God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

Sam Storms asks (updated link) just how united we really are if there are Christians who will not fellowship with other Christians at the Lord's table. He is responding to a meeting he attended at the last Together for the Gospel conference and also to Mark Dever's recent post on baptism and church membership. Storms' main issue in this article is not baptism itself, but the fact that there are those who exclude other Christians because of their beliefs regarding baptism. He writes:

Let me be clear on one thing. I am a credo-baptist, not a paedo-baptist. That is to say, I believe that only those who believe in Jesus Christ should receive the ordinance of water baptism.... Ligon Duncan, on the other hand, is a Presbyterian paedo-baptist. Because of this, both Mark Dever and Al Mohler made it clear that if Duncan were in attendance at either of their churches they would not permit him to partake of the elements of the Lord's Supper....

This may be offensive to some, but the claim to be "Together for the Gospel" rings a bit hollow to me when some would decline to fellowship with others around the Lord's Table because of their disagreement on the proper recipients of baptism.

Storms points out that Christians are preventing other Christians from participating in the symbol of the very thing that gives us something to be united about. He writes:

The Eucharist is a dramatic, visible, vocal enactment of the gospel itself. It stirs our hearts to meditate on Christ's redemptive work and is designed to stimulate the mind to reflect on the significance of all that he achieved on behalf of those for whom he died.

My question, then, is this: How can we claim to be "together" or "united" for the sake of the gospel and turn away a brother or sister from the very expression and proclamation of that gospel that is so central to the life and testimony of the church? What does this prohibition say to the world around us? ...

I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound to me like "together" or "united" or any such thing for the sake of the gospel. It sounds rather like a narrow sectarianism that fails to consider the unity of the one body as represented by the one bread (1 Corinthians 10:17). It sounds like the colossal loss of an excellent opportunity to deepen and strengthen Christian fellowship and bear witness to a lost and dying world both of the gospel itself and our unity that is grounded in it.