If you glance through the aggregators – e.g., The Evangelical Aggregator or The Blogdom of God – you will notice a development that is not too surprising but potentially not very desirable. What I refer to is the emergence of denominationally- or doctrinally-determined associations and aggregators.

It was inevitable, I suppose, that we Godbloggers would begin to seek out others who thought and reasoned as we do, forming our own subculture in blogdom even as Christians have done in real physical space since the inception of the church. It is part of our nature – our Adamic nature, it would seem. We (myself very much included) always seem to be gathering when God wants us scattering, excluding when He wants us including.

Not all such formations are undesirable, of course. When various blogs band together for the purpose of making it easier to find resources, news, and commentary on issues such as abortion, apologetics, or cults, a valuable service is provided to the Christian community. Think of them as “para-blog” organizations. Similarly, limiting aggregators to evangelical bloggers serves the purpose of maintaining unity in the essentials of our faith.

When the clustering is to promote a particular denomination or doctrinal position, however, such division needs to be carefully considered. There are often sad and unwanted consequences not usually felt by those inside the cluster.

For one, the people in the newly split-off group frequently wind up talking to themselves more than to other people in the Body of Christ. Counterbalancing factors are lost and corrective influences are sacrificed; biases are confirmed. Growth may occur, but it is not always healthy or attractive.

Before Arnold was a Terminator or a Governor, he was Mr. Olympia (the highest achievement in professional body building) six times in a row. What set him apart from all the others was not his sheer mass (which was considerable), but the almost perfect symmetry. The size of his biceps was in proportion to the size of his calves, which was in proportion to the size of his waist, which was in proportion to the size of his deltoids . . . You get the idea.

Groups that cluster resemble body builders that focus all their energies on building up their biceps while their calves remain underdeveloped. Christians tend to be like those guys in the gym who spend all their time doing a particular exercise – bench press, curls, lat pulls, squats – and ignore the other, equally-important muscles. They also tend to hang around their favorite machines or free weights, becoming experts in that particular discipline.

We do a similar thing spiritually, both individually and corporately. We have churches, for example, with tremendous heads but with tiny, underdeveloped hearts; some churches have great hearts but empty heads. Others have a good head and a good heart, but the hands never seem to get any service done, and the feet are often unshod for the spread of the gospel.

Blogs are not exempt from such imbalance and lack of symmetry. The Blogdom of God, with its tremendous diversity, offers a channel for interaction that can enhance and edify. It is an opportunity to build bridges, not walls. Diverse and distant parts of the Body have the opportunity to hear from and interact with others whose voices they don’t normally hear and whose positions they don’t often consider.

I, for example, have had more interaction with and read more perspectives by people from the Reformed tradition in the last two months than I probably had in the previous two years. Or twelve years! It has been richly rewarding for me, as much for the spirit of the fellowship as for the information I have gained. I don’t think my experience is unique.

But when segregation occurs, we fragment and fracture fellowship and become more and more exclusive instead of inclusive. The Body of Christ is dis-arranged as a result – as well as deranged. All the eyes huddle in one little corner of the body, while all the fingers and toes hunker down in their territory. Rather than complementing one another and functioning in a healthy manner, the Body becomes unbalanced and unhealthy, a grotesque caricature of what it is meant to be. The beauty of Christ is distorted.

Those Christians on the outside looking in – who donÂ’t belong to a major denomination or whose denomination has yet to discover blogging – are left feeling like bastard children in the family of God. We belong, yes, but we are not privileged to associate with this particular sub-blog or that class of bloggers. We don’t have the right pedigree, so we don’t appear on the exclusive lists.

More importantly, it can be a sad witness to the world that Christians cannot help but be divisive and exclusive. As a whole, evangelicals are already guilty of developing their own jargon (which delineates who is “one of us” and who isn’t) and doctrinal Shibboleths to distinguish ourselves from liberal and/or non-Protestant segments of Christendom.

Again, this is not always wrong, but by further discriminating against those who are “not like us,” we display disunity and factions: “I am of Calvin!” “I am of Wesley!” “I am of Scofield!” “Ah, but I am of the Holy Spirit!” We are becoming like a first-century church: Corinth.

Does this mean that I oppose blog fellowship for Reformed or Dispensational or Lutheran believers? That we cannot talk to kindred spirits or relax in the company of like-minded people? Have a network of fellow Christians from the same tradition?

Not at all. It means that, when we develop lists or groups that exclude other members of the Body of Christ, we need to stop and ask ourselves why we are doing it. If it does not promote unity, if it does not demonstrate love, if it does not glorify God – if it is unnecessarily exclusive, then perhaps it is a wall we should not build
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Update: Jollyblogger offers some insightful and important correctives to my post. For an example of the Body of Christ working to balance itself, read his response. Or even if you don’t need an example, read it! Now. Click the link. Go.


2 Cor 1:13