Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2006

Photo: Lizzie Freear

Between Wednesday the 18th of January and Wednesday the 25th of January a week of prayer for Christian unity was held on campus. This involved the campus-based Christian societies each committing to some form of prayer activity in the Quiet Place for a period of time on each of the week-day lunch times. If my memory and diary serve me correctly the days were filled with the following:

Weds 18th January Christis. Thu 19th January Rev. Fri 20th January Christian Focus. Mon 23rd January Christian Union. Tues 24th January Speak. Weds 25th January Cassoc

I personally tried to commit myself to going to as many as possible, however on the 23rd I had my first year physics labs and apologise for my absence. As well as going to these I also tried to go to quite a few of the separate meetings of the groups I know of or am on the mailing lists for. These included Christis, Cassoc, the main CU meeting and Christian focus. Obviously I have too much time on my hands.

Through this week I have felt a part of all the meetings I have attended, each one was enjoyable for what it was. The diversification was staggering, from Cassoc with the Quaker visitor they had and the powerful silence shared to the Student Christian Movement visitor Christian focus had with discussion on how well known prophets from the Old Testament compare prophetically with 20th century figures.

So I have come to see an issue with the system. During the lunch times together we pray for unity and in the evenings we split into our diverse groups with a equally diverse set of views. This obviously poses a question — is there any possibility of unity in diversity? I suppose you may want a bible passage if you are that way inclined.

Romans 12:4 following: For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to grace given to us.

Obviously this seems to point to some fact that different churches have different uses/functions — but though we are many we are one in the body of Christ. This clean statement may be quite easy to imagine, all the different cogs of a machine interacting in a lovely harmony. I however feel that as more and more cogs are added the harmony is gradually reduced in quality and there may be so many cogs that they over lap and what was once a harmonic machine is now in fact inefficient. So perhaps there is a line we can draw between a stimulating diversity and destabilising one. We are to an extent lucky in this case that we have what I think is a stimulating diversity. Each group to a certain extent fulfils a role of Christian campus life and though the groups may disagree over certain issues it is always good to see how easy these issues can be dropped for a week at least.

Peter Davis