#23: Pastoring Unity in Churches

Dr. Smith:
Welcome to Peculiar People, a podcast where we examine what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in our present times. We anchor ourselves in Peter’s declaration that we are a peculiar people, a chosen generation, a holy nation that we should show forth the praises of him who has brought us from darkness into the marvelous light. And so we do this through discussion as brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow disciples of Jesus Christ discuss just their desires to honor the Lord Jesus Christ in their various vocations, in their various areas of service and life.

Dr. Smith:
So we’re blessed today to have one of our Maryland/Delaware pastors on the podcast today, Pastor Larry Lin of the Village Church in Baltimore, Maryland. We are honored to have him with us. He is a fine brother who is serving in, I believe his second year of pastoral leadership thereafter transitioning from one of the associate ministers there and we are excited about the work that they’re doing. This church is located in Baltimore City and they’ve also recently started campus and planted a church in another part of the city and so the Lord is expanding and increasing the work there and opportunities for fruitfulness.

Dr. Smith:
This is a congregation that is composed of people from different backgrounds, different languages and cultures, ethnicities. Some people are native of Maryland and Baltimore. Many people are transplants. So we’re just excited to have a conversation today about Christian unity and what that might look like in our current days and how that is a vital part of our witness as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pastor Lin, thank you so much for joining us today on Peculiar People.

Pastor Lin:
Thank you very much, Dr. Smith. It’s a huge pleasure to be with you and to discuss this very important topic for our church today.

Dr. Smith:
I want to ask you just kind of introduction question. We are peculiar people being born again by the spirit of God and we are committed to be disciples of the Lord, Jesus Christ. So how did you become a follower of Jesus Christ?

Pastor Lin:
Yeah. Thanks for asking. My parents became Christians basically right when I was born. They had grown up in communist China and then they came over here in the early ’80s. They met here. So before then, they were basically atheists, very nominally have some Buddhist influences, but mostly atheists and then they were plugged into some bible studies. The Chinese immigrant population connected them to some bible studies and they started going to Chinese immigrant church and they got saved. And I was born shortly afterward.

Pastor Lin:
So I grew up going to church all my life because of that and my dad in particular, he really picked up the faith once he became a Christian, he was very against Christianity up until he became a Christian and then he was sold out and I really learned from that. So many people, they can think of one particular instance in which they said a prayer and became a Christian. I can’t really think of one particular instance. I was a kid who every time, the altar call was given, I raised my hand.

Pastor Lin:
So I accepted Jesus into my heart in a sense dozens of times, but middle school, I think was when I started to take my faith more seriously. I remember reading a CS Lewis quote in which I’m paraphrasing, but he was saying if Christianity is true, is of infinite importance. If it’s false, it’s of no importance, but it cannot be moderately important. And that made a huge impact on me because up to that point in life, my faith was moderately important.

Pastor Lin:
If I were to describe my life, I would say that my goal at that point was to be liked by my friends and to fit in with people who were popular and my faith wasn’t a huge priority, and then I started to realize that my goal in life should not be to be liked by other folks, it should be to be approved by God and thank God that Jesus came and died on my behalf and saved me and because of that I have been adopted into his family and I have been approved by God.

Pastor Lin:
So that was the turning point for me realizing that God is the God who is worthy of my attention and praise and through the gospel, I have been given access into that family and I don’t need to be fitting into this crowd or this crowd or this crowd, I can just be content and overjoyed with fitting into God’s family because he welcomes me. And that’s the crux of the gospel that really got me in middle school.

Pastor Lin:
So since then it’s been a continual growing journey and I would say going into college, that was when I started to seriously consider full-time ministry and just God continued to develop this heart in me that he doesn’t just want me in his family, but he wants to use me to bring other people into his family as well. It took me a while. It took me several years of God gently inviting me into vocational ministry before I took the plunge in a sense, but eventually God did his work in me and I transitioned into ministry as well.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. And you studied at a place that we’re familiar with in Louisville, Kentucky, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and I certainly know that you have a family. How did you meet your wife?

Pastor Lin:
So my wife and I, we met in college. We both went to college in New York and she was a year older than me actually. I went through a little phase in my life in which… So I had always been very shy as a child and I hated that about myself. So I tried everything I could to force myself to be more outgoing. So my freshman year of college, I actually started this thing called the Name Tag Society. I had this clipboard and I just would walk up to strangers and ask them if they want to join the Name Tag Society. And if they would, then I write their name down and I give them a name tag. And we’re supposed to wear the name tag all the time.

Pastor Lin:
So that’s how I met my wife. I was recruiting people for this Name Tag Society and she probably thought I was the weirdest kid. So that’s how we met. We didn’t really become friends though. We said hi to each other when we bump into each other for a few years and she was a senior about a graduate and she was a few weeks from her graduation. Up to that point, I had been admiring her from afar.

Pastor Lin:
She had a heart for ministry, she had a heart for discipling women and I just thought she was godly. She just had a great head on her shoulders. She was very empathetic. I was thinking seriously about going into ministry at the time and when you’re in that mentality, then those who may be interested in you, that boat shrinks because there aren’t a whole lot of folks who want to go into ministry.

Pastor Lin:
So she was one of the few who I knew she was interested in going into ministry or at least being a part of a ministry family. So she was right about to graduate. I asked if we could talk and I said, “Hey, so I was thinking that maybe we could get married.” She was so flabbergasted. She was so shocked because the thought had never crossed her mind before and she thought I was joking actually.

Pastor Lin:
Then I was clarifying, “I mean, not now. We can date first and get to know each other, but I want to let you know this is my intention.” So she was shocked and she didn’t give me a straight answer for about a week and then after a week, she said, “Maybe we could try it out.” We’ve been trying it out and after a few years we got married, and now we’ve been married for six years. So we’ve continued to try it out and we have two kids now. So we’re really thankful to be together.

Pastor Lin:
I’m really glad that things worked out. If I hadn’t caught her before she graduated, I probably wouldn’t have seen her ever again because we weren’t super close. Like I said, I was just sort of in this relationship where I was admiring her from afar, but that’s our story.

Dr. Smith:
Well, I’m glad you took the plunge, brother. So describe your journey in vocational ministry?

Pastor Lin:
Yeah. So I went to school for engineering and my goal going into college was sort of to have a stable career and my parents especially as immigrants, they really valued getting a great education and making sure that you’re setting yourself up well. They immigrated so that we would have a better life than they did. That was sort of the mentality. During my time in college, I was a part of Campus Crusade or Cru and that was really formative for me. It taught me the importance of evangelism and missions and community, and things like that, and doctrine.

Pastor Lin:
I think through crew, there was a seed planted that I should potentially at least investigate the possibility. I’m placing a lot of qualifiers. There was a huge part of me that was so fearful of the idea. It just seemed so unstable. It seemed so risky. I was afraid I would disappoint my parents. There’s so many factors involved. But the seed was planted that maybe ministry was for me and I had a lot of personal events going on especially my senior year of college and made me ask a lot of questions including my parents separating and things like that.

Pastor Lin:
But by the time I was a senior, I was thinking I had done one summer internship in engineering and I didn’t like it. I couldn’t imagine myself doing it, but there were a lot of folks around me encouraging me to consider going into ministry at least doing an intern year somehow. So I interned for crew for one year and I remember the very first day of school. This was the August right after I graduated college and I was at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Pastor Lin:
I met a freshman and we had a three-hour conversation and he decided that day he wanted to trust Jesus with his life, and I led him in this prayer. I just remember going home that day thinking I feel like I was made for this. I feel like God wired me to do this. I love this. It doesn’t matter what the risk is and it doesn’t matter if maybe I won’t make as much money as I would if I was an engineer. I feel like this is where God is calling me.

Pastor Lin:
So since then, I haven’t really looked back. It took me a while to figure out exactly what my specific ministry track was. I was doing college ministry at the time, but eventually God gave me a heart for local church ministry and specifically urban ministry. So I joined the Village Church staff team in 2013 as an intern. I was an intern for several years just learning from Pastor Dan and the motto of ministry there and participating in different ministry efforts.

Pastor Lin:
Then eventually, largely through his discipleship in my life, he raised me up to become an assistant pastor and eventually today, I’m an executive pastor. So that’s been my track and I love the Village Church. It’s been a huge joy. I’m biased of course because I’m on staff, but I think it’s the best church around and I learned so much being there and I love the culture, I love the gospel-centeredness. I love the diversity and the missional engagement. And I love that it’s in a city where there’s so much need. We’re in a sense on the frontiers, on the front lines of doing ministry in America. So I really love that.

Dr. Smith:
How did you develop a passion for urban areas? Did you grow up in an urban area?

Pastor Lin:
No, I didn’t at all. So I grew up in a very suburban pretty well-off area and this is part of, I suppose the immigrant mentality as well. So my parents when they immigrated, they wanted to make sure that we didn’t experience any of the suffering that they experience. So they try to make a lot of money to try to get us to live in a very safe community. So it was a very suburban sort of place.

Pastor Lin:
In fact, I grew up maybe an hour away from Oakland, an hour away from San Francisco. Those are two big urban places, but growing up, I almost never went there. I run into people all the time now in Maryland and I say I’m from Baltimore. And I asked, “Oh, have you ever been to Baltimore?” And they would say similar things, “Oh, maybe I go once a year to see an Orioles game or when I was a kid, I went to the aquarium for a field trip.” And that was me.

Pastor Lin:
When I grew up, I never went into urban places all that much. It was almost an accident, I would say that I started going to the village. My wife, we were dating at the time. She went to the village first. She had moved to Baltimore for grad school and I would visit her once a month or so. I would attend the church and I loved the church. It was something unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

Pastor Lin:
I remember there was one Sunday when there were baptisms and there was this ex-drug dealer, and a Johns Hopkins psychiatrist being baptized on the same day. And I just loved that picture of unity in the midst of diversity, and I just loved that there were people whose lives were being changed through that church. So that’s when I started to develop a little bit of a heart for the church. So around that time, the villagers were looking to take on an intern, and I believe I was the only person who applied, so I got the internship.

Pastor Lin:
So it was during my time at the church when the very great incidents happened I believe in 2015. That really stirred a lot of stuff in me as well in giving me a stronger heart for urban ministry and seeing the need for there to be a gospel presence in impoverished neighborhoods. So I’ve just been loving to learn from all the pastors I’ve been not only at our church, but other churches around Baltimore.

Pastor Lin:
There’s a lot of great churches in the SBC and in the BBA in that area. I mean reading a lot of books learning about the history of Baltimore, I’m a little bit of a nerd. I love learning and it’s been a wonderful journey just learning about our city and seeing God’s heart for the city.

Dr. Smith:
Yes. Baltimore has some historic congregations in baptist history. Certainly our home missions offering and southern baptist life is named after Annie Armstrong who was affiliated with several churches there in the Baltimore area. Certainly Richard Fuller is a prominent name in southern baptist history who pastored in Baltimore. So we certainly do have a rich history. Certainly the baptist convention Maryland, Delaware goes back to 1836 even before the Southern Baptist Convention.

Dr. Smith:
So it’s always encouraging to encounter another history buff. So I’m definitely #teamhistory. So in your description of some of those early visits to the Village Church, you mentioned the baptism and the sense of unity that you notice with believers from different places, different backgrounds. I wanted to talk to you about Christian unity, but I was just wondering as you kind of have been a disciple of Jesus Christ and through high school and then in the college and campus ministry, and then moving to Baltimore, what have been your observations about just Christian unity or you mentioned gospel witness in a particular community, the witness of the church and you can think of it locally in your community or you can think of it nationally.

Pastor Lin:
Yeah. So I grew up in a relatively theologically conservative, but non-denominational church. It was a Chinese immigrant church. So the sort of culture was we avoided controversial topics, but for the most part we believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and the literal resurrection of Jesus and things like that. So I think that framed a lot of how I viewed things because my natural tendency was to shy away from controversy and I love sort of the big tense understanding of the church like we are here for everybody.

Pastor Lin:
I’ve recognized now there are a lot of downsides to that. I do think it is important for the church to explore controversy and I think sometimes the controversial areas of doctrine, we really need to engage in because otherwise it’s going to be a lot of confusion, otherwise people receive their discipleship from the culture instead of the church.

Pastor Lin:
I think that core philosophy as we are here for everybody, that has really meant a lot to me and it’s also part of my salvation story I would say this idea of me wanting to fit in because again, I shared earlier I was very shy. I was one of only a few Asians at my school and I felt like it never fit in. So the gospel of God wanting to invite or compel people from the highways and hedges to come into the kingdom, that was really appealing for me.

Pastor Lin:
So fast forward a little bit. In college, I got the reformed bug. Many people get this reformed bug where they start to read the likes of John Piper and Tim Keller. And that transformed how I understood the gospel and how I understood Christianity. I remember this was kind of funny. I was talking to my dad about this. And my dad, he probably read the bible more than anybody else that I knew and I was sharing with him about how I’m into this reformed theology now. And to my surprise, he had never heard of reformed theology.

Pastor Lin:
So I was trying to explain to him, “Oh, it’s about God’s sovereignty. It’s about gospel-centeredness.” He just was like, “That sounds like regular Christianity.” And I was just trying to show him that was different, but I realized my dad, he just grew up in this culture where he was just out of sync with this whole celebrity pastor movement with the different church camps. This is this camp. He didn’t care about all that stuff. He just cared about reading the bible and just following Jesus.

Pastor Lin:
I started to realize I love that mentality and obviously, I think it’s good and healthy to learn about what you believe, what you don’t believe and who you associate with and all that, but I think this core mentality that my church had, my home church had that my dad had of we’re all on the same team, you can have conversations here and there, but at the end of the day, don’t prioritize your specific tribe of Christianity over the whole tribe of Christianity, over the whole church.

Pastor Lin:
Another way, don’t let second-level issues divide you so that you’re not holding on to these first-order issues. So that has really appealed to me and I think especially with this election, with politics, I think even in the reforms camp there’s a lot of boundary drawing. One of my burdens is to be a voice of unity, a voice of reconciliation across political lines, ethnic lines, even doctrinal lines.

Pastor Lin:
One of the things that I do every month in Baltimore, there’s a Baltimore pastor’s prayer meeting and it’s cross-denominational. You have Presbyterians there, you have some charismatics there. You have all sorts of people there and I like to be a part of those things and I don’t think I’m compromising in any way, it’s just I think there’s value in being a part of the greater body of Christ that’s bigger than just your local church. It’s okay for me to disagree. Maybe here’s a pastor who’s an egalitarian and I’m not an egalitarian.

Pastor Lin:
But I still think there’s a lot we can learn from one another. I mean I think that’s really important especially in today’s day and age. In fact, yesterday I was having a conversation with someone and I had posted a quote from somebody, another pastor online and he questioned why I would post from this person because that person has certain beliefs that he want to line up with. And I was just saying, “Whenever I post statements from people, I’m evaluating that statement on the merits of that statement not on the merits of everything else that person has said.”

Pastor Lin:
I think sometimes there’s a tendency within the Christian church. They would say, “You know what, I align with this person, and this person, and this person, and not with this person.” And they draw these strict lines. I think it’s helpful sometimes especially if you are new to the faith. I think that sort of mentality is helpful. But I think as you mature, I think it’s wise to say, this person, I might agree with 90% of what they say and that’s okay.

Pastor Lin:
I’m just going to post this person. Even though I might disagree on this area, I’m just not going to post about that topic, but I’m going to post about this topic. So I think that sort of mentality is really needed in our church. It just promotes this culture of we’re all learning from one another and we’re all using discernment and wisdom and assessing one another as opposed to drawing these strict boundaries.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. I think as you were describing your dad’s thought pattern, it reminded me of 1 Corinthians 12 where there is one body, but there’s many members and the opening part there says there’s different gifts and different administrations and different manifestations, yet there’s one body one spirit. And I think Christians struggle with difference in a way that they need not struggle. I think sometimes instead of just saying different is different, they want to say different is better or different is worse instead of just saying different is different.

Dr. Smith:
I think you know as a baptist, I think it’s healthy or as a Christian I should say, I think it’s healthy to be able to celebrate other parts of the body. So I am a baptist and I can tell you the difference between believers baptism or cradle baptism and paedobaptism or infant baptism, but at the same time I can tell you that I wouldn’t have a third of my library without Presbyterians. I’m very thankful for people like the late James Montgomery Boice and the late RC Sproul, and people like that. I am not a historic confessional Pentecostal, but I did my MDiv at the church of God Theological Seminary in the Wesleyan Holiness Tradition and really appreciated reading more Wesley than I would have read in my particular tradition and thankful for their confession in the historic kind of confessional early original Pentecostal denominations.

Dr. Smith:
I can tell you why I’m not Anglican or Lutheran or some of the other traditions from Europe that have establishment in their background and obviously as baptists, we would be part of the free church tradition and understand the distinction between the church and the state, those types of things. But I think to the point of unity, we do have to understand the breadth of the body of Christ and I think Ephesians 4 is helpful that Paul exhorts the Ephesians to endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit and in verses four through six, he has boundaries and points of doctrinal commonality. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, et cetera.

Dr. Smith:
But those things still allow for there to be differences in distinction within congregations. And I certainly think in an increasingly secularizing culture, there are missiological consequences to Christian unity or Christian disunity and I think we ought to be very cautious about alienating or developing unnecessary hostilities or divisions with other brothers and sisters in Christ who claim him as Lord, and trust him as Lord, and declare the truthfulness and the authority of the scripture.

Dr. Smith:
I think different can be different and we need to do a much better job of thinking about that. Let me ask you how you’re thinking as a local pastor and you can split these up or you can combine them, but I noticed you did a statement on Christian unity for your congregation and then also you wrote an essay that says that church unity does not require silence. So we can actually look into and dig into some differences.

Dr. Smith:
One thing I would say even as I pass this over to you is I find it tremendously unhelpful when Christians would have disagreements over political or social or economic items in our culture and act as if those are some basis for Christian unity when the gospel is the basis for Christian unity, our commitment to follow Christ and that certainly does not say that there would be uniformity among Christians and how they analyze and engage cultural, social and political issues. But what prompted that statement? What prompted that essay and how are you thinking about this as a local church pastor?

Pastor Lin:
Sure. Thanks for bringing that up. So historically our church hasn’t been… Historically, as in past 12 years. Our church has only been around 12 years. Our church hasn’t really been the church to make public statements like that. I think we’ve always taken the stance of we have a statement of faith. It’s very non-controversial, but if there are specific issues, we just invite you to talk to a pastor, have a one-on-one conversation. We’ve never really been the type of church to have statements. But this year, I think we’ve taken a little bit of a different approach.

Pastor Lin:
We’ve seen the need to be a public witness and to have a non-compromising stance because we started to recognize there are all sorts of churches out there putting out statements that we think are either wrong or at least unhealthy or unwise, and there’s just so many people being led astray whether by churches or organizations, that I think are being overly partisan, overly divisive, overly fear-mongering.

Pastor Lin:
So we just felt like we need to be a voice of reason, a voice of truth, a voice of unity in the midst of all this so that people aren’t thinking, “Oh, this is the only Christian way to do things.” So there were a few unhealthy tendencies I was seeing both in our local church, but also at our church at large. I think there was a Christian cancel culture going on. And I hinted at this earlier, this idea of, “Oh, this person said this one thing, so we can’t pay any attention to this speaker, or pastor, or denomination, or organization.” That sort of culture, I felt like it was very unhealthy, canceling people out of the kingdom of God.

Pastor Lin:
In the realm of politics, on both sides, there were people saying things like, “If you are a Trump supporter, you can’t be a true Christian or if you’re a Biden supporter, you can’t be a true Christian.” A lot of that sort of language going on and it just seemed very unhealthy. But on the other hand, we also saw this downplaying of politics faction where people would say, “Oh, we need Christian unity so let’s not talk about politics at all. Let’s not get into the weeds of politics. Let’s leave politics at door, at the church. We’re not engaging in these current events.” We also felt like that was unhealthy. That was on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Pastor Lin:
So we just wanted to put out as a church a balanced statement where we recognize politics is important and there are large consequences for who is in office, who is in control and so we don’t want to deny that. So we think as Christians, it can be good to be engaged in politics just as say Esther was engaged in politics and Daniel was engaged in politics and Joseph was engaged. So I think there is some biblical precedent for being engaged in politics. However, we cannot be so partisan or so narrow-minded that we don’t understand that God works differently in different ways, that different people have different lifestyles, different experiences, different traditions, different political values.

Pastor Lin:
So we think it’s okay for different Christians even in the same church to vote differently. I’ll share this. I don’t get into my personal politics a whole lot, but I’ll say that I voted for three different political parties at the presidential level. I’ve only voted in four elections. 2008 was my first election when I became of age, but I voted for three different political parties because I don’t 100% align with a single political party.

Pastor Lin:
In our church, I think that’s definitely true and I think we need more people who are able to be more questioning of their own political affiliations. I would say this, I think we need more people who are willing to be pro-life Democrats. I think we need more people who are willing to be, let’s say, pro-environment or pro-immigration Republicans and I think we just need more people all across the spectrum who buck the trend and they don’t just neatly fall into partisan stereotypes. So I think one of the ways to generate that in the church is to have conversations.

Pastor Lin:
So I don’t think we should be silent in the church. I think that we should in the church allow for opportunities for people to have dialogue and not just pretend we’re all the same, but to say, you know what, you vote this way, I vote this way. Let’s talk about it. Let’s learn about one another, and I think that’s how true unity can be built. True unity, doesn’t come from just us pretending like we’re all the same and minimizing our differences, downplaying our differences, but I think it’s saying, “Okay, let’s try to understand each other, let’s empathize with each other and agree to disagree, and also agree that our unity in Christ is stronger than our differences.” I think that’s where true unity comes from.

Pastor Lin:
So that was the heart behind both the statement in the article. Oh, and the last thing I want to mention about the statement, I think it was really important to mention that the kingdom of God in the church is more important than the state. I think that’s also an unfortunate reality today is so many people, they are treating their political party like it is their savior. They’re treating their presidential candidate of choice as if he is their savior and life is going to be over as we know it if this person doesn’t win and I just think that priorities are misguided, and I think that we all need to recognize that.

Pastor Lin:
At the end of the day, the United States may go the way of the Roman empire and the church will outlast the state. And our ultimate goal should not be to reform our country, though that is a noble goal, but it should be to be citizens of the kingdom. I think that was really important to mention in our statement as well.

Dr. Smith:
I’ll ask you about three different energies or efforts, and I think the third one is a definite blind spot. Being Bible-believing protestants, I can find many people who eagerly think it’s worth their effort to earnestly contend for the faith. So people think that’s worth good energy, good effort and they’re diligent about that being Godly people and people who believe God is holy, I can find many people who believe you ought to work out your salvation with fear and trembling and press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Dr. Smith:
So personal holiness is very important. So doctrinal fidelity is important to people and personal holiness is important to people. I don’t find as many people who would likewise, for example again in Ephesians 4 or Colossians 3 think that unity worth the same kind of effort, the same kind of energy. And I think endeavor certainly calls forth the same type of effort and energy as work out or contend for. So just kind of curious in your observations, you are a younger generation than me. I’m a black brother, you’re an asian brother. How have you observed people even having concern or unity even being on people’s radar screen?

Pastor Lin:
That’s a great question. This is, I think a very important topic. I don’t think I understood a lot of the gospel implications for unity even until a few years ago. I remember reading Paul talking about the Lord’s supper in 1 Corinthians, and realizing it was just like a light bulb. He’s talking about unity. He’s talking about the body of Christ. In fact, 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14, all of that is about the body of Christ about unity and the Lord’s supper is about unity. And sometimes when we take the Lord’s supper, I remember growing up in a context where this is about me and God. I’m going up by myself, very privately, thinking about my personal relationship with God and taking the Lord’s supper.

Pastor Lin:
But I realized, Paul wasn’t talking about that. He was talking about how you cannot take the Lord’s supper if there are people in your church going hungry. And he was saying this is not just a statement of unity with God, this is about a statement of unity with your brothers and sisters in Christ. So I do think this is a very important topic, and it’s so unfortunate that many Christians they don’t put unity at the same level as some of the other virtues that you talked about.

Pastor Lin:
I’ll say this, at our church a few years ago, we made an intentional effort to broaden who could become members at our church. And this is not for everybody. I’m just speaking about our church because we realized there were a lot of people who were attending our church regularly, but they weren’t becoming church members because they disagreed with our church leadership on a number of theological doctrines. I remember just thinking is it okay for these people to not become church members. And I think it was a John Piper sermon or a podcast or something, and he was saying he believes that the door into a local church should be about the same size as a door into a universal church, the universal church.

Pastor Lin:
Meaning if someone can fulfill the requirements to become a Christian, he or she shouldn’t fulfill a whole list of other requirements in order to join a local church. I remember that really shaped how we understood membership. So maybe if you were to look at our church, you might say, “Oh, it seems you have a lot of people who are at different parts of the spectrum in terms of theology and doctrine.” And we would say, “That’s okay. We live in a day and age where a lot of people when they become Christians, it’s not like they believe everything that I believe. It might take a long time for their beliefs to change. Maybe years for their beliefs to change.”

Pastor Lin:
So we felt like that was very important in order to affirm church unity. We didn’t want a culture where you have essentially first-class church members where these are the people who are church members and they believe the right things and then you have the second tier of church members, they believe things that are a little bit off, but they’re still Christians. So we just decided, “You know what, we’re going to open up the gates. And if we feel like you are a Christian, you believe that Jesus died for your sins, you trust him with your life and you want to follow him. You might have a few other beliefs that may not 100% line up, but that’s okay. So we’re going to welcome you in.”

Pastor Lin:
So we do have a statement of faith, but we stripped it down a little bit. We took some things out of it that we felt like even though we affirmed those things, they might be divisive. So we just say as long as you affirm this statement of faith, you can join our church. I think for us, that was a way of demonstrating unity and sometimes we still have interviews with folks. Unless they’re deciding to become church members and they might say a few things and we talk about these things, and we say, “You know what, we disagree in this area and we’re going to encourage you to do your homework, and we’re going to try to shepherd you in this area, but we invite you into our family nonetheless.” So we think that sort of mentality has been really helpful especially in our diverse context to promote a culture of unity. Yeah, I’ll leave it at that.

Dr. Smith:
When you say those doctrinal differences, would those be what people might call secondary issues like eschatology or cessationism, things like that?

Pastor Lin:
Yes. I think, well, every church has to draw their line somewhere. So I would just say we draw a line maybe a little bit on the… I think we would err towards having someone in our church who we would have some differences with, if we feel like their heart is in the right place, if we feel like they’re genuine followers of Jesus. We let them know in advance. We say we recognize, we disagree in this area, but our hope is that our unity in the gospel would be stronger than our differences in this area. If we feel like you can be a voice of unity despite what you believe that you won’t be going around gossiping or having your own personal agenda, I think then we want to welcome you into our church.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. Wow. Now, how has that gone over the several years since you’ve instituted that?

Pastor Lin:
I think it’s been wonderful. I mean, obviously there are a few times in which we don’t allow people to become members. There have been times when people they believe that there are other inspired scriptures or something like that. I think for us we put that in our same interface. So we do draw the line here and there. But there are some people who I don’t want to out our church, but we do have some church members who believe things that maybe if other people in SBC knew these people existed in our church, they would be kind of concerned.

Pastor Lin:
But we’re okay with that. We’re okay with attention. Also, we have a higher standard for eldership, of course, but we think it’s helpful to have people become full-fledged members of our church and they’re not in this… It’s almost like undocumented immigrants. They’re people who are living among us. They’re doing life with us, but they’re not citizens. So we don’t like that sort of culture. We would just rather say, “You know what, here’s a path towards citizenship. Here’s a path towards membership. There’s some issues we need to work out. We’ll work those out, but we want you to be with us than leaving us.”

Pastor Lin:
Here’s another way to put it. Sometimes we would find people who this has happened in the past. They would disagree with us on a few issues. They would hang out with us for a few months and eventually they would leave and find another church that’s more similarly aligned. Our stance has been, “We don’t want you to leave. We don’t want you to find a more progressive church or something like that or another denomination, we would rather you stay with us. So we just want to give you a path to membership so that you could walk with us and hopefully, we’ll learn from each other.”

Dr. Smith:
Amen, amen. So you spoke of student ministry and you spoke of being in the urban area. Sometimes I’ll get pushed back as if unity is some kind of cultural consideration or some kind of sentimental consideration. I’m always reminding people that the scripture says unity has significant missiological implications in John 17. John 13, Jesus says, “Other people will know you are my disciples by the love that you have for one another.” In John 17, he prays that believers would be one. His disciples would be one as he and the father are one with the Trinitarian implications there. And he says, “So that the world may know that you have sent me.”

Dr. Smith:
So there’s certainly gospel import to Christian unity or disunity and we can undermine our proclamation of the gospel with disunity. So I’m just curious in your interactions with students, interactions people in Baltimore who are not followers of Jesus Christ, what do you observe people thinking about the church? Because Jesus says that our unity should be a certain type of witness and obviously we are lacking in those areas in too many ways. So from your perspective, what have you observed about unbelievers as they look to church?

Pastor Lin:
Yeah, that’s great. It is unfortunate as I talk to people who are not Christians and I’m asking them about how they perceive the church. One of the common things I often hear is that there are so many denominations, there’s so much division. So even non-Christians can tell that the church is not fulfilling. The church in large is not fulfilling its role in its calling to be a unified body of Christ. And they see it as one of the weaknesses of the modern church. But I think on the other hand, when there is a picture of church unity, I think people celebrate.

Pastor Lin:
Even those outside of the church celebrate. I’ll speak sort of a big picture. I had someone reach out to me several months ago. We ended up not doing this, but he’s not a Christian, almost a little bit anti-Christian, but he was just organizing this event for the neighborhood, the Halloween event. He even said, “I think it would be a beautiful thing if multiple churches got together and helps coordinate this event.” And I think that mentality is out there. Even non-Christians have recognized that there is beauty when people who typically don’t get along start getting along.

Pastor Lin:
So I think that if the church were to rise up and to be a witness to everyone saying, “You know what, we’re all different. We’re Republicans and Democrats. We all have different skin tones. We’re all different, but we are united in the gospel.” I think that’s beautiful. I think Pastor Dan said this one time. He says, “The only time you ever see people who are of diverse backgrounds getting together is because of drugs or because of the gospel.”

Pastor Lin:
I think that it’s unfortunate sometimes the drug culture is better at unifying people than the churches. So we obviously want to be a church where anybody can feel welcome and people around can look at it when I think our hope is that on Sunday mornings, when people pour out of our church, when there’s no pandemic going on, of course, when people are pouring out of our church, passerbys are taking double takes, and they’re looking at the church building and they’re wondering, “How is it that all these people can be so different yet so united?” I think that’s our hope.

Dr. Smith:
Amen, amen. Well, I think the corporate witness or the big picture witness is not as strong as it could be right now, but I certainly hope that you would be encouraged as a local pastor to just dig into what the local witness is of your particular congregation, because I think this is a wonderful window of opportunity for local congregations to show something different than what people are seeing in the media and what people are seeing in big picture Christianity and certainly pray that we would be more attentive to 1 Corinthians 12 type implications about considering the breadth of the body of Christ, and considering different gifts, and different administrations, and different manifestations there in 1 Corinthians 12 to be part and parcel of being a member of the body of Christ, a large body.

Dr. Smith:
So whether one is in a large congregation or whether one is in a particularly large denomination, and whether one is in the worldwide body of Christ, we must be able to absorb, and celebrate, and love brothers and sisters from different backgrounds, and who have different priorities, and have different life experiences. And the thing that binds us together is the declaration that Jesus is Lord and the belief in the authority and the truthfulness, the sufficiency of scripture. Kind of some of the things you describe as a basic confession of faith or maybe things of the… Something like the Apostles’ Creed.

Dr. Smith:
So Pastor Larry Lin of the Village Church in Baltimore, Maryland, I am honored and thankful to speak with you, brother. I celebrate your quest and desire that we would honor the Lord Jesus Christ as a unified body certainly with your work starting there in your local congregation. I’m glad for the vocation that the Lord has laid upon you and I pray that you would bear much fruit as you press on in godliness and in service of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Pastor Lin:
Thank you so much. It’s been a huge pleasure and I really appreciate your heart as well in being a voice of unity and giving opportunities to little guys like me to offer my perspective as well. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Smith:
Thank you, brother and we’ll have another opportunity because I’m going to remember that you like history and so I’d love to talk about the book I told you recently I’ve been reading. And once you get through it, that might be a good discussion we could have, the making of Professor Lee’s book.

Pastor Lin:
I actually just recently finished it.

Dr. Smith:
Oh.

Pastor Lin:
Yeah.

Dr. Smith:
Well, you’re ahead of me. When I finish it, I’ll reach back out. God bless you, brother. Thank you so much.

Pastor Lin:
God bless you. Take care.