Pursuing Unity

In a beautiful reflection of his trinitarian nature, Jesus prayed for his people to reflect the remarkable oneness of his relationship with the Father, while honoring their social and cultural differences. The Church has historically struggled to faithfully live out unity in this calling across cultural, ethnic, and racial lines.

Culture is made up of what humans create: the artifacts, ideas, and words we share. Ethnicity is the shared cultural and ancestral history of a people. Race is a socially constructed way of organizing people by arbitrary physical differences like skin color or hair texture, as a means to create a hierarchy which has also created cultural differences.

Of these three, there has been no greater obstacle to unity than race. We’ll reference race throughout most of this lesson, but invite you to apply this to cultural and ethnicity unity as well. From Genesis to Revelation, God
has been on a rescue mission to restore unity across all that divides. It’s a mission desperately needed in our society, deeply scarred from a legacy of slavery, segregation, and “the narrative of racial difference.” How can the unity that Jesus prayed about be expressed among us? To answer that, we must first understand how the narrative of racial difference has shaped us.

I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

JOHN 17:22-23

Some of us have grown up in communities where the dominant, racial category of whiteness was the uncontested “normal.” Racial dominance is a privileged category that, in America, centers “whiteness” as normative. It also creates “the other.” Some of us have grown up as the subdominant racial category of other. Whether that was called, black, Asian, Latinx or other, such marginalization can lead to a sense of rejection, isolation, and even fear. And along the way, historical prejudices, misunderstandings, and injustices have piled up. The kind of trust that sustains unity in the midst of diversity has worn thin or worn away.

But, as the Spirit applies the gospel to our hearts and communities, ever more deeply,
we find more of the humility and boldness required to bring our truest selves to the table, while joyfully welcoming others to do the same. And each relationship we build with someone different from us stitches back together the incredible picture of the Trinity that emerges from oneness, while celebrating distinctiveness.

At the beginning of LDG, you spent some time processing your identity. In that conversation, we focused on seeing ourselves the way God sees us. As rich as that conversation about identity can be, it’s also incomplete. None of us develops an identity in isolation. To put it another way: each of us has a culture which has formed our identity in profound ways.

If you grew up as a minority, you’ve probably been aware of this fact for as long as you can remember. If you’ve spent most of your time as part of the majority culture, you may not have given much thought about culture, ethnicity,

or race. But no matter what your background is, growing in your understanding of your
own culture and its impact on you is crucial
to becoming the kind of leader who can build relationships of trust in a world that can seem irreparably fractured along cultural, ethnic, and racial lines.

Objective

Become a more culturally self-aware leader who can build relationships of trust across cultural differences. In this lesson, you will:

• Examine your cultural/ethnic/racial background by considering the people who have most influenced you.
• Respond in the Spirit to the emotions that surface as you consider your cultural influences.
• Trace generations of cultural influence through the relationships that have shaped you.
• Consider the implications of your cultural influences on your leadership.
• Trust God to build trust with others in your group as you share stories and insights with one another.

UNDERSTAND

From the earliest days of the church, our limitlessly creative God has called us from remarkably diverse cultures to be his
people. The miracle of Pentecost specifically addressed the challenge of bringing together people “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5) who didn’t even speak the same language. And as the church grew and
began to welcome Gentiles, as well as Jews, the range of cultural and ethnic differences grew even further. One of the most striking snapshots of this diversity comes in the church at Antioch, where “the disciples were first called Christians”(Acts 11:26b). Just look at the backgrounds represented by the leaders of this church named in Acts 13:1:

• Barnabas – a wealthy Jewish Levite born on the island of Cyprus
• Simeon – a black African convert to Judaism
• Lucius – a Gentile from North Africa
• Manaen – a Jewish aristocrat strongly influenced by Greek culture
• Saul – a Jewish born Pharisee raised in Jerusalem All of these men worked together, worshiped together, navigated conflict, and enjoyed an uncommon love for one another in Christ.
  The same is true across the New Testament, where we find merchants and slaves, men and women, Jews, Greeks, Romans, and Africans, all bound together as God’s people.

Yet, these extraordinary relationships were
not forged without confronting the ethnic
and racial discrimination of their day. Perhaps most notably, as the gospel began to spread among people who didn’t share Jesus’ Jewish heritage, the church wrestled with the question of what it meant to be a Christian who was

not also Jewish. Their judgment, recorded in Acts 15, required both Jews and Gentiles to let go of some of their deeply ingrained cultural practices and viewpoints for the sake of the gospel and for love of their brothers and sisters in Christ. However, it did not require Jewish Christians or Gentiles to renounce their cultural identities.

2,000 years later, the challenges of building common bonds across cultural differences are no less formidable. In the American context, centuries of oppression have made this more of a challenge. If we want to be a part of change, we need to embrace a lifelong journey of learning, repentance and growth. Though cities are, by definition, places of density and diversity where difference is unavoidable, the histories, hurts, and uncertainties associated with those differences can make it daunting to engage with people from other backgrounds in meaningful ways.

So where do we begin? No matter how familiar you are with the reality of cultural, ethnic, and racial differences, one of the most foundational first steps towards engaging this conversation is understanding your own culture. And even though each of us has a culture, it’s almost impossible to describe it if you look at yourself in isolation. Culture is a collective phenomenon, so the best way to get a look at your own is to look at the people who have shaped you.

PRACTICE

(This activity is adapted from Daniel Hill’s book White Awake)

List the following:

• Members of your family of origin
• Closest friends
• Mentors you look to for guidance
• Preachers/teachers/theologians you look to for spiritual guidance
• Authors of the books you read Once you’ve finished your lists, take note of the cultural background each one represents. Then take some time to reflect on the following questions:

1. What patterns do you notice? Why do you think those patterns are there?
2. What do you feel as you review your lists? Is there anything that makes you sad? Grateful? Unsettled? Angry?
3. In what ways have the people on these lists shaped you? How do you think their cultural backgrounds have impacted the ways they have shaped you?

PROCESS

Write out a prayer responding to God based on the insights and emotions that surfaced during this exercise.

Meet with your process partner to debrief the cultural influences exercise.

It can be easy to drift into abstract conversation about broader cultural markers and differences. While it’s important to acknowledge larger patterns, this conversation will be most impactful if you can connect those patterns to your own personal experiences. How did it feel to examine your lists? What memories came to mind as you reflected on them?

Help each other fight the shame and self-righteousness that can flare up when culture is discussed by taking appropriate risks in vulnerability and listening with genuine curiosity.

ACT

Reach out to one of the people on your lists and share about your experience with this exercise. You might ask if they’ve ever thought about the cultural backgrounds of the people who have shaped them. Look for connections between the people who influenced them and your own formation.

What are you seeing about the ways cultural influences are passed down through “generations” of family, friendship, mentorship, and/or leadership?