A Letter from Bishop Chris (September 2024B)
Friends,
When you read the book of Acts, one of the things you see the Holy Spirit doing in the early Church is to bring about unity.
After Jesus’ Ascension, the disciples waited in Jerusalem in obedience to the Lord’s command. Acts 1:14 says, “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers and sisters.” Corporate prayer and obedience to the command of Christ were foundational to unity.
When the Day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place as God poured out His Holy Spirit (Acts 2). Each of them received the Spirit and all of them were filled. This uniting experience of God’s empowering presence led them outward in common mission and connected them deeply to one another. Acts 4:32 says, “The full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.”
As Dr Femi Adeleye said in his plenary session at the fourth Lausanne congress, currently taking place in Seoul, South Korea, “This state of affairs was an answer to Jesus’ prayer, ‘that they may all be one, so that the world may believe that you have sent me’ (John 17:21). Jesus implies here that unity leads to credibility. Perhaps it is this same realization that inspired Paul to exhort the Ephesians ‘to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ (Ephesians 4:3).”
While God has designed great variety in his creation, the Holy Spirit works within that diversity to bring about unity. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”
The Spirit’s work is to unite us to Christ and to one another and then to send us out in the common work of proclaiming the Gospel and announcing the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom. Our call, grounded in corporate prayer and obedience, is to make Christ known to a lost and dying world.
Why is this so important to remember and reaffirm?
Because we are living in a polarizing age. This is a time of great and increasing division - politically, socially, economically, spiritually. The threats to our unity are myriad. And if Dr. Adeleye is correct, and I believe he is, our unity as the Church affects the credibility of our mission to the world.
This doesn’t mean we must agree on everything - we won’t. But as we approach another presidential election, and an increasingly anxious and inflammatory political season, we must ground ourselves in the transcendent and locate ourselves in the mission of Jesus. The call of the Church, to “make disciples of all nations,” exceeds national interests and our immediate lifestyle concerns. Our mission is nothing less than the eternal purpose of God. We must not lose sight of this. No matter who the next president is. No matter what joys or challenges we face.
It is to this end we must pray and work: that the Holy Spirit might fill us with power and call us to God’s purpose for our lives. That together, in one heart and soul, diverse yet united in Christ, we might bring the world to the saving embrace of Jesus.
Blessings,