When I was in South Africa a black pastor told me his church had a written order for public prayer for healing but they never used it. Why? 'Because white hands may have to be laid on black heads!'

Fear, pride or ignorance are behind the slogan 'We've not done it that way before!'

Although what happened in Antioch was outside Barnabas' experience, he was a big enough person to believe that God was doing a new thing. How often church leaders are bound by history - especially the history of their own group. God isn't allowed to step outside the structures and habits and orthodoxies of one's own church or denomination! Many of us are so threatened when God does something new we react according to the mindless adage 'If you don't understand it, condemn it or discourage it!'

The history of the church is beset with a litany of blinkered leaders committing the sin of unbelief. Small-minded people cannot believe that God is versatile enough to operate in ways beyond our experience and understanding. This is the kind of arrogant pride that has seen prophets killed, change resisted and renewal discouraged.

When the Spirit of God fell on seventy leaders (Numbers 11:25 ff.) and they began to 'shout like prophets' Joshua couldn't cope, and told Moses to stop them. Moses replied: 'I wish the Lord would give his Spirit to all his people and make all of them shout like prophets!' We can understand Joshua's fear of what is new and strange, but Moses had the larger view.

Today, as I type this, Psalm 78 is the lectionary psalm, where the Israelites are berated for sinning against God by believing his power was limited to their experience (Psalm 78:17-20).

When the Messiah came, and his opponents said 'Prophets do not come from Galilee' (John 7:52) they were expressing the same sort of blinkered unbelief.

When Savonarola in Florence, Jan Hus in Bohemia, the Englishmen Wycliffe and Tyndale, or Luther in Germany advocated reform in a decadent church, the powers-that-be persecuted them. When the Anabaptists preached doctrines commonly held today, thousands were burnt by Catholics or drowned by Protestants. Because Servetus had ideas John Calvin didn't agree with, he was executed by burning. When Wesley tried to 'reform the church and spread Scriptural holiness over the land' churches closed their doors to him, so he went into the market-places and countryside. When William Carey suggested that God wanted the gospel preached to the heathen he was told to 'Sit down. When God wants the heathen converted he'll do it without your help or mine!' When the Plymouth Brethren opposed formalism and spiritual deadness in the nineteenth century British churches and advocated a return to apostolic simplicity they were often criticized as untutored and ignorant. (But when Christian Brethren people have an experience of the Holy Spirit that is too 'charismatic' they too are sometimes persecuted). When some brave German Christians opposed Hitler, Father Alfred Delp, a Jesuit, Dietrich Bonhoeffer a Lutheran, and others were executed. Indeed, more Christians may have been tortured and slain in this century than any other. In many places it is dangerous to be a Christian - particularly a Christian who helps the poor.

A pastor in a church which believes baptism is essential for salvation quoted one of their sayings: 'Now abideth faith, hope and love - and the greatest of these is baptism'! (For other groups substitute 'bishops', 'tongues', 'sacraments', 'Saturday sabbath', 'ecumenism', '1662 prayer book', 'Latin mass' or whatever). It must be interesting for the angels to look down on our planet to see thousands of different denominations, each one believing it has a monopoly on the truth, and that heaven is going to be populated only with people like them!

The body of Christ, Paul affirms, comprises people with different spiritual gifts, who serve the Lord in different ways, with different abilities, but who all affirm 'Jesus is Lord!' and in whose lives the Spirit's presence is shown (1 Corinthians 12:1-7).

Stanley Jones asked a missionary how they obtained such a lovely property, and was told: 'The man who owned it built such high and expensive walls he went bankrupt and had to sell the property.' Bankrupt building walls! Is that not a parable of our churches?

Discuss: (1) If your church were to become divided over some issue of doctrine or method, what might that issue be? (2) What are your church's 'distinctives'? What can you learn from what God has taught other churches?