#unity

A Pastoral Prayer for Unity Amid Pandemic

Every now and again I like to share one of the pastoral prayers from Grace Fellowship Church. This particular one was prayed by Paul Martin on a recent Sunday. The context, as is obvious from the prayer, is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and, perhaps more specifically, the vaccine mandates that are taking root in our city and country. This context provides many opportunities for Christians to disagree with one another and, therefore, to become disunited. This, then, is a prayer …

We Are All Cultists On the Inside

There are different ways to distinguish a church from a cult. Churches hold to a broad consensus of orthodox beliefs while cults invariably elevate a small number of uniquely unorthodox beliefs. Churches tend to foster a context in which leaders are accountable to their congregations while cults tend to foster a context in which leaders demand mindless obedience. Churches expect loyalty to the word of God while cults expect loyalty to the words of a charismatic leader. And then there …

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Little Seeds that Split Great Rocks

In the warmth of a Canadian summer, in the reaches of a distant forest, a maple seed falls from the sky. This seed, called a samara, is a masterpiece of design that looks and behaves much like the blades of a tiny helicopter. As it falls through the air it spins, and this spinning action generates lift, and this lift keeps it aloft long enough to fall far from the smothering shade of its parent tree. As that seed helicopters …

Learn the Lesson of Aaron’s Oily Beard

The Bible is a book of many metaphors. Almost all of its most precious truths are taught through vivid word pictures. Even a brief look through its pages will turn up hundreds of them—God as shepherd, his people as sheep; Jesus as head, the church as his body; the Bible as nourishment, its words as honey and water. On and on it goes. One metaphor that has always intrigued me is at the center of one of the shortest psalms—Psalm …

When Unanimity is the Enemy of Unity

It is God’s desire that there be unity between his people, and for that reason Christian unity is a prominent theme in the New Testament. Jesus prays for it in his High Priestly prayer, Luke describes it in his history of the early church, Paul demands it of the congregations he writes to, Peter appeals for it in his epistles, and John displays it in its final perfection in his vision of what is to come. As we each live …

Why You Really Need To Be Praying For Your Pastor

You might be tired of hearing it, but that doesn’t make it any less true—these have been difficult days for pastors. And I think you need to hear as well that there are more difficult days ahead. That being the case, for the sake of your pastor and the sake of your church, he needs you to be praying for him right now and in the weeks and months to come. Pastors, like everyone else, had their lives and routines …

Division, Jesus, Unity

At this year’s G3 Conference I had the opportunity to share some of the lessons my church has learned as we’ve grown into a congregation that reflects many different kinds of diversity. In this video I explain how one passage has been meaningful to us. Transcript You know in the first section of Ephesians 2, Paul talks about how people become Christians. Then in the rest of the chapter, he starts to discuss how God takes those Christians and He …

How to Build Unity in Your Church

Yesterday I wrote about Satan’s Great Desire which is to bring about disunity in your local church, somehow convincing you that the people in your church are no longer worthy of your love. I ended by giving the encouragement that God has equipped us to build and maintain this kind of unity and that all we need to do is use the tools he has equipped us with. How has he equipped us? According to Ephesians 4, he has given …

Putting Unity First

The fourth chapter of Ephesians deals primarily with unity within the body of Christ. Through the first three chapters of the book Paul has been laying the theological framework for the life of good works that he describes in the final three chapters. The first topic he discusses in this regard is unity. He encourages believers to live together in humility and patience, bearing with one another and maintaining the unity of the Spirit. The word one appears seven times …

Unity and Maturity

In the past few years I’ve often been asked to speak or write on the topics of discernment and Christian maturity. I’ve also been asked to discuss the ways Christian communicate using all of these amazing new media available to us. In both cases I’ve found myself drawn to a quote by John Stott. This comes from his excellent commentary on Ephesians and here he discusses the well-known words of Ephesians 4:15 where the apostle calls us to speak truth …