People of God did not erase their tribal identities.

If you stop to think about it, you must admit that a monolithic and homogeneous Church could never reach a world population as culturally diverse as ours.  In fact, no single church could be expected to reach all the various subgroups within, for example, just one typical high school.  A gospel message phrased in a way that reaches a Geek might confuse a Jock and elude a Stoner altogether.  That’s why it was so wonderful and miraculous that, when the church was born on the Day of Pentecost, foreigners who had come to Jerusalem from the far corners of the earth all heard the gospel, but each in his own language.

In employing the imagery of the human body, the New Testament makes the point that this living, breathing thing we call the Church is actually a very complicated organism whose various parts are different by design.  Diversity makes it possible for the Church to adapt, to speak countless languages simultaneously, to identify and meet a whole spectrum of human needs. And whether we see it or not, the Bible insists that the Church is actually a unified spiritual entity, with “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of us all,” and that it functions under the direction of one Head, Christ himself.

Complications arise, according to the Apostle Paul, whenever one organ in this body begins to regard the others with contempt.  It is there, at the point where believers take so much pride in their God-given identity that they lose sight of their place within the larger whole, that they fall victim to a debilitating spiritual sickness.  The whole church suffers when this happens, and the mission and witness of the church suffer as well. The single characteristic that is supposed to mark us as Christ-followers is lost.  “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples,“ Jesus said, “That you love one another.”

After I left home, I wandered away from our little tribe and began to explore the larger world.  At university, I discovered Church History, a subject I had never encountered before.  Our denomination, after all, was less than a hundred years old.  Since we regarded our movement as a restoration of the New Testament Church, I had never paid any serious attention to the nineteen centuries that had passed between the Day of Pentecost and the modern descent of the dove.  Had the Holy Spirit been absent from the earth during that time?  Had Jesus, in abrogation of his explicit promise, forsaken his disciples for nearly two millenia?

Delving into the archives of the Christian faith, I was astonished to discover committed believers in every age and in every place where the gospel has traveled.  Each of these Christ-followers was born into to a certain people-group and spoke a specific language.  Each one inherited a set of cultural norms and an incomplete understanding of the physical world.  All of them were surrounded by political realities and historical forces from which they could not escape.  It is not at all surprising. therefore, that despite their common commitment to Christ, these believers ended up interpreting and articulating and applying the gospel in different ways.  Of course they did!

It was especially humbling for me to trace my own Christian heritage.  As it turns out, the movement in which I was raised did not emerge spontaneously from a vacuum, immaculately conceived by the Holy Spirit without any cultural influences.  Yes, I do believe the Holy Spirit was involved in the birth of our movement.  But in the many generations prior to our revival, religious sincerity regularly mated with socioeconomic factors, military and political realities, racial biases, and even, at times, naked ambition, to produce our progenitors.  Eventually I came to believe that it was this half-forgotten and mostly unacknowledged genetic material, rather than theology alone, that made us unique.

Today, I live in a historic town in the American South, one with plenty of churches.  Only 150 years ago, most of the white Christians in this town defended the institution of slavery on biblical grounds.  Most of my neighbors still go to church.  People who grew up here tend to attend the church their parents attended, or one like it.  Those of us who moved here from somewhere else typically look around for a church that speaks our worship-language, shares our cultural values, and endorses our political views — and it isn’t hard to find one that fits.  There is a church for every taste in Franklin, Tennessee.

My wife Allie and I joined a church when we moved here 15 years ago.  It’s a good church.  We’re comfortable in our church home, and we are deeply engaged in ministry.  More than that, we’re proud of our church.  It is probably the best church in town.  At least that’s what I was thinking a few weeks ago when an unexpected email suddenly arrived, an invitation to speak in another church just a few blocks from my house.

I had walked past this Other Church nearly every day for 15 years, but I had never so much as looked inside the building.  Frankly, I had no interest in looking inside.  In my mind, the denomination to which this church belongs is deluded on crucial points of doctrine, and some of its practices are weird.  But when its new pastor, a likable young guy whom I’d met a few times at Starbucks, asked me to lead a weekend men’s retreat and then preach on Sunday morning, I didn’t have the heart to turn him down.

I finally entered the Other Church this last Friday, late in the afternoon, feeling like I was crossing into North Korea.  And what I found inside both shocked and humbled me.  Rather than foreigners, I found men like myself, flawed men who are aware of their sin and grateful for forgiveness, who are committed to their families and doing their level best to follow the Savior.  I didn’t know all of their songs or understand all of their jargon, but the Spirit among these men was unmistakable.  It felt like I’d arrived at a family reunion for the very first time, along with relatives I’d never met before.  When the introductions were over and the initial awkwardness had passed, I found that we have an awful lot to talk about.

Still today, she loves to tell how her heart jumped the moment our eyes met, how she knew at that very instant that I’d come running to meet her the second the service was over.  That, of course, is precisely what I did.  Vaulting a couple of pews to get around the traffic in the center aisle, I approached her with all the casual detachment I could muster.  “Welcome to our church,” I said, and stuck out my hand.

Up close she was even more intoxicating than I had imagined, and I was now finding it difficult to breathe.  I was in the presence of a grown-up girl-next-door, a woman with the freshness and exuberance of youth.  And at that crucial moment, I ran out of things to say.  Suddenly, just standing there seemed stupid, so in a desperate bid to to salvage my self-respect I abruptly wheeled toward the closest warm body, who turned out to be a sunburned farmer, and engaged him in a spirited conversation about, of all things, rain.  When I looked back again, she was gone.

My infatuation had not gone unnoticed, however.  A few minutes later, as I sprinted toward the parking lot in search of the woman of my dreams, I was intercepted by one of the congregation’s eligible young ladies, a gingham girl who had always monitored me in a proprietary way. “Who are you looking for?” she asked.

“No one,” I lied.

“You don’t even know her name, do you?” she said.

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“Her name,” the girl said, pausing dramatically, “is — get this — Bunny Bean!”  She giggled.  “And guess how old she is?”

My heart was racing, but I maintained a poker face.  “Oh, you must be talking about the visitor,” I said evenly.  “You talked to her?”

“No,” said the girl, “but I know someone who did.  And guess how old she is.”  She raised her eyebrows.

I did not know how my tormenter had learned the identity of the mystery woman so quickly, but I did respect the girl’s resources.  She was, after all, a female.  More than than, she was a church girl, which meant that she had access to several intelligence networks.  In the Young People’s Group in our church, most of the girls competed with each other constantly on multiple levels, forming alliances and trading secrets in an ongoing drama that, at any given moment, could cause any one of them to erupt in tears.  But if an outsider appeared, a female pretty enough to attract the boys, hostilities would be suspended while the girls worked together to assess the threat.  They were master researchers, all of them, and they could transmit information via prayer chain or semaphore at the speed of light.

“She’s twenty-eight,” the girl said smugly.

This was an unexpected development, but I instantly determined that it was irrelevant.  I had assumed that our angelic visitor was older than I — I’d guessed she was in her early twenties — but that fact had only added to her appeal.  The truth was, I liked older girls.  My previous girlfriend had been four years my senior, and age had never been an issue in that relationship.  So if this woman really was ahead of me by — holy crap, a decade — so what?  I shrugged.  “Really?” I said.  “That’s interesting.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed.  “If you think that’s interesting, then you’ll be fascinated to know she has a kid.”

“She’s married?”

“No,” said the girl, a triumphant gleam in her eye.  “She’s divorced.”

Divorced.  The gingham girl had obviously saved that crucial piece of information for the coup de grace, and she delivered it with sadistic finality.  Game over.  The target had been acquired and neutralized.

In our church, we talked and sang a lot about Amazing Grace, but when it came to the subject of divorce, grace was in short supply.  Sure, an exception could be granted in the case of an unfaithful spouse, but divorced persons were forever second-class, barred from any important role in the church.  Anyone who married a divorced person committed adultery, case closed.  And since, as everyone knew, I was destined for the pulpit, any association with divorce would mean career suicide.  I was free to pursue any maiden or widow who caught my fancy, but a divorcee?  Out of the question.  Our beautiful visitor deserved my pity, but she could never be a legitimate object of desire.  A romantic connection was out of the question.

My world collapsed.

She arrived at our church on that first Sunday morning like a visitor from another planet, and from my very first glimpse of her, I was captivated.  But within hours of that first encounter I learned that she was unattainable.  Worse, she was off-limits, because in the Pentecostal church where we met, there were rules about these things.

There were regulations in our little world, most of them unwritten, that governed almost everything.  There were standards for dress, for hair styles, for poses and facial expressions during worship.  There were phrases to avoid when presenting a prayer request (“this killer hangover,” for example) and others (such as “the Lord told me”) that were essential to a proper testimony.  But on this miraculous morning, as we rose to our feet for the opening rendition of “This is the Day,” there appeared at the door of our church a young woman whose aura, even before she had uttered a single word, shouted that she did not know the rules, or if she did, she did not care about them.  I could not tear my eyes away from her.

She had not arrived alone.  There were six people with her, six  bobbing and shuffling women whom she blithely ushered into the back pew.  Her companions were, in the parlance of the day, “mentally retarded,” and yet I detected not a hint of condescension in the way she treated them.  She might just as well have been sharing a pew with the leadership committee of Women’s Aglow.

When her charges were settled in their places, the woman looked up and took in her surroundings.  She was trim and bright, with bobbed brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, and she was wearing an outfit that, while it was not immodest, conformed more to her figure than to the standards of the sanctified sisterhood.

With an expression of frank curiosity, she surveyed the sanctuary. I watched as she studied the stained-glass windows, the song-leader on the platform, the organist and the piano-player and the polyester-clad backup singers and the banner above the choir loft on which a flaming dove dive-bombed the baptistry.  Then her gaze suddenly shifted to the second pew on the right-hand side, where I was sitting, and she caught me looking at her.  Before I could look away, she smiled, and I almost passed out.

To be continued.

Ordinary people fall in love, you know.  You may not read their stories in the gossip magazines while you’re waiting at the checkout — “JANICE OGLEFOOT MEETS PERFECT MAN AT MUFFLER SHOP” or “EUGENE TURDWEILER GOES BONKERS FOR MACDONALDS CUTIE” — but it happens.

Every day, all around us, ordinary men and women are experiencing the miracle of mutual attraction so essential to the survival of the human species.  And it’s always beautiful.  The plainest woman is radiant when she’s in love, and the object of her affection, no matter how cloddish he may have seemed before they met, is suddenly Sir Galahad.  The sight of them kissing makes everybody smile, because there is something about love that anyone who hasn’t died inside finds irresistible.

Some couples are superficially matched, as perfectly paired as Ken and Barbie, but most of them are not.  From a physical point of view, at least, most couples are asymmetrical, and sometimes the disparity is great enough to make you marvel at the power of love.

Men and women are forever falling in love despite startling differences in height, circumference, color, age, class, nationality, religion, and certainly looks.  What an encouraging thought!  When it comes to love, every bald man has a chance, and every big-hipped woman does too, because true love sees the part of you the mirror will never see, the real, essential You, and recognizes kinship there.  Even a penniless pipsqueak with pipestem arms and coke-bottle glasses has a shot at the beautiful woman, as long as her emotional cognition is more than skin-deep.  Which was a very good thing for me back then, in the summer of 1977, when I found myself in the company of just such a woman, beside a waterfall.

To be continued…