What is a Christian Union?

Making a Departure from Identifying as a Traditional Church

We identify our community as a ‘Christian Union,’ to reflect our further diversion from the word, concept, and polity of the traditional church model and reflect the total unity in love, faith and hope for which we strive. It is important to note that while the word ‘Church,’ and its derivatives, carry with them a rich history of obedient believers in Christ and people of God who have received mercy that the value of that history of obedience rests entirely in the Holy Spirit who indwells us. As such, the change of identification is to distance ourselves from modern day, extra-biblical models and polities in order to establish a fresh narrative of the people of God who have received mercy.

The identification as a Christian Union also more publicly renders the specific Symbiotic Organisations we individually choose to associate with (if any) as comparatively inconsequential to that unity as it is with any other worldly difference we can imagine i.e. where we work, where we live, our socio-economic status etc. It is our belief that the unity in the body of Christ we are told to pursue in the Word of God transcends what has become known as the, ‘local church,’ which has been overrun by extra-biblical organisations we call ‘symbiotic organisations,’ or SOs. SOs operate to supply safety, legitimacy and provision for the body of Christ outside of God and in direct opposition to the spiritual rights of the people of God who have received mercy. Depending on their age, SOs vary in severity to the health of the body of Christ, and so we have endeavoured to rid ourselves entirely of an SO by various means of returning to the scriptures for our form and function as well as to recognise the rights of the people of God who have received mercy.

Finally, identification as a Christian Union ensures that we maintain strong ties with the believers inside the Symbiotic Organisations who are yet to, and indeed may never decide to rid themselves entirely of the SO and culture they have associated most strongly with Christianity. In other words, we are not a Christian Union as opposed to Baptist or Presbyterian, but are simply a Christian Union who may have those who associate with the SOs that are Baptist or Presbyterian or any other form of Christianity. We believe that Christians still operate within SOs and as we are called to be one with them, there is no excuse on our part to alienate them. It is our hope that the majority of believers will abandon the SO model, but in the event that they do not, we will strive to love them in ways that they cannot love us back due to their organisation and structure.