Over the Easter long weekend, my daughter came home from university for the weekend, bringing two friends with her. She attends a Christian university in Moncton that offers degrees in Arts and Sciences. One of her friends was from Ontario. He had searched on the Internet for Christian universities offering science degrees and found this one in the Maritimes. He had never heard of it.

When he arrived he was even more pleasantly surprised to find a bedrock of strong evangelical Christianity both among the professors and the students. He asked me, "Why have I never heard of your denomination before?” (I belong to the denomination that supports this privately funded university.)

Good question. My denomination has more than 500 churches across the four Atlantic Provinces. We are affiliated with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

I have friends who moved to Ontario from New Brunswick. They live in the sprawl of a large city. They found a church where they feel at home with a slightly different denominational name than their church in New Brunswick. Both churches have the same basic Christian beliefs. But when my friends mention that they are from New Brunswick, they too frequently get two prejudicial responses-one geographical, one denominational.

The geographic stereotype is that everyone from the Maritimes either fishes or is on welfare. The denominational stereotype is that we are all "small l” liberal (interpret that as non-Christian). My question is, "How in the world did they get that impression?”

About the geographic prejudice, I will only say, "Did you know that we have more universities per capita than other region of Canada?”

The other stereotype is more serious, for me. I am a Bible believer and firmly evangelical.

Sadly, the more "conservative” or biblically-based our beliefs are, the more suspicious we tend to be of anyone outside our little flock. We are afraid of being "taken in.” We have a propensity for rejecting anyone who does not dot their i’s and cross their t’s exactly as we do. What a shame! We miss knowing other wonderful believers.

Furthermore, and much, much worse, because we do not know and trust each other, regrettably, we do not ask for each other’s help as we face the assault of our ungodly Canadian culture.

By God’s grace, this mistrust of other Christians is not true of all of us. More and more churches and Christian leaders are reaching beyond their walls to partner with other churches in their community, and even regionally and nationally. As issues of same-sex marriage and freedom of religious speech sweep the nation, we are beginning to work together to sound the warning bell.

Most young adult Christians don’t care about denominational labels. They just want to worship the Lord and hear God’s Word preached. Churches, especially in the cities, are increasingly low-key about denominational affiliation.

While visiting a large Canadian city a while back, we decided to attend a local church. Its name was such and such Community Church. We were curious to know its denomination. There was nothing in the bulletin or worship service to designate it. There was, however, literature at the back of the sanctuary classify it as Brethren. It was obvious that a denominational label was not their first point of contact.

I’m not saying you should forsake your denomination. But we must not be so myopic that we reject all who are not exactly like us. God’s Word teaches that we are the body of Christ-some are toes, some are ears. We are not to disallow or simply ignore those who, while they believe in God and also teach the Bible, do it in a slightly different way. Furthermore, by refusing to really value each other, we miss the great work of the Lord we could do together.

We must not become like the dwarves in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle. They had arrived in Narnia’s version of heaven, but didn’t believe they were there. They were "so afraid of being taken in” that they could not see their fellow residents around them, nor the beauty of the world into which they had arrived.