Years ago, when my wife and I moved to California with our two boys, we lived about an hour from a grove of giant redwood trees. Having never seen them before, we decided one day to make the drive to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.
I wasn’t prepared for what I encountered.
The trees were absolutely massive. Standing among them, some of which had been growing for an estimated two thousand years, I felt appropriately small. There was something almost spiritual about walking through that forest. The sheer size and age of those trees had a way of putting life—and my own sense of importance—into perspective.
But I learned something else that day that made an even greater impression on me.
Redwoods are remarkably tall, yet their roots don't typically extend very deep into the ground. You might think that would make them vulnerable to strong winds and storms. How could trees so massive remain standing when their roots were relatively shallow?
The answer is that their roots intertwine. They spread outward, connecting with the roots of neighboring trees. Rather than standing entirely on their own, the trees help anchor and support one another. Their strength comes, in part, from the connections beneath the surface.
I’ve often thought about that image because it illustrates something important about the way God intended us to live.
We were never meant to stand alone.
That is true of us as individuals, and it is true of the church. We have a personal relationship with God, but our faith was never intended to be a private experience disconnected from others. We need one another. We need encouragement, support, correction, patience, and love. And the more deeply our lives become connected in Christ, the better equipped we are to withstand the storms that inevitably come.
In Ephesians 4, the apostle Paul turns from describing what God has done for us through Jesus to explaining how we should live in response.
He urges believers to live in a manner worthy of their calling, demonstrating humility, gentleness, patience, and a willingness to bear with one another in love. He then tells them to make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
What strikes me about this passage is where Paul begins.
When discussing unity, he doesn't start with organizational structures, leadership strategies, policies, or procedures. He begins with the character of the people involved.
That doesn't mean organizational structures and good communication are unimportant. They certainly have their place. But Paul understands something we sometimes overlook: unity is not sustained primarily by better systems. It is sustained by people becoming more like Jesus.
Think about the qualities Paul identifies.
Humility allows me to recognize that I may not have all the answers. Gentleness influences how I speak when I disagree with someone. Patience gives others room to grow instead of demanding that they immediately see things my way. And love reminds me that the person on the other side of a disagreement is not an obstacle to defeat, but someone who matters to God.
These qualities are not merely private virtues. They are relational virtues. We cannot demonstrate patience, gentleness, or forbearance in isolation. They become visible when we are dealing with people who test our patience, challenge our assumptions, or see things differently than we do.
That is precisely why they matter so much.
It is relatively easy to appear patient when everyone agrees with us. It is easy to be gentle when no one challenges our preferences. The real test comes when relationships become difficult.
In those moments, we have a choice. We can insist on our own way, speak harshly, withdraw in resentment, or treat others as though their shortcomings disqualify them from our respect. Or we can remember how patient God has been with us and extend some of that same grace to others.
Unity is not simply something we believe in. It is something we practice through the way we treat people.
One of the most important distinctions we can make about Christian unity is this: being united does not mean we must be identical.
In Ephesians 4, Paul emphasizes the things Christians share: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all. At the same time, he recognizes that Christ gives different gifts to different people so that the whole body can be built up.
There is both oneness and diversity in God's design.
We do not all have the same abilities, personalities, experiences, or perspectives. We will not always agree on every question. Even sincere Christians who share a commitment to Jesus may interpret certain passages of Scripture differently or arrive at different conclusions about matters that are not central to the faith.
That diversity does not automatically threaten unity.
In fact, our differences can become a source of strength when we learn to use them in service of a shared purpose.
The problem comes when we confuse unity with uniformity—when we assume that everyone must think as we do, prefer what we prefer, or approach every situation exactly as we would.
A healthy community doesn't require everyone to see everything the same way. It requires people who can remain committed to one another even when they see things differently.
This is especially important in the church, where we sometimes allow secondary disagreements to overshadow the central truth that binds us together: our shared allegiance to Jesus Christ.
We may have different backgrounds, traditions, worship styles, and approaches to ministry. But when Jesus is at the center, we have a foundation that is larger than any of those differences.
The church is bigger than any one congregation or denominational label. Across communities and traditions, those who belong to Christ are part of one body. We should live and relate to one another in ways that reflect that reality.
Our unity in Christ ought to matter more than our desire to preserve every distinction that separates us.
Of course, saying that we should be united is much easier than actually living it out.
People disagree. Personalities clash. Expectations go unmet. Decisions disappoint us. Sometimes we feel misunderstood, overlooked, or treated unfairly.
These things happen in every human community, including the church.
The question is not whether we will experience conflict. The question is how we will handle it.
I believe there is a meaningful difference between healthy and unhealthy conflict.
Healthy conflict seeks understanding; unhealthy conflict seeks victory.
Healthy conflict pursues truth; unhealthy conflict protects territory.
Healthy conflict leaves room for grace; unhealthy conflict demands perfection.
Healthy conflict addresses problems; unhealthy conflict attacks people.
Conflict itself is not necessarily evidence that something is wrong. Sometimes it means people care deeply about an issue and are trying to work through a difficult question. The challenge is to disagree without forgetting that we belong to the same family.
That requires spiritual maturity.
Mature Christians can wrestle with difficult questions without turning every disagreement into a personal battle. They can listen without immediately preparing a rebuttal. They can acknowledge that someone else may have a valid point. They can stand firmly for what they believe while still treating others with dignity and respect.
And when they make mistakes—as all of us do—they can apologize, forgive, and begin again.
Paul's call to humility, gentleness, patience, and love is not a command to avoid difficult conversations or pretend that differences don't exist. It is a reminder that our character matters just as much as our conclusions.
We should care not only about what we believe, but also about how we treat people while we are working through those beliefs.
Sometimes the greatest evidence of spiritual maturity is not that we have learned how to win an argument, but that we have learned how to preserve a relationship without compromising our convictions.
Paul goes on to explain that Christ gives different people different gifts so that the church can grow toward maturity.
His picture is not of a gathering of independent individuals who happen to occupy the same space. He describes a body in which every part is connected and contributes to the health of the whole.
That is a powerful image.
A body cannot function properly if its parts insist on operating independently. Each part has a role, and each depends on the others. The body grows when its members work together.
The same is true of the church.
God has given you abilities, experiences, insights, and opportunities that I do not possess. And God has given me things that you may need. We are meant to contribute to one another's growth.
Some people encourage. Others teach. Some quietly serve behind the scenes. Others lead, organize, give generously, or offer wisdom earned through years of experience. No one has every gift, and no one should be expected to do everything.
But everyone has something to contribute.
When we recognize that, we stop viewing other people merely as companions on our spiritual journey and begin seeing them as participants in our growth. We understand that God may use someone whose personality differs from ours, whose experiences are unlike ours, or whose perspective challenges us to see something we have missed.
Our relationships become part of the way God shapes us.
One of my prayers for myself—and for others—is that we will be a little more like Jesus after spending time together than we were before. That growth doesn't happen only through sermons, Bible studies, or individual prayer. It also happens in the way we listen, serve, disagree, forgive, and care for one another.
Sometimes the person who challenges us most becomes the person God uses to teach us something important.
We cannot become all God intends us to be while refusing the relationships through which He wants to shape us.
There is another important implication of Paul's teaching.
The church is not simply a local congregation, a particular denomination, or a gathering of people who share a common history. It is the body of Christ—a community that extends across cultures, generations, and places.
Every congregation is part of a story that began long before any of us arrived and will continue long after we are gone.
That perspective should change how we think about our place in the church.
We are not the owners of something that belongs to us. We are stewards of something that belongs to Jesus.
We did not begin the mission, and we will not finish it. Our responsibility is to faithfully serve God's purposes in our generation and then entrust the future to Him.
That means our first concern should not be preserving every familiar practice, protecting our preferred identity, or ensuring that things continue exactly as they have been. Our concern should be whether we are faithfully participating in the work Jesus has given His people to do.
Sometimes that means continuing a tradition because it still serves a valuable purpose. Sometimes it means making changes so that the mission can move forward. Sometimes it means working alongside Christians from another congregation or tradition because we recognize that the work of God's kingdom is larger than our own organization.
The point is not that every congregation must become the same or that all differences are unimportant. The point is that none of us should mistake our particular part of the church for the whole of what God is doing.
We have been entrusted with one chapter in a much larger story.
Our calling is to make it a faithful one.
I keep coming back to those redwoods.
Some of them had been standing for nearly two thousand years. They had endured storms, seasons of drought, and countless changes in the world around them. Yet they continued to stand—not simply because each tree was strong enough on its own, but because their roots were connected.
I think that is a fitting picture of the church.
Our strength does not come from pretending we have no weaknesses or insisting that we can manage everything independently. It comes from being deeply rooted in Christ and genuinely connected to one another.
When storms come, those connections matter. When disagreements arise, humility and patience matter. When the future is uncertain, our shared commitment to Jesus matters.
One day, every one of us will be gone. Other people will gather to worship. Others will tell the story of what God has done. Other generations will carry the mission forward.
The question is: What will we leave them?
Will they inherit a community whose members learned to support one another, forgive one another, and work together despite their differences? Will they find people who understood that the mission of Jesus was greater than personal preferences and that the church belonged to Him, not to them?
Or will they inherit the remnants of a community that gradually disconnected because people became more committed to their own positions than to one another?
I want to be part of a church whose roots are intertwined in humility, gentleness, patience, and love. I want to be part of a community that takes seriously both its commitment to Christ and its responsibility to one another.
And I want to remember that this calling extends beyond the walls of any one congregation. We belong to a body that reaches across communities, traditions, and generations.
The mission is bigger than any of us. Thankfully, we do not have to carry it alone.
May we sink our roots deeply into Christ, intertwine our lives with one another, and spend less time protecting our own little corner of the forest and more time strengthening the community God is growing.
There is one body, one Lord, and one mission.
And we are stronger when we remember that we belong to all three.