So, if you do not have a single person or a committee deciding what a fellowship of believers will believe and practice, how do you maintain unity? The answer is that this will always be difficult, and it will be messy. Common sense and history both agree on this. But this is the goal, is it not? Answer: Absolutely! Jesus’ last recorded prayer was for unity among believers. I propose that to maintain this vital unity a range of practices and traditions must be maintained. I do not have the silver bullet, but let me propose some things which will be helpful.
First, for continued unity, the members of this group must learn to tolerate diversity of belief and practice in nonessential matters. This certainly applies to the specific potentially divisive issue you raise. Those of us who continue to be part of the ICOC must be determined to accept those who have different practices when it comes to the women’s role. Some will be more conservative. We can predict that in places like Africa and East Asia, this will predictably be the case. Those who choose to have a more egalitarian approach to the role of women will need to tolerate those who feel strongly in the other direction. And the reverse applies. To tell you the truth, it will probably be harder for those who oppose having women elders and women preachers to accept the more progressive on this issue. They will find it more difficult to adapt to this than the other way around. But that is just the way it is. This means that those who take “conservative” views will have to work even harder than those who take “progressive” views to tolerate those on the other side of the issue. More can be said on this.
Also, although we will not have top-down structure, we do need to have para-church structure which brings people of different belief and practice into the same room for helpful discussions. It is much easier to be disunified with a person you do not know personally. I do not propose that we drop the idea of congregational autonomy altogether, but if we are serious about maintaining a real unity over time, we must create structures for discussion, compromise, and for communication to the broader fellowship concerning the discussions. On some matters we will do something like what the church did in Acts 15–providing some rather specific advice to the churches–and on some other issues we will simply discuss and let different groups do what they choose. Either way, on-going discussion and communication is absolutely essential to maintaining unity. This point applies to the women’s role issue as well. If I were asked, I would advise that the ICOC churches ask congregations across our fellowship to keep within certain limits, at least for now, in order to protect the unity of the body. This would require those of the fully egalitarian view to limit their freedom somewhat on this issue, which might be hard for them to swallow. But unity is too important to be sacrificed on a debatable matter.
My third suggestion is the most obvious one, which is that we need to be fully and without reservation committed to the idea that the Bible is the final authority on matters which are dealt with in the Scripture. There will be grey areas, and there will be questions on which consensus cannot be reached, despite this commitment, but it is essential that we agree on the ultimate authority of the Bible.
My last suggestion is related to the second. We need to find ways to continue the amazing relational unity we already have. At the risk of exaggerating, we have a fellowship of church in which anyone can go anywhere and be welcomed. They will find someone who knows someone they are close to in our churches. Our person-to-person fellowship and closeness has been maintained remarkably well right up to today. It will be harder to maintain this moving forward, but it is an essential to long-term unity. We need to love one another with a brotherly love, and we need to create instruments to maintain this unity.
And by the way, I strongly agree with you that the solution of producing a creed would be a mistake. Creeds are normally written in order to produce unity, but history tells us that they either create a false unity or they actually create more division than unity. I strongly urge us as a church to avoid relying on creeds to solve our unity problem.
John Oakes