Christianity cannot hope to survive in the 21st century unless the denominations unite to form one church.

so this is not really ecumenical, although it is an improvement from how the church used to be. St Bartholomew's church in Sheffield is meant to be another example of an ecumenical church, so although it is an improvement the church building is shared, the two denominations celebrate at complete different times and do not join or meet at all, this is not really ecumenical, more economical than anything else as the churches have nothing to do with each other just support each other financially with the running of the church. I think that the best example of churches being together but keeping separate is the church in Abingdon, although the churches do not celebrate together they have much more contact with each other, yet each denomination manages to survive by itself and still can unite at times with other churches for the good of the community such as to organize drop in centres. This is an example of churches, which have managed to survive separately yet join together to help young people and people in the community. I think that although many people want the church to join together and become one united church that this would not work as there are so many different views within each denomination already that to join all the denominations together would just result in the church splitting again because of all the different views and opinions which would occur and the arguments which would happen. Although all the churches have one belief in God and Jesus Christ, there are many separated views on matters such as abortion, female ministers, marriage of priest etc. that these would be hard to compromise on, such as the Roman Catholic's allowing there to be female priest or for priests to marry, they would have difficulty allowing them in the church were as the United Reformed church would have a problem with them not being in the church. I think another problem could Becky Lown 11B Be to do with sacraments such as baptism which some churches would not want to do until the person was much older such as in the Baptist Church whereas other churches such as the Roman Catholic Church likes to baptise at a much younger age when the person is a baby for Example. I think all of these could of will be unresolved problems if the churches were to unite as, many churches would not see eye to eye on many issues and these would not be able to be compromised or changed so that all the churches agree. So although the churches joining ecumenically to become one united church is a good idea in theory it would not work, the church is more likely to survive with many individual denominations than one large denomination which would cause many problems, So I think that the church will survive through the 21st century as separate denominations, it already survived 10 centuries as separate denominations so it will easily be able to survive another 10 as separate churches which can unite at times when needed to.