What is the Universal Church and How Should The Church Reflect her Unity To The World

In The Christian context the word Catholic refers to the Universal Church Of Christ.The Universal Church according to what I understand refers to the body of Christ and all who are born again and have come into a relationship with Christ. Unity in the body of Christ at this moment is invisible. On a visible level we have the various denominations and their different doctrinal beliefs.

If I am to answer the question 'how does the church reflect her unity to the world ?. I would say it is only possible as a conciliar form of unity because the doctrinal stand of many churches are too diverse and sometimes too heretical for them to come together into an organic form of unity. The World Council Of Churches is trying to cement an organic form of church unity and without much success. They began as conciliar and I believe they should stick to this.

A conciliar form of unity is when churches of various denominations come together irrespective of their doctrinal beliefs into a council or an organizational alliance so as to be a more effective force in evangelism. They band together into a 'council which is the root word for conciliar and thereby work together for the common good of each other. In coming together into such a unity the identity of each denomination is retained and there wont be any compromises in doctrine.

I believe if the church is to realize the end time prophecy of Jesus as recorded in Mathew 24:14 'that this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world before the end come'. , then the only best solution is a conciliar form of church unity.The organic form of unity is not feasible, no not until Jesus comes, as there are too many differences among the various church groups and denominations for it to work successfully. If denominations do not come together and practice a conciliar form of unity say in a particular field of missionary activity and if each of them does things independantly then you might have as the saying goes 'too many cooks spoiling the soup'. You might have the AOG doing their thing,the Baptist another thing ,the Lutherans anything ,and maybe the FGA something.There might be a duplication of efforts that sap the resouces of the Kingdom Of God and waste valuable time and effort. Added to this our disunity will confuse the new converts to Christ.

In 1989 ,I witnessed such a conciliar form of church unity ,when various denominational church groups rallied together to organize one of the most successful evangelism rallys ,Malaysia had ever witnessed till then. It happened at Merdeka Stadium when the German evangelist Reinhard Bonkerr held a series of healing crusades that saw hundreds or even thousands give their lives to Christ and many more recieved healing.

The conciliar form of church unity is still the best bet until our Lord Jesus comes and unites the body of Christ and does away with all the differences that divides the visible body of Christ.