God has been working a thought over in my head and heart for a few days now. I figured it might be best to blog about it. Maybe then I’ll shake it (probably not).

Ready? Vulnerability time. Here it is:

“Steve, you don’t make time for people who aren’t like you.”

This might sound weird to those of you who are reading this, so let me define exactly what I mean by “people who aren’t like me”: People who aren’t waving the STEVE banner. People who don’t like the music I like. People who are not in my immediate age bracket. People who, if I’m honest, are more work than not to interact with.

To be fair, part of this is perfectly natural. We are drawn to people who love us and are like us and that’s okay – to a certain extent. But far too often, we stop there. We don’t relentlessly pursue connection and community with people we don’t naturally connect with. In fact, we fight with them. Then, we leave them behind.

I think we see this many places in culture – but I think we see it in our churches, too. Here’s an example (forgive me, I’m a worship leader): 40 years ago, we sang hymns during our worship services. Then, some of us decided that wasn’t good enough anymore, so we moved on to G-C-D-C choruses. After we tired ourselves out with “Lord I Lift Your Name On High,” we fell in love with Delirious and Sonicflood and then Hillsong and Hillsong United. Now, we are looking at all those electric guitars and the lights and the fog and saying, “It’s too produced. I want to go to a church where the worship is AUTHENTIC.”

And in our wake, we leave countless people we USED to do church with because we couldn’t find a way to have a community of people who have radically different views on music. Friends – I believe this is a dangerous trend. In fact, I’ll just go ahead and say it: It’s more than dangerous…it’s anti-gospel. We’re not together. We’re altogether separate.

The gospel of Jesus Christ should be the greatest galvanizing agent in the history of the world. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul drops this bomb at the beginning of chapter 3:

“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” – Ephesians 3:3

Ouch. Every effort? You see, the hallmark of the gospel-centered, Jesus-following church should be this fact: We are a bunch of people who have absolutely no business getting along…getting along. And boy, they had NO business getting along in Ephesus. There were Jews, Gentiles, rich, poor, slaves, masters, orphans, and magicians…all in the SAME CONGREGATION, just to name a few.

We are radically different – yes. Some people REALLY annoy me – true. I REALLY annoy some other people – even truer. But none of these things should ever be reason enough for us to break apart community. When we do it, I sincerely believe that we fail the gospel. 

Why? Look at the second half of the verse. How do we keep the unity of the Spirit? “…through the bond of peace.” What does he mean? Well, thankfully, Paul gave us that key a couple of chapters earlier:

“For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…” – Ephesians 2:14

Whoa. Don’t miss this: JESUS IS THE BOND OF PEACE. And He has done what? Destroyed the barrier? You mean to say that what Jesus did on the cross effectively destroyed anything that could possibly separate His people? Yes.

No matter who we are or where we come from, for as much as we differ, we have one thing in common: Jesus went to the cross for us. Trump card. That’s it. Game over.

Join me, friends – let’s stop settling for a brand of community that is less than what Jesus died to make possible.

SL