I live in a Middle Eastern (Muslim) country, and currently I have 12 days off work due to National Day and Eid Al Adha celebrations.  We enjoyed the National Day fireworks from the roof of our apartment building (45 minutes of dual-source synchronized fireworks!).  And then we put ear plugs in so we could go to sleep with all the young guys driving/honking//backfiring till 3 AM on our street.  We remind our kids that this qualifies as a cultural experience!

Eid Al Adha is the Muslim festival that comes at the end of the Hajj (required journey to Mecca) and about 6 weeks after the end of Ramadan.  It also commemorates Allah providing a ram so that Abraham didn’t actually have to sacrifice Ishmael.  (That is the Muslim take on it.)  Muslims normally slaughter and eat a sheep as part of the festival.  In years past, apartment staircases here have run red with the blood of slaughtered sheep, but now residents must take their sheep to authorized slaughter-centres that are set up for the occasion.  (Sort of reminds me of polling places appearing and disappearing over elections.)  So, a couple of days ago, i discovered a sheep in the parking lot of my building!  Didn’t take too much imagination to figure out what was going on.  This morning, Mr Sheepy was gone, and it looked like the short-term owner took the legal route on preparing his meal.  Fortunately for Mr. Sheepy, he didn’t have any clue what was waiting for him.  Sort of reminds me of many of my friends.

Like my hockey buddies (yes, ice hockey).  A couple of nights ago, HockeyGuy turned to me on the bench and says “I think Jesus showed us the ultimate example of humanity.”  I pulled out my CS Lewis Handbook and replied that Jesus claimed to be God, so either he was loony or else he was/is God.  Either way, you can’t take the “great man” approach.  HockeyGuy basically said to me “I don’t think the I-am-God stuff matters.  I just like the Great Moral Man stuff.”  Must be that post-modern mindset kicking in, i guess, that someone can pick and choose what they like or dislike about Jesus and totally ignore the rest.  Or is that just human nature?  Isn’t that what the Gnostics did so very long ago?  Anyway HockeyGuy, who *is* a good guy, doesn’t believe he needs a Saviour and misses out on Jesus as the Eternal Sacrifice.  Hmmm, kind of reminds me of all the Muslims i know…

Michael Spencer over at jesusshaped.wordpress.com laments about the division within the church. He writes:

Most of what we call churches behave as if they are the true church finally arrived, and the guy three doors down is someone getting it all or mostly wrong. Evangelicals reinvent the faith and the church every time they get bored. In the proliferation of churches in small communities in my part of the world, the differences are primarily stylistic, not substantial.

The comments to the post show that this is a frustration that is shared by many.

I had been meaning to write about this topic for some time, but from the other side of the coin, because as an Eclectic Christian I am interested in ways that believers and churches can work together.

In the heart of the Muslim world lies a very unique church. Here is a recent article about the church from the outside perspective of the Gulf News.

Abu Dhabi: More than 2,500 Christians from 21 different denominations celebrated on Friday the construction of the new facility for worshippers.

“This is a historic day as we celebrate 30 years of the Christian community in Abu Dhabi in this facility,” said Cameron Arensen, pastor of the English-speaking Evangelical Community Church.

The Evangelical Church of Abu Dhabi is home to 21 different churches that hold services back-to-back from Thursday to Saturday. For more than a decade, 21 different churches and denominations have been meeting in the small facility in the Khubairat area. The churches’ new home now has the capacity to accommodate the growing numbers of its congregations.

“The land was granted to us by the rulers of this country, who have been very generous. The old facility was getting way too small for us and this is a very exciting new phase for us as a church,” the pastor said…

Pastor Stuart Briscoe from the UK delivered a message on unity and worship to the congregation…

“The significance of all these different churches meeting in one facility is to give a visible demonstration of our unity as a Christian community despite the many nationalities and cultures,” Arensen added.

“It has been amazing to see new nationalities from around the world coming here every week… The government has been extremely good to allow different faiths to live and work together,” [John] Kochummen [a member of the church] said.

Of these 21 congregations, only a couple are solely English Speaking. (The article is a little misleading when it talks about 21 denominations. The division is primarily along linguistic and cultural lines.) In the Evangelical Community Church, the largest of the congregations in the Evangelical Center, about 700 Evangelical Christians from over 40 different countries and denominational backgrounds gather together to worship, pray and learn from God’s word.

I asked Peter Heath, one of the worship leaders at ECC, to join this post to describe a little more what that looks like, and to explain how they cope with theological differences and practices:

Hey Mike, thanks for the vine. Somebody once said that necessity is the mother of invention. Indeed, the good things that we see in the church community of Abu Dhabi are a result of the circumstances of life here. This is a Muslim country – the weekend is Friday/Saturday, and Sunday morning is just another workday. That in itself changes church life. Further, it is impossible for every congregation to have its own facility. Expats are not allowed to purchase land in Abu Dhabi; besides, most congregations don’t generate enough revenue to manage their own building. Fortunately, the government of Abu Dhabi has given land for four church facilities, of which the Evangelical Center is but one. From these facts of life come some really interesting and mostly wonderful dynamics.

Eclectic co-operation comes in a couple of flavours. My church, the Evangelical Community Church, is a collection of over 40 different nationalities. Everyone can speak English, but most have a different mother tongue. Church members tend to hang out with their own culture, and that can be a good thing. The South Africans have their own Bible study during the week, conducted in Afrikaans. The Filipinos are constantly on the lookout for new “Pinoys” to bring into the congregation. But it is not all little national cliques. The board is deliberately very diverse. My own worship team is a mix of four different nationalities. And every Christmas we have an International Carol Service where we can celebrate the birth of Christ in as many ways and languages as there are in the church. We learn from each other in Adventures in Fellowship. And our children learn that the Church really is worldwide.

Regarding church sacraments, ECC takes a “less-is-more” approach. Communion is usually prefaced by a comment from the Pastor that this is for anyone who has made a commitment to Christ. No membership implications or anything like that. We use flat bread cut into little pieces and little cups of grace juice – very similar to my church in Canada. Baptism is also done very simply. Actually, this is a necessity, since we often have over 20 people baptized at any one time. And the only interesting thing is that both the Senior Pastor and the Associate Pastor are involved. The Senior Pastor stands outside the tank and asks the candidate if he/she believes if Jesus is the Son of God, if he/she is going to live for Him, etc etc. After an affirmation of these things, the Associate Pastor dunks the candidate. (This provides better visibility, and ensures that no microphones drop into the water and electrocute the pastor!) These approaches to the sacraments follow the leadership’s position on many things, including the church’s Statement of Faith. The Statement is pretty short, and covers core beliefs only. Everyone believes the statement … plus some other things. The “other things” vary from person to person, but there is a large area of common ground. While this may make ECC a little on the vanilla side (especially for liturgical or charismatic folks), it provides basis for a wide swath of ministry in a city with over 100 nationalities living and working. And quite frankly, vanilla is the best base flavour for making a good ice cream sundae

The other side of eclectic co-operation can be on Fridays. Worship services begin at 8:30 AM and go all day long. Most of the time, there are two or even three services running concurrently. (Thank God for concrete!) At the end of ECC’s second service, my band packs up its guitars, etc. while the Filipino band starts setting up their equipment. We have learned to work around each other cheerfully. As I leave the building, other musicians are taking their gear to the basement or upper chapels. After the Filipino service there are Indian services, Ethiopian services, etc etc etc. The Center itself was designed to accommodate multiple congregations and multiple services. There is a large outdoor courtyard where people can chat after services. We all love eating breakfast there after the Easter Sunday Sunrise Service. And the facility itself is designed with a multitude of big, medium and small rooms, as opposed to one really big room and only a few smaller ones. This means that ECC started in the new facility with two services and will likely expand to three services in the near future. This is all because the leadership of ECC (the biggest and richest congregation) looks for the good of all congregations rather than just its own good. Really, that summarizes the attitude of church leaders here – the common good of all. Lots of variety, but a common Saviour, a common confession, and a common Spirit.

Is this perhaps more of what we should be striving towards in North America?