Blueprint for Unity
286 | “We Just Say Stuff”
Build the Body
We’ve all been part of a nightmare group project — whether it’s pulling an all-nighter sleeping on a lab floor or surviving a high-stress church event that tests your marriage. But while human collaborations constantly break down, Ephesians 4 gives us a flawless, practical blueprint for spiritual unity. This week, we’re diving into Jesus’ high priestly prayer to see what a “Trinitarian union” actually looks like in everyday church life. We talk about the difference between creating unity and maintaining what the Spirit already built, how to tell a load-bearing truth from a personal opinion, and why church leaders are more like sports coaches equipping a team. Finally, we look at what it means to “truth in love” so you can stop behaving like a relational wrecking ball. Strip off the masks, pull up a chair, and let’s find out where our churches need to grow!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Christ provides the guidance and gifts we need to maintain unity.
This Week's Challenge: Identify the specific grace and spiritual gift Christ has given you, and take one practical action to use it for the vulnerability, communication, or building up of your local congregation this week.
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Unity Blueprint Intro
Bryan: especially as like an engineer, like we have no feelings, so we just say stuff and, you know, we don't care. Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks podcast. I'm Bryan Schiele.
Ryan: I'm Ryan Joy.
Bryan: And thanks so much everyone for tuning in. You know, it's easy to talk vaguely about divisions without ever giving people the tools to unite together. But Ephesians 4 gives us a practical, personal blueprint For unity.
Ryan: Right in the heart of Paul's sweeping picture of God's eternal purpose, we learn the mindsets that bind us and the truths we stand on.
We see how leaders and teachers equip us so that we all can work and grow together as a purposeful, healthy body.
Worst Group Projects
Ryan: okay, icebreaker to get us started. I want you to go back to all of your awful high school projects, your team ups, your working with engineers who have no relational skills.
I'm not making a generalization, just
Bryan: Oh, it's
Ryan: you've described as your coworkers. The icebreaker is what's the worst group project? Team experience or committee situation you've ever been part of and what made it so frustrating? Lesson
Bryan: wound up working on a capstone project with a team of people. Which, the people were okay, I think, in general. But, we were notoriously all together of the same mind in terms of procrastination. And so, we wasted a lot of time. And there was no real leader among us who was, like, trying to crack the whip or get us to be on board to do things at the right time.
So, we basically waited until the very end. And then, uh, I think we stayed up for, like, a whole week in the lab. Just, like, sleeping on the floor in the lab to get everything ready to go. But, by the time we were done, it was this amazing demonstration of this project that we built. But, yeah, I think that was probably one of the worst.
Not because of interpersonal relationships, like going south, but we had no leadership to actually get us, uh, you know, focused on the goal in a timely way. So, that was kind of, that was probably the worst one that I can remember. You never, never a good day when you have to sleep on the couch. So,
Ryan: one, leadership helps as
Bryan: it does indeed. How about you?
Ryan: like the worst one. So I think I'll pull out a recent one that just went bad. It's actually with my favorite person to work with, which is my wife, and we usually have a great partnership. We have alignment on a lot of things, but it was one of those situations where this church event, a lot of things fell apart, people who were gonna be part of it weren't able to for whatever reason, and then at the last minute, it became her and me doing this work, and we just could not get alignment.
We have different styles of what we need. She wants everything mapped out and prepared to the oomph degree long before, and I'm like, I want structure, but within that, some room to operate and improvise in the moment as I'm working with people and different things like that, and it just kept getting us all flubbed and frustrated and everything, and at the end of it, she was like, man, we gotta have a team for next year for the sake of our marriage.
This is not the best interaction. So sometimes you got good people, good relationships, but the alignment is lacking, and things that you're bringing into it, frustrations with the way it's playing out and the situation in general, just it's too much baggage to really successfully get the party going on a project, but I was just thinking how every single one of the bad projects we go through have similar kind of breakdowns.
Why Unity Matters
Ryan: There's a whole host of them, but I think that pretty much all of them are addressed in a text we're gonna be looking at here later in Ephesians 4, and the Bible really helps us learn to work together and to be united, and we might ask, what's the big deal about unity? Why is this important?
Jesus Prays Oneness
Ryan: And I don't know, there's so many different directions to go, but I thought to start us off, we could go to something Jesus said about it in his powerful, beautiful prayer in John 17, sometimes called the High Priestly Prayer.
I don't know, do you wanna read that, verses
Bryan: Yeah. So, John 17, 20-23, Jesus says, "I ask not for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you. That they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me, I have given to them.
That they may be one, even as we are one. I in them, and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them, even as you loved me." It's like so poetic there in this prayer. You know, just the symmetry and the one-anotherness and the connectivity that's going on between Jesus and the Father, but then obviously, as we're talking about in this conversation, that they may be one, these ones who are following him, as Jesus is one with the Father.
Just this relationship is connected to each other, is perfectly united. And so, for Jesus to pray this, I feel like is so telling, like, that they get to overhear this being said, right? That we even get to read this being recorded here. Like, this is,
Ryan: 23? Very
Bryan: like this, yeah, like this private conversation that we get to listen in on the door of, and I think Jesus is really teaching a lesson, even in this prayer, about what kind of unity we're really looking for, and to what extent does it go.
Ryan: You know, I heard somebody talking about this where they described it like, even though Jesus is, again, probably in the upper room, he is still on earth, this prayer feels like the beginning of his ascension. It's like his heart is already moving to this place where he's going to be our heavenly intercessor, where he is already in this union with the Father, praying for us, and I think what you said there is good too, that it defines the nature of our union, which is that we would have a oneness that we would be perfectly one, like the Father and the Son are perfectly one.
Boy, you know, no high standard or anything
Bryan: No, not at
Unity As Witness
Ryan: being called into Trinitarian union, not just with God and Jesus, but with one another, and that is profound, and then did you notice the result that he hopes comes from it?
Bryan: Are you talking about the "so that the world may know," like that piece of it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. there's a purpose to all of this, right? It's like it's not just unity because "well, Jesus said so." You know, it's unity because that is going to be one of the biggest evangelistic tools, I think.
We may not even think about it that way. Like, I don't tend to think about unity as an evangelistic tool, but if I'm yeah, if I'm inviting somebody to come and you know, maybe into one of our worship services or, you know, among a small group of us in the church, like getting together and sharing a meal together, if I invite somebody from the outside to come in, and all they see is like coldness and gossiping and backbiting and like all these different things, that is going to tell a story about who we are as a people.
And that is not going to be like a feature and benefit of becoming a part of the Lord's Church here in this location. That's going to be a deterrent for them.
Ryan: yeah, there is a missional aspect to our unity. It is beautiful and good in itself to be united. Also, we can't get all of the amazing and important work that God wants us to get done if we're not able to work together well, but there is something bigger than that. We are the body of Christ, and under his loving headship, we are meant to be fully united together in a way the world has never seen a people be together.
Bryan: You know, sometimes we go and we talk about the decent and in-orderness of our church and our gatherings and things like that, but maybe not from the standpoint of like what Jesus is saying here in John 17 and like John 13 like you were talking about. Just the orderliness of a body that functions properly.
Like when all of your muscles are working in tandem with all of your joints are working in tandem with your, you know, your digestive system with, you know, your respiratory system. When all these various and disparate systems are working together
unity is about the orderly, carefully structured way that God wants His church to operate and that kingdom is going to function in a way that's not based on chaos and reactivity, but is based on just a clear direction of love and mercy and focus on the Master.
Church Unity Struggles
Ryan: So you have me thinking about this book that I'm teaching from right now, and it's a book from Florida College Press. I'll put, it has a terrible title. I'll put the title and the link in the show notes. It's like "Attitudes and Reactions "to Congregational Problems, the Divine Will." Like somebody actually approached me when I said I was gonna teach from this book, and they were like, "Why are we talking about problems?"
But it's really about unity, and it's pointing to Ephesians 4. And I just thought, so this is by a gospel preacher, E. Glenn Barnhart, who really calls us out and does not have nice things to say about our work in unity. I just wanted to get your take on whether this resonates with you, or you think he maybe went too far.
I think he wrote it in like 1988. He says, "Does this question ever come to your mind? "Why can't Christians learn to get along together "without fussing and dividing? "Across the country and probably all congregations "of varying degrees, Christians are not very successful "in keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace," quotes our passage here in Ephesians 4.
"Our track record is poor, from personality differences "to ongoing tensions in the congregation, "from one or two families leaving the congregation, "wholesale division." He says, "I'm aware that no one is perfect, "no congregation is perfect." But he says, "The truth is, "as we broadly observe the situation, "we have never learned well how to get along in harmony.
There seemed to be a little forethought on how to react to personal, doctrinal, social problems in the congregation.
So, too harsh, or does that resonate?
Bryan: No, I think it resonates. And deep down in our heart of hearts, we can probably all pinpoint a scenario in which that all breaks down and we maybe were a part of it or we were not doing the kinds of things that would have led to avoiding that sort of disunity.
But I don't know that we've learned how to get out of our own prideful ways enough over time.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah, and the good news is we haven't solved it, we're ongoing in our work of trying to be all that God wants us to be, which we're gonna talk about in this passage, but we have a guidebook. W
Ephesians 4 Culture
Ryan: e have what we're calling a blueprint for unity, and it comes here, at least one such picture that I think hits a lot of notes that we need just all in one power-packed passage of 16 verses.
Comes right in the middle of Ephesians. He is just in the first three chapters, he's established this picture of the purposes of God to accomplish all he wants, revealing his manifold wisdom in the church. And he's talked about how we, Jew and Gentile, we're all a temple, and Christ is bringing all things together in himself.
There's this kind of lofty viewpoint in Ephesians. And then we get to the therefore, and this is where he breaks into the second half of the book that's all application, but the first thing he wants to deal with is unity. And so, maybe I'll read the first three verses here, and we can talk through it.
This first part helps us to see what our culture is like. It's kind of like the culture of unity, the attitudes and the glue in our relationships that holds things together. If we don't have this, we're gonna be missing a lot as we try to work together. H
Maintain Unity Attitudes
Ryan: e says, "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, " urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling "to which you have been called, "with all humility and gentleness, "with patience, bearing with one another in love, "eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit "in the bond of peace." So he starts off with these attitudes, but he also says, "eager to maintain the unity "of the Spirit." And I was just, I wanted to maybe start by asking, why is unity something we maintain instead of something we create?
Bryan: here reading this time. It's like I feel like we have to come up with why we're united from time to time or we have to like manufacture it. Like what can we agree on? Or, you know, how can we get over things so that we can all come to a common idea or understanding about something?
And that's not really what he's saying here with this word "maintain." It's like if you're filled with the Spirit, and I'm filled with the Spirit, and I have a relationship with Christ, and you have a relationship with Christ, then we're already united in what fills us and what brings us together. So it's not about like building something or manufacturing something fake or, you know, just creating like these structures around, like scaffolding around our relationships.
It's more so just realizing what's already there and then making sure we're keeping in step with the Spirit to use another phrase. Making sure we're not fighting against the work of the Spirit to bring us together. And a lot of that I think is just going to be, you know, avoiding our own pride or avoiding us trying to take control of the wheel and lot of it is just acknowledging that something like what the Spirit is doing is already there. So not getting in the way of it maybe is where I'm landing. What about you? What are you thinking when you see this word "maintain"? Why is that such a helpful cue?
Ryan: I think you hit the nail on the head. It exists already, and I think in a minute, we'll talk about the one body we're already part of and the one baptism. These are reality, and Christ has created this essential oneness of his people, his body, his, you know, the faith that we hold to. All of these things are one already, and so our job is to not start shattering things that are one in essence by bringing, I guess you could give the opposite of each of these four attributes he uses here.
Instead of humility, if we bring our pride and our selfishness and our ego, you know, I have to win the discussion, be the smartest person in the room, whatever it is, then we can start to break down that essential oneness instead of maintaining it, or instead of gentleness, I bring a disrespectful, irritable, kind of abrasive fight to
Bryan: I was just thinking
abrasive.
Ryan: yeah,
So I think that, yeah, these attributes start to give us glue to hold things together when the seams want to pull apart, because there's gonna be stress and strain in the course of any relationship, and when you have a, you know, a congregation of people from different backgrounds, I think this is why Paul is all the time teaching on unity and on how to be united.
So much teaching on these attitudes and relational skills and approaches.
Bryan: I almost think about it as like
store owner or like a museum curator or someone who like, they're not painting the paintings, but they're making sure that the paintings are in order and being kept. They're almost like a maintainer or a watcher of what the artist has already built and created. And if there is some decay or there's something on the painting, like it's about faithfully restoring it to its original beauty and glory, like all of these things, that's kind of a helpful mindset shift for me in talking about maintaining here.
It's like I'm just, I'm not building anything new necessarily. I'm just maintaining what God has already built. This body that he's created, this structure that's built together in love that he's made. And why is that so hard for us to deal with? I think in part is because this is such a high stakes building.
This is such a high stakes thing that we're participating in. This is the church of the living God. This is the kingdom here on earth. What are we doing together? This is not like an unimportant activity, like a PTO meeting or something like that. This is like a serious thing and because we're serious people and because we treat these things reverently, I think sometimes we mistake the importance for it with our need to come in guns a-blazing sometimes and not treat it with care and, you know, like you said, humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another.
Like, these things that, you know, these are soft things. These are careful kind of qualities. These are not like, you know, come in and destroy it all, burn it all down, and rebuild it all again. Like, I feel like this is, we might feel justified in approaching the church or in approaching our relationships with some amount of passion flipping over the tables and things like that, and I think a passage like this is right there for us to latch on to, to shift our mindset so that we don't come in doing that.
Ryan: Yeah, I like that storekeeper picture of like,
somebody that's tending to what he calls not only the unity of the Spirit, like the Holy Spirit is, wants to create and will create, as we follow him, a unity, and then in, it's united in the
The Gospel Shema
Ryan: bond of peace.
Bryan: There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all." That's a that rolls off the tongue after a while reading it. It's all of these ones, right?
Ryan: think I heard somebody say this, maybe I was just thinking about it, that this is almost like the Gospel Shema, back in the Deuteronomy 6, 6-4, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one."
But all of these are pointing to this reality we were talking about, that we're maintaining, that you and I have this in common.
And there's nothing more important that we could have in common, is that I am getting up every morning excited about the same bright future. I came into Christ in the same baptism. I have the same Lord that I'm serving each day. all of these ones, how do you think these seven ones and the truth that they express stabilize us more than having shared backgrounds or shared preferences? Or we all like kind of the same thing. This is kind of like the antithesis of our community of grace or whatever we called that mini here recently.
That's
Bryan: know that there are things that are just absolutely fundamental to who we are. Like, I don't have to convince you that our carpet color needs to look a certain way or like, you know, that we've, whatever, all the things that divide us, like the hymnals we use or the paint color or all those silly things, right?
Like, I don't, we don't have to agree on those minor details, but we absolutely have to agree on these things. Like, these are the core, these are like the, I don't know, the floor, the foundation underneath everything that we will then build on. And it's, I think it's so helpful for us to see that, that like, there are things that if you don't agree with, with these things, if you don't hold these things to be true, we cannot have fellowship with each other.
We cannot have unity with each other if we're not united in these things. And so, I think in order to help this become a concrete, I mean, pun intended, right? A real concrete, stable force for good, this kingdom that, that is being built, this house that's being built together, we've got to agree on the foundations of things, and this can't be just a, like, fuzzy, nebulous blob of a conversation that's like, anybody can just decide whatever they want to do.
No, like, we have to agree on these things. And then above and beyond these things, I think then we approach each other with those qualities, that relational glue that we were just talking about with, with our gentleness and our patience and our, our bearing with each other. But like, on these things, these stabilize us and provide a framework more than anything else that, that we can probably focus on.
Ryan: well said. And I think that we can even get vague by saying, you know, the Bible, like we need to follow the will of God. Well, we all agree on that. That is true. But like a vague blanket statement of, you know, we follow the Bible or we unite around the gospel, like that is true. But let's talk about what are these pillars?
And I think it's helpful to know that Paul gives a discreet list here. These are the things, you know, these are load bearing
Bryan: Mm.
Ryan: columns and beams in this house that give it structure.
so that it's not just feelings, but it's not like we have to get every nitty gritty detail, like
Bryan: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, everything matters equally is, is kind of blown out of the water by this, right?
Ryan: yes, exactly.
Yeah, these are the things. And, you know, there's other lists like this in the Bible, you know, the first principles in Hebrews six, or the things that are of first importance in first Corinthians 15. And I'm not trying to like boil all of the Bible down to where this matters and nothing else, but not everything is weight bearing in the way that these fundamental realities are.
And that's really helpful. And, you know, I think you summarized it well, that this stabilizes and gives a structure solidity.
Bryan: I think sometimes we just need to stop for a minute and, like, label what it is that we're talking about, you know? And maybe just a practical kind of tip along the way here is, like, are we talking about something that is like a divide-over kind of issue?
Or are we talking about something that's like a, "Let's debate about this," or, "Let's discuss in some, you know, careful ways," or, "Let's, let's just make, like, a decision on this so that we can move on." Like, you know, there, not everything is the same level of severity. So, like, let's, let's bring a, a fierceness and a passion to defend, like, "We're gonna die on this hill that these things are true."
But then there are some things where you're just, like, "Look, I, I don't believe this is true, so we need to just go our separate ways if, if we can't come to alignment on this." Or, like, you know, "Let's just have a, a careful discussion about, about this." Just defining what these things are, I think, is, is helpful in some ways.
Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah, I think that's a really important point. And, you know, we sometimes grow and learn from each other, and that's why debating, discussing, listening, trying to hear it out, reasoning from the scriptures is all really important as we're growing into, as we're leading to the fullness and maturity of Christ, we're speaking to one another truthfully.
Gifts And Equippers
Ryan: And getting into this next section, the design of unity, verses seven to 12, we start to see how each of us has a gift. And we go back to that thing you brought up in your example of a college project where there was no leadership, and Christ has gifted us with different people, different roles, different grace.
And so I'll read verses seven to 12, and we can start to see what the purpose of each of these gifts is as well. It says in verse seven, "But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.
In saying he ascended, what does it mean, but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ."
So we have, first of all, verse seven says that each one has grace. So what do you take from that, that Christ has given grace to each one before we get into some of these specific roles that he lists?
Bryan: Well, this is given to each of us. Each of us has a role, a function, um, as all of these body metaphors are going to play out in Paul's writing. It's like, you are a part, and you bring something to the table. So, you've been given a grace.
Nobody comes to this, nobody comes to this party with, uh, everything that they've brought to the table. Like, what you have has been given to you, and everybody gets to use that. So, it, it, I, I feel like he is leveling the playing field here. That not, none of us gets to stand up pridefully and say, "Ah, yes, I have, I have brought something that no one else could bring because I am such an important person."
Ryan: Yeah, yeah, and we're gonna get into, in verse 16, kind of how that is the necessary part of how the body works, is it is not just, you know, fingers and toes and the rest of the body is not working or doing anything. It's like, I don't know why fingers and toes, but it's like the whole body is working or else the whole thing doesn't work.
But getting into these specific offices or roles or functionaries like shepherd, evangelist, teacher, he talked about apostles and prophets. What is the purpose of these roles?
Bryan: they're to build up, um, you know, just from that standpoint of equipping people for the work, for the building up of the body of Christ.
Being able to, really just represent in the most honest and truthful way what Christ is in the world. And I think that, like, it goes back to Jesus' prayer in John 17, right?
"I want the world to see that they're my people because of the way that they are united together." You know, the way that they are one as Christ is one with the Father. And so, every one of these offices, "offices" in giant quotation marks, every one of these roles is, is a, a way of building us up to, to be able to stay in line with that purpose.
Ryan: know we make this distinction between clergy and laity, and we try to make it clear. We are a priesthood of all believers and everybody is equal, but do you think that it ever somehow devolves into this idea of like, yeah, there's church workers and then there's everybody else, or even like a consumer mindset where, hey, I went to church, I didn't get as much out of it as I wanted, or, like just thinking of both these roles and church generally as operated primarily by a certain set of people and everybody else just kind of showing up to be served gets flipped by this idea of everybody equip all of these roles, a shepherd's job, an evangelist's job is to equip everybody else for ministry. They are all ministers.
Bryan: think you're hitting on, I mean, maybe we could just camp on this whole point, but we probably won't. I, I do think it's one of the biggest challenges in what Paul is describing here is walking away from this picture thinking that I have no part in this. That this is their job. You know, "they" as in quotation marks here.
And, like, I'll just go back to, to my example from our, our capstone project in school. We had no leadership. There was nobody there to take the reins and make sure we had a direction. And so, we suffered because of that. It was, it, we as the, like, every single one of us were a part of that team and we were all getting individual grades, but each and every one of us suffered from the fact that there was no leadership, there was no direction, there was no sense of, like, importance that we're putting this stuff together by a certain time.
And I feel like that's what Paul is getting us to see here is, like, in order to keep us from being a bunch of disparate random, you know, sheep wandering around bumping into things, like, we need shepherds, we need, you know, teachers, we need equippers, we need all of these roles. We need everyone to bring their gifts to bear so that we have leadership, we have clarity, we're, we're being fed by each other.
And if we ever view ourselves as outside of that process, I think we have, we have missed the boat of what Paul is trying to get us to. And, like, you say, I mean, boy, an evangelist's job, a shepherd's job is so important, but it's, it's there to benefit and bless the lives of all of the people who are actually the ones functioning as priests in this world, as Christ representatives.
Like, we as the church are not a business or an organization, like, in the way that typically we would put them together in the world. We're a collective of people who are all ministers and servants of the King.
Ryan: it's more like, I mean, this every metaphor is imperfect, but more like a team where the team is the one that's gonna be actually playing, right? But you need coaching, you need good trainers, you need good organizational structures, you need good rhythms, you need somebody to buy the equipment and provide it, you know?
And so that is what I think we're here to do when we're in a role as a teacher or as one of these other specific roles that are mentioned
Bryan: Well, it's like Acts 6, Acts 7, right? Like, the, all the difficulties that were happening in the early church because there was nobody leading the charge of caring for those Grecian widows, right? There was nobody there who was, who was responsible for that job, and they suffered because of it. And, like, as soon as that locked in, as soon as somebody was responsible for that and they were doing their job well, like, it unlocked everything that kept them, that kept the church from being able to move forward and and flourish in the communities in which they lived.
So, so yeah, I love that analogy about the team and team culture and the coaching and everything else. I think it, it definitely
Maturity Truth In Love
Bryan: fits.
Ryan: So let's go on to our final section here, the goal of unity, and you were starting to allude to it, kind of merging into verse 13. You wanna read those verses and then start to maybe talk about in your own words what we're striving for in the body, what the vision is.
Bryan: of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love." And that is like, man, it's one of those like Pauline sort of phrases that just get better and better as it grows and just this concept that we're growing up into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
It's like, how many superlatives does he need to throw in there, you know, as we start thinking about it? It's like, "I am measuring up to the full breadth of who Christ is when I help the church to grow together in that way." Like, all of us together,
you know, he talks about here that we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head. And so, we as the whole body are just benefited by every single member because he's the head, he's the source, he's the vine that we're all connected to.
And when we're all connected to him, we're connected to each other in the way that works out so, you know, orderly and decently as we talked about earlier. So united in the way that we can speak to each other in love, that we can, you know, hold each other accountable for what we need to hold each other accountable for.
Ryan: I love that you connected it to the vine because it's not just we're growing into Christ the head, but then the next verse, from whom the whole body is joined and held together. It's like he is the life giver that we're connecting to, and so we have to stay connected to him. We have to stay in the spirit, in Christ, following his ways, and that's where we'll find the stability not to be knocked around.
That's where we'll find maturity. But there's this one very specific directive about an action in the middle of this very broad, picturesque description, which is speaking the truth in love. So what does that mean, and why truth and love? How do we make sure those each get their proper place in this activity, and why is that so helpful for this work, this one action, us speaking the truth in love?
Never.
Bryan: of, it almost seems like he's coined a phrase here like "truthing in love" if you break it down to what he's really saying there. It's like a, it's the kind of what I was saying about like the bull in a china shop, like overly aggressive.
Like when we're passionate about something, we want to express our passion forcefully. Or maybe let's just say I do. I don't know if you struggle with that, but I certainly, when I'm passionate about something, especially as like an engineer, like we have no feelings, so we just say stuff and, you know, we don't care.
Like it doesn't really matter. Like people are just going to take the truth. Like I will give you the truth and that's the most important thing. But, you know, Paul is really, I think, helping us to see like you don't get to be a wrecking ball in the way that you live in community. You do not get to like bust into the room and force everybody to do what you want.
You need to say true things, but you need to do it in love. And if you say false things in love, or you say true things out of frustration and anger, none of those things are going to build the community in the ways that they should. And we totally get that, like you and I totally get that when we relate to anyone else.
That if you can say a true thing, but if you say it in like a grumpy, you know, frustrating kind of way, like that's not going to land with people. And it's like it's such a common sense thing that Paul's even bringing to our attention. But it's like so required when you're trying to, you know, build alignment, build unity, get us all onto the same page.
Like focus on truth, but also making sure that everything is woven together with a feeling of love. So emotion and the truthfulness part of it all together. Don't get to swing the pendulum too far one direction or the other. Yeah.
Ryan: in unity that we have to be speaking to each other, and then it gives the what, like you said. We need to say true things, whether that's, most importantly, the truth of the word of Christ, which is going to align us all and shape us all. But in everything, we're trying to speak honest words, and we're trying to do it in this particular motive, which defines, as you're bringing out, also, not just our motive, but the motive starts to shape the method, the tone, the location, the situation.
Am I the right person to have this conversation? When should I have it? How should I have it? Starting to think through as best we can, because we want things to land. And not every, of course, not every conversation needs that level of intentionality, but some do. And love lets us think carefully for the other's good, always, to bring about the building up of the body and the building up of one
Reach Out Application
Ryan: another. That's Ephesians 4, 1 to 16. That's our blueprint for unity. But maybe that leads us into a reach-out question starting to make this a little more personal.
Bryan: so the reach out question for this time is where do you think our church most needs to grow right now? Boy, like we could talk about all the different ways, but where do you think, I mean this isn't really telling on each of our individual churches necessarily, but like where, you know, what qualities do you think we need to bring to the table?
Like in our attitudes, in our truth, in equipping and working together like we've been talking about in these passages. Where do you think you can fit into that as a change maker even in our churches right
Ryan: because you can't say all of them. That's a cheat answer. And yeah, you could also, like to the, our church, we're not part of the same congregation. We could say the church, you know, just generally, too. the groups that I'm associated with have anchored well in the truth, and that has been a priority. Sometimes to the neglect of how we communicate it, to go back to the speaking the truth in love, or to these ideas of being patient with each other as each one is growing into a fuller perspective, humility, and those kinds of things.
I mean, I feel like just generally, that's something that I would like to see. I'm gonna, if I don't stop here, I'm gonna go through each
one of these and talk about why they're all important. So I'm gonna stop there at, yeah, patience, gentleness, humility.
Bryan: Okay. I was just thinking about the communication part of it. I feel like the church that I've been a part of, churches, local congregations that I've been a part of, can always do better at communication. And I'm not talking necessarily about making sure we've got a more fully fleshed out church bulletin on Sunday mornings.
Like, that's not exactly it, really. I'm more talking about like the vulnerability and the openness that comes when we're around a table together. You know, as we've talked about in prior conversations, the real life communication about who I am and what I'm bringing to the table, what I'm struggling with, where Satan is trying to get a foothold into my life, like these kinds of things that I feel like we can be more open with each other and allow for people to speak the truth in love to us when we need it, right?
And there's a big danger, I think, when we hide and we veil and cover and pretend and put on a show, whereas this is not about that. Being a part of the church, being united in this way, is to know each other with some amount of intimacy and communicate with each other in some amount of honesty that the world is never going to do.
And we trust each other, we lean on each other, we rely on each other, and we deal with the scruples of the week, you know, these kinds of things that each of us go through. And I just feel like that's one of the biggest areas that I think the church can grow in so that it doesn't feel like a PTO organization or some business, you know, that it feels like something that's alive and moving and active and relational, like we've been talking throughout this whole episode.
So, for me, I think that's something I can be better at. I mean, I can open up more. And, you know, in the spirit of these reach-out questions, that's kind of, you know, what we're, I guess, modeling here in a little bit of a way.
Where do I struggle with these things?
Ryan: yep, yep. You know, this whole thing is really a guide book for collaboration would be another way of talking about it.
And, you know, if you think about it, there are attitudes needed for collaborations. There are skill sets. There is, you know, a need for leadership, and leadership that's oriented towards the right things. And there's a need for, like you say, communication, all of these different things, a shared alignment around what we're going to stand on and
hey, what do we need to accomplish as a body? And how can I make sure that everyone in this group has the tools to accomplish it, the motivation, skills, the right attitudes, the orientation, you know, I'm not a shepherd, but I am, you know, one of the primary teachers in this congregation.
How can I make sure that that is happening consistently?
Bryan: Well,
Takeaways And Farewell
Bryan: I love this conversation. I think it's so challenging, and for us to reduce it down to, like, a single episode feels like it's cheating.
I'm taking away from this conversation just the idea about load-bearing walls, we've sort of talked about that a little bit, you know, these key things that we just have to agree on, we have to be united on. Absolutely, there's no options. We've got to be united on our one Lord, our one faith, all of these things that we've talked about.
And to hold that in one hand, while also holding loosely in another hand all of these opinions and preferences and things that we just get to decide, and, you know, come together and listen to each other and patiently work through these things together, just to know that there are varying degrees of important things that we hold, is the reminder I'm walking away from this conversation with.
What about you?
Ryan: I think I'm going back to kind of what you were just talking about a little bit ago aboutjust remembering that transcendent spiritual reality of Christ's body, that there is something more than just one-to-one relationships.
There's something more than just a body of people that come together on Sundays. There is a profound connection to Christ in heaven where our life is, and the oneness we share is as He is embodying each of us individually, but more so all of us as a whole working together as His working, functioning body on Earth.
Bryan: like, again, you talk about the metaphors, you throw around the phrases, but like, the body of Christ means something so different every time I think about it. And I love just that idea that we get to be even a part of that body. So, thank you for bringing this conversation to the table here.
I feel like a conversation about unity can always be something that the Church is blessed by. And yeah, it's going to be a lot to wrestle with. But maybe we'll have a whole episode one day about all the reasons why this is hard. Because, yeah, it's something that we all struggle with and something we can all do better in maintaining what the Spirit has already built.
So, thanks everyone for tuning in to the Bible Geeks podcast. You can find us on our website at biblegeeks.fm Find show notes for this episode in your podcast player or at biblegeeks.fm as well. Get in touch with us, reach out.
our contact form on our website is available to you or on social media. Please, please do that. And until the next episode, everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you.