Unity not Uniformity

I’ve been working with FOCUS for seven years now, and if you count my time as a student, I’ve been around FOCUS for eleven. When you’ve been part of a community that long, you get used to certain things about how the organization operates and the culture it fosters. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on some of the things I’ve taken for granted—one of which is the idea of unity, not uniformity. That’s a core value in FOCUS because we see it as a core value in Scripture.

One of my biggest takeaways from the New Testament Foundations class we take is just how big of a deal Jesus, Paul, and the apostles make about unity, oneness, and fellowship among believers. Once you start looking for it, you see that it’s everywhere in our Bibles. A key part of biblical unity, at least in my understanding, is that unity doesn’t come from us all being exactly the same. Instead, unity comes from many very different people gathering together and being united under Christ. He holds us together. He unifies us and makes us one.

While our broader culture today says plenty of nice things about unity and even claims to value it, if we’re honest, we’re pretty terrible at actually being unified. Division is rampant, and sadly, that’s often true in the Church as well.

But even with all of that, I often forget how bad the division can be, because that’s not my experience in the church, thankfully. I look around the room at one of our Thursday Night services and see a crowd made up of people of all different races and backgrounds. It’s hard to even determine if there is a “majority” in our ministry because it’s so diverse. And I don’t just mean in terms of skin tone, I mean in terms of background, especially religious background. There are Pentecostals and Baptists laughing and joking together. There are students from all sorts of backgrounds— Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, you name it. All together, loving one another, learning about Jesus together, and walking through life together. When I step back, it’s pretty amazing, but I often forget how special it is.

One of the reasons this has been on my mind recently is because we participated in another United Worship Night with nine other campus ministries this month. Not a single one was from the same denomination. And yet we all worked together to host a worship night in the middle of campus, creating a space where students could see the Church coming together to love Jesus and serve Him side by side. When’s the last time you heard of nine different churches doing something like that?

The college campus is such a unique space, and it gives me so much hope for the future. I hope that if this is the norm for our students while they’re here, they will grow up to be people who build bridges, peacemakers who actively pursue unity in the Church instead of division. I hope they carry that heart not only into their churches but also into their workplaces and everywhere they go. That’s been my prayer recently, and I hope you’ll join me in praying for that!

We’ve kicked off our KFG fundraiser for this year, which is a really big deal for us. It really is the thing that lets FOCUS continue to grow and be at campuses that nobody else is at. So, if you’re looking for a place to do some end of year giving, I really encourage you to pray about making a donation!