When I was in radio a few years ago, I became familiar with a type of, shall we say, "enthusiastic" listener known as a "Crusader." A Crusader is a very passionate and outspoken person, which, in some respects is not necessarily a bad thing. A person who is freely animated by their passions has the ability to bring a lot to the table, in addition to whatever anyone else brings to the table.
However, a Crusader is a person who is not only very eager to bring his stuff to the table, but he does so with the thought that everyone should be equally as enthused and excited as he is about what he has brought. He becomes unsettled and dismayed when others don't immediately jump on his bandwagon, and he may not even understand how others could not be absolutely thrilled about it!
In radio, a Crusader might be a listener who is all gaga over a new artist or song, and he calls and writes the station, insisting that the song be played in heavy rotation - all because he is infatuated with it! Or it may be quite the opposite. He may abhor a certain artist or song, and he isn't shy at all about letting the station know, over and over again, that they shouldn't be playing that song - all because he doesn't like it! There are many other ways in which the "Crusader" comes out of a person, but in short, a Crusader wants his way and wants everybody to want what he wants and to see what he sees. He's relentlessly insistent that everybody not only "gets" him, but goes along with him and does things exactly like he does.
Christianity has its share of Crusaders. As a recovering Crusader myself, I can vouch for what it's like to be one and I can understand and be sympathetic to other Crusaders, while at the same time admonishing against Crusader-type behavior. In the body of Christ, a Crusader might be a person who has a certain "gift" that he legitimately and predominantly operates in (as examples: evangelism, giving, teaching), and he thinks that everyone else should operate in the same gift to the same extent that he does. Or a Crusader might be a person who has a passion for a specific cause (such as feeding the hungry or having a strong youth program), and he can't see why everyone else doesn't get excited about those things like he does. A Crusader may have a zeal for or against a certain doctrine or set of ideas, and wants everybody to get on the same page as him, right here and right now.
Crusaders come in all kinds of different shapes, colors and flavors, and each Crusader might truly have legitimate hopes, passions, gifts and causes to be excited about. But what Crusaders generally fail to see is that, while they are walking in their own God-given dreams and desires, not everybody else has exactly those same dreams and desires! Crusaders tend to be limited in their view of the body as a whole. Their vision of God doing all kinds of different things through all kinds of diverse and assorted people, tends to be clouded.
The body of Christ is one "unit." Although it is made up of many different parts, the parts all make up one body (see 1 Cor 12:12, NIV). Each part of the body of Christ is unique. We're not meant to all be the same. We're not all meant to do the same things. We're not all meant to get excited and passionate about the same things. We don't all have the same "function" within the body. It would be a very messed up body if all the parts were the same part!
As different as we all are, can we all be passionate about what God is doing in and through each other? You bet! What better way to celebrate the God-given uniqueness of each other than to lift up and exalt the diverseness through which God is making the one body work as a whole!
