Where We Hang Our Hat

Dan Ericksen tells a story all too familiar in the annals of church history. In the 1890's there was a small Baptist church in Mayfield County, Kentucky. The church had two deacons who were constantly arguing and bickering. One of them put up a small wooden peg on the back wall so that the pastor could hang up his hat. When the other deacon discovered the peg, he was outraged, “How dare you put up a peg without consulting me!” The people in the church took sides and the congregation eventually split. Today the residents of Mayfield County still refer to the two churches as Peg Baptist Church and Anti-Peg Baptist Church.

How silly! But before we get too smug lookign down our nosesa on those Christians for their silliness, we have something of a history of division in Churches of Christ, don't we? A casual observer may find our reasons for our division just as silly as the Peg/Anti-Peg controversy:

• At the same time the controversy raged in Mayfield, our churches were splitting over church music and how to best support our missionaries and mission efforts.
  

• Since that time, we have divided over how cups in communion, classes in Sunday School, and what precisely will happen at the end of time (like God is waiting to see what we decide so He'll know what to do).

We could go on and on enumerating controversies, but this list is depressing enough. All of these are pretty petty reasons to divide. In fact, it is rather hard to imagine a noble reason to divide the church Jesus prayed would be one. Sure, there may be many reasons why we feel comfortable at one place and not at another. Paul and Barnabas had to agree to disagree at one point. But pointing fingers? Splitting hairs that split the church? Gathering our robes around us and proclaiming, "All who are on the Lord's side come to me?" Is that our job?

In 1 Coprinthiasn 15, Paul gives us a peg upon which to hang our hat, "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." We will never stand together on all the minutia of things that take place when one is "doing church." And we shouldn't all agree on such things; there is something to be said for variety! But let's hang our hat on the one thing that really matters-- the cross on which Jesus died.