Many years ago, I was in Ahmadu Bello University Zaria to visit some friends and I attended their fellowship.
That period, there was some sort of restrictions on Christian fellowships on campus by the school authority.
So prayers to God to change the position of the school authority was ongoing.
While giving his brief exhortation, the student pastor leading the prayer said something to demarcate their fellowship from the others.
He said, "We and others... We are different from the others..."
I was uncomfortable with the statement because there's nothing like "we and others" when it comes to the church.
There's nothing like Living Faith, Christ Embassy, RCCG, or Deeper Life in God's Kingdom.
God knows and identifies us as the church or body of Christ.The designate or label of church organizations is merely their earthly means of identification.
It's not the Spirit of Christ to hype a church organization over another. The church is not an organization. It's a living organism.
There's nothing like "We are different from the others..."
Such statements even make the round in some of the mission statement of our churches, i.e. "We lead, others follow..."
Who are the others?
Most preachers are so lost in their ambition to use the name of the church to build personal castles that they no longer even recognize how disconnected they are from the body of Christ.
The Scripture calls us ONE BREAD. Paul used the human body structure to describe our connectivity. We are called the body of Christ or members of the same body.
There really shouldn't be any difference between us even though we are all at different levels of spiritual growth.
If you have Christians around you and they need help or assistance, don't wait until they become members of the same church assembly with you to support them.
By virtue of their relationship with Jesus, they are your brethren already and members of the same body.
Church organizations are not the body of Christ. They are not-for-profit organizations. The body of Christ is the people who identify as saints.
God is not going to ask you about what you did for Living Faith or RCCG, even though you should register your support to them as Christian fellowships.
God already instructed us to do good to humanity especially those of the household of faith.
Also, he made it clear to us to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, keep ourselves unspotted from the world because that's what true religion is.
So what God is going to quiz us about is what we did for the least of the brethren – how we visited the sick, fed the hungry, or clothed the naked amongst us.
Please don't allow any church denomination to make you stop seeing that it remains one faith, one Lord, and one baptism.