Volume 2 · CenteredLesson 20About 23 minutes

The Reformation

If there is one Jesus, why are there so many churches?

Centered edition for believersSwitch to Honest Heretics (for skeptics)

The center · John 17:21

²¹that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that you sent me.

Drive through almost any American town and count the churches: Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, nondenominational. Most of them trace their split, directly or not, to the 1500s, when Western Christianity broke apart. Each believes it has the truth. Many have fought, in words or worse, with the others.

Ask yourself how you think about Christians in other churches. Are they fellow followers, or people who have it wrong? On his last night, Jesus prayed for exactly this. You don't need anyone's permission to follow him, inside a church or outside one, and his prayer can shape how you treat the church down the street.