Introduction to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in affluent  neighbourhoods as well as those designated as deprived. One unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

For the church, the question remains, “where the stones thrown from the inside or outside of the church?” Someone has posed the following, “we would be one if everyone would just stop fighting over the questions we already have answered. We could be one if it wasn't for us.” 

A young preacher began a ministry at a church that was rife with disunity, so he devised a simple method to eliminate the bickering. Whenever a member came to him to complain, he would take a spiral notebook out of his desk drawer. (It was brand new-still had a W H Smiths  sticker on it.) Across the cover of the notebook he had written in magic marker, "Complaints." 

Then he would say to the member, "I’m glad you’re here. Let’s go over your complaints against so-and-so one by one, and I’ll write them down, and you can sign the complaint. At the next church meeting we’ll bring it up, and you can present your case then." When the church member saw the open book, he or she would inevitably back down, saying, "Oh no! I couldn’t sign anything like that." During ten years of ministry the preacher opened that notebook dozens of times, but he never wrote anything in it.

Paul writing to the developing church was already of aware of the dangers of division, “Now I do beg you, ….  by all that Christ means to you, to speak with one voice, and not allow yourselves to be split up into parties. All together you should be achieving a unity in thought and judgment.” 1 Corinthians 1:10

John F. MacArthur, in his book The Master’s Plan for the Church writes,”No one is perfect—there are always going to be little things that people disagree about. Nevertheless, we should always get on our knees together and seek to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace (Eph 4:3)”

Father of all who live in the Spirit,

you have brought unity through your Son Jesus Christ:

help all who profess his name to show in their lives,

in their worship, and their evangelism

that oneness which springs from the truth 

as it is found in Jesus,

and fill your church with the desire 

both to seek and find that unity

throughout the world; in his name. Amen.