We Are Not Guerrillas Nor Gorillas

I think of Christ's church as His ekklesia, which is much more than what we have come to understand church to be. We are called to be the Kingdom and especially a governing body with authority and responsibility.

I'm not sure I can come up with an adequate analogy to shine a light on the problem but I'll try.

Think of World War II. What would have happened if the Allied Forces decided they would all fight as independent guerrilla bands and not share information with each other? Further, in this picture, let's also put the United States in one box and all the other Allies in another box. Now let's pretend all the Allies, those not the United States, decided they would fight on as little guerrilla bands and actually even begin to doubt whether the United States is even an ally.

I use this analogy to illustrate how I see the condition of Christ's ekklesia. In my analogy, the United States represents the Roman Catholic Church. Like the Catholic Church is now becoming, after Pearl Harbor, Japan said of the United States, "We have awoken a sleeping giant." The other allies are the many non-Catholic Christian denominations. The Roman Catholic Church has the potential of being an awakened giant with resolve.

To make my point as quickly as possible, related to evangelism and discipleship, the Roman Catholic Church is a sleeping giant. She is awakening slowly, at a glacial speed, on her own, but the rest of the body of Christ could do much to help her get focused on joining the rest of Christ's ecclesia fulfilling the Great Commission.

The Roman Catholic Church, roughly half of the total number of those claiming to be Christian, groggy as she wakes from her hibernation, is only part of the problem. The other part is also illustrated in my analogy but the other allies fighting like little guerrilla bands. The body of Christ is not operating as a united, disciplined fighting force. It's acting like a collection of undisciplined guerrilla bands who often can't even decide who the enemy is, often spending a vast amount of their resources on infighting and tearing down those they should know are also their allies.

It even gets down to the individual level. I've been searching the internet for information on spiritual warfare and a huge amount of the information is about how Christians should put on the whole armor of God and defend themselves from attacks. Yes, that's true enough, but where is the strategy for the body of Christ, as a united force, to storm the gates of hell and release the captives?

I'm not one of those who thinks individualism is a horrible problem. But I believe we are called to operate as one body, not as little guerrilla bands of undisciplined renegades or only as households defending their turf from home invasions.

I've been praying for decades, "with Jesus, for all Christians to be one as Jesus and the Father are one so we can, with a united voice, proclaim the Gospel message to the world." In Jesus's High Priestly Prayer in John 17 He said the world would know the Father sent Him if Christians were united. He didn't say what the world would know if we became what we are now, very divided.

The body of Christ needs to move beyond talking about how individuals can win their little spiritual battles as at home, all on their own, and move up to how the body of Christ can become a disciplined fighting force together to come up with a D-Day battle plan to take back our planet.

I am able to wrap my head around the differences and similarities between evangelical Christianity and the Roman Catholic tradition. I have become more and more frustrated with the entrenched attitudes of Catholics which I feel are keeping them from moving into the evangelism and discipleship roles needed to help us all fulfill the Great Commission.