How to Find Unity Instead of Uniformity in Your Church

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Jamie Dunlop
So you may well find that those friendships in your church, where you share the least in common, some account, intuitively, have the potential to become your deepest friendships, precisely because you have nothing else to build on, other than the foundation of Christ. And those friendships will take longer to develop, and a little bit more patience is necessary, a little more charity. But wow, what a beautiful thing for us to aspire to.

Collin Hansen
I don’t know anyone who says they want less diversity in their churches, but when we get more diversity, this could be age diversity, ethnicity, class or something else. It’s often harder to manage than we expect. Suddenly, other people think differently than we do. They don’t understand us. They even make us uncomfortable, and surprise we make them uncomfortable too. It’s just not easy to love the ones who drive you crazy. But that’s just what Jamie Dunlop wants us to do in his new book by that title, published by crossway and nine marks, he offers eight truths for pursuing unity in your church. Of course, loving the ones who drive you crazy starts with recognizing how God loved us when we were yet sinners. He didn’t choose us because we were lovely, rather, he made us so in choosing us before the foundation of the world. Well, turns out he chose of the other people in our churches too. And Jamie serves as an associate pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, and joins me now on gospel bound to help us love one another. Jamie, welcome.

Jamie Dunlop
Thank you so much, Collin.

Collin Hansen
Jamie, what motivates you? I just don’t see many people writing or even caring about this subject of how we love, these people who drive us crazy across all these differences. What motivates you?

Jamie Dunlop
Number one, I drive other people crazy, and so it’s helpful to give them some gospel tools to love me. I have learned a lot pastoring a church of people who often disagree. We’re a few blocks from the US Capitol building. We’re an opinionated church. There are people who have shown me what it looks like to love me as their pastor in ways that are profound, that go far beyond agreement, and it’s a beautiful thing. I think that’s what motivates me. It’s there’s something about a church which is clearly centered on Christ alone, rather than Christ, and a whole raft of other similarities. That is, it just shows the gospel off like a diamond. It’s a beautiful thing.

Collin Hansen
Isn’t church hard enough without increasing the degree of difficulty with diversity. It feels like a lot of churches have pulled back on their efforts toward the variety of diversities you talk about in this book based on the experiences of the last, say, at least five years. Or I wonder about this as well. It seems maybe that some churches have devalued theological unity in favor of, say, political or cultural unity. So I’ll go back to my original question. Church is pretty hard to begin with, and then we’re adding a degree of difficulty.

Jamie Dunlop
You would think so, right? You know, I think about that when I read through the epistles of the New Testament. And there’s such a focus on, you know, Hebrew and Hellenist, even before you get to the Epistles in the book of Acts, or, obviously, Jew, Gentile, young people, old people, rich, poor, slave, free. You know, you look at any one of these churches in the New Testament, and you think bringing a whole bunch of sinners who have only been Christians for a short time together on a weekly basis, where they have to make decisions together and deal with their various annoyances and work through sin together isn’t isn’t that hard enough? But then on top of that, you’re going to throw in, you know, the the book I wrote is largely based in the closing chapter, the book of Romans, where there’s a big focus there on Jew and Gentile. And it’s almost like, you know, God’s the typewritt Walker. You know, I’m, I’m not only going to get to the end of this rope, I’m going to do it while riding on a bicycle while I’m juggling while I’m also, you know, balancing something on my head. Because God really is that good? Jesus is able to pull all these different strains together. And so, yes, church is hard enough. Yes, diversity throws an added degree of difficulty, and that’s where the gospel shines.

Collin Hansen
One quote from the book that stood out to me is this, you write the differences and disagreements that threaten to tear your church apart are filled with potential to proclaim the glory of our good and gracious God. Jamie, I think that vision. Really captivates Christians, but they have a hard time imagining that they could experience it. I’m wondering if you could give us an example of what this looks like on the ground you’ve alluded earlier to capital Baptist church could be from there. But also Washington DC is its own kind of place. It’s either help us to connect to how Washington DC plays out in other parts, or maybe an example from another place.

Jamie Dunlop
Yeah, I mean the quote you you said, I think we all agree on paper. And in reality, it can honestly feel a little naive, and maybe sometimes it is naive. These things don’t always work out the way we would hope them to. But in practice, you know, I’ll give I’ll give one example. You know, obviously the years 2020 2021 were ripe with opportunities for disagreement. So in my own congregation, like many, we disagreed over how we should meet and when we should meet. We disagreed over the protests that happened in the wake of George Floyd’s death and murder. We disagreed over politics, obviously, is, you know, as we are now headed to election, we were back then as well. I think one thing that I two things I noticed during that time, the first was there were members of the church who disagree with me quite vociferously, and yet we were able to have real productive conversations, because they treated me like a brother in Christ and and that was that was not just productive, that was sweet. And I think some of my sweetest memories from pastoring a church during that time are some of those honestly hard conversations where it was clear that our unity in Christ was more valuable to each of us in the differences that we had. And I learned during that time I went into some of those conversations with trepidation, and I think I came out being schooled a little bit in in the fact that Jesus really is enough to hold us together. That’s that’s one thing I saw. The second thing I saw was that there are some very deep friendships in my church built from disagreement during those years. That when, when you work through something like that together, and you realize Christ really is enough, that’s a that’s a powerful foundation for friendship, rather than we’re friends because our kids are the same age, or friends because we happen to vote for the same person, or we’re for, you know, whatever other Secondary good, but secondary foundations for friendship we might have.

Collin Hansen
Is there something Jamie or I know there are some things, but maybe explain some of the things that you and the other pastors and other leaders of Capitol Hill Baptist Church had done, maybe even decades earlier, that you felt as though bore fruit during that incredibly difficult season along the lines of what you wrote in this book. And let me ask a clarifying question, did that did that experience motivate you to write this book? I mean, I know you’ve already been writing and thinking on these lines in your previous works, but how did the writing process come about in terms of timeline?

Jamie Dunlop
Yeah, well, maybe to answer your first question, things that happened kind of foundationally. You know, when I, when I came to this church 25 years ago, it was largely elderly. It was almost exclusively white, it was largely working class, and into that congregation streamed as the neighborhood began to change, 25 year olds, 26 year olds who weren’t all white, who weren’t all working class. And what I saw that older congregation do was to embrace these young people, not as people who needed mentors, but as friends and and and the way that happened was because we valued Christ most, and if, if you’re a Christian, I’m a Christian. We can have a friendship even if I’m 85 and you’re 25 and I think that was that was significant, that that experience of sort of one congregation beginning to give birth to another, the church has, for a long time, had made a big deal of church membership, which sounds very formal. What does that have to do with loving the ones who drive you crazy? But when you build the community of the church off of church membership, you’re saying, Look, you’re part of the family because you’ve committed to the family. Kind of the difference between. In a marriage, and, you know, we just love each other, so we’re going to live together. There’s a commitment that formal commitment is a foundation. And so when you build your community off the foundation of church membership, and people say, I’m here and I’m committed to love you, even though I don’t even know your name yet, then when you begin to find that there are differences between you, you have a foundation, I think, a foundational commitment that at least gives you a better chance of of taking a second look at that relationship. So this would be two things that I think were helpful for us. Kind of timeline of writing the book was, was really watching the church go through that very difficult season, 2020, 2021, during that time, I actually it’s kind of one of my pandemic projects. Was memorized in the book of Romans, and I just began to map these conversations I was having and the good things I was learning onto, particularly those chapters at the end of the book of Romans. You think about we’ve got the gospel on display, Paul, that really zeros into the fact that the Jews and Gentiles are together as family in really chapters 1011, and then chapter 12 and following is kind of the practical. Okay, what are we going to do now? Like we’re one big, happy family? Well, it’s not always going to be happy. How can we really love each other? As he says, genuinely, because we’re one family in Christ, Jesus. And I’m particularly struck. I wonder if Paul wrote most about this to the Roman churches because of their history. You know, we had, we know from Paul’s description of Priscilla and Aquila, the Jews had been expelled from Rome, and so you have what were probably majority Jewish churches initially that became Jew Gentile, while all the Jews had to leave. That Emperor died in 54 ad a few years later, Paul writes the book of Romans, and I would just wonder, is he writing back to those churches who are in a very new way, having to grapple with diversity because they hadn’t had that diversity for several years. And suddenly the Jews are flowing back into Rome. The churches are now Jew Gentile again, and it’s not easy. And yet, as you mentioned earlier, this is an opportunity for the gospel to prove itself stronger than our differences.

Collin Hansen
Love that answer and love to see the fruit of that pandemic project of memorizing Romans. Romans, 12 in particular, for me, was very powerful during that period. I’m sure for a lot of the same reasons, that this book is powerful to me. Are there any occasions, Jamie, where a Christ and church would be acceptable, or even preferable? You can go ahead and explain what you mean also by a Christ and church.

Jamie Dunlop
Yeah, I opened the book just by talking about the fact that a church should be built on Christ alone, not Christ. And, you know, a shared love of the Chicago Cubs or Christ, and a shared love of, you know, particular stream of politics or Christ, and a shared commitment to homeschooling, right where the church is to be built on Christ alone. And you’re wondering, okay, what are the caveats to that? The most obvious is language. This, this, you know, between Babel and heaven, we’re divided by language. And so, you know, my church is an English speaking church. It’s interesting. We’re actually a few blocks away from one of the nation’s largest Deaf communities. You would wonder, well, Jamie, why don’t you translate your services, interpret your services into American Sign Language? Well, because most of my members don’t speak ASL, they don’t know sign language, that would be, I think, a false front to our church to say, yes, if you don’t speak English, you can join us, but you can only do the services. So I think our job is to see an ASL church planted, but we’re an English speaking church. I think we’ll always be an English speaking church. So that would be, I think, the most obvious, secondarily, every community is going to have its own unique Christ ends right? If you’re in an all black part of your city or country, it’s no surprise if your church is going to be almost entirely black. That’s understandable. Churches are defined by their immediate geography, and that’s going to have implications, I think, beyond that, sometimes I look at a church and I just think, okay, I don’t fit in here. That’s a glorious thing. Just like the Jew, Jewish Christian may not have felt like they fit in naturally to those. Majority Gentile churches in Rome. That’s a glorious thing, and yet some of us are more built to be pioneers than others, and some of us may look at ourselves and say, gosh, if I was more mature, I think I could probably build good friendships here and feel known and feel like I belong. But given who I am, the history I’ve got, the struggles I’ve had, maybe, maybe I should go to a church that’s a little bit more similar to me, and maybe I’ll grow in the future. I think there’s, there’s an appropriate humility sometimes we recognize our ability to be those pioneers all at the same time, understanding there is a beauty and a glory to a church church where we don’t all fit in because we belong in Jesus Christ.

Collin Hansen
Certainly your church in Washington DC has opportunities geographically that some other churches don’t have, but that would come with it a whole bunch of challenges as well that we’ve talked about in there, the the spectrum that your neighborhood runs, in income, in ethnicity, in education, in politics, is is truly unlike any other place that I’ve that I’ve been there are which makes sense of why this book is so Powerful and why it comes out of that experience, and why it’s so beautiful, and yet it is a testimony to the gospel that it has looked so beautiful because all of those same reasons have torn churches up all over the place, especially during especially during those years. Now you write in the book something really interesting along these lines, that disagreement in the church might not be evidence that something’s gone wrong, but that something’s gone right. How can that be, Jamie?

Jamie Dunlop
Yeah, if, if you build a church where everybody agrees on everything, you won’t have as much conflict, and that will make for a really easy church. But as I mentioned, the book easy love really shows off gospel power. You know, it’s what Jesus told us to love even our enemies. That’s how we show ourselves to be sons of the Most High and so the fact that you have disagreement in your church is certainly evidence that we’re all sinners, and it may be evidence that things have gone terribly wrong. I just don’t want to jump to that assumption too quickly. Sometimes we get so discouraged by those disagreements, not realizing, if we look behind what’s what’s going on, we realize, ah, this only exists because we have, in fact, managed to build a church that’s centered on Christ alone, rather than Christ and the secondary matters, and it is now a wonderful stewardship we have as Christians to work our way through these disagreements, because this is what it looks like in a sinful world to build on Christ alone.

Collin Hansen
Jamie, do you ever talk with churches and try to help them understand the cultures that they can’t see? Let me give you a couple examples in here. So just in my own context, there’s one church that I know and love dearly, and it was hard for the people in that church to realize that they shared an underlying cultural assumption that people were upwardly mobile. And so as long as you were upwardly mobile in life, you fit in fine in this congregation. But of course, the pastor was never preaching, you know, an upwardly mobile gospel or anything like that, but often the contrary. I’ve also seen in in other con other situations, in my immediate context where you mentioned pioneers earlier, these are white Christians who are deeply involved in racial justice inner city situations, and they’ve attended African American churches that have been very welcoming to them, very happy to have them there. But in every case, the white couple or individual or family have underestimated how encultured they were to something else and how different that church really was and they weren’t able to make it work. Do you ever talk with churches or just advise them or help them to understand that? Because I think sometimes the strongest culture of a church is that which nobody from the inside even seems to notice.

Jamie Dunlop
Yeah, you know, you don’t see the water you swim in, you don’t you don’t see the air you breathe in. I think it’s important to recognize we actually have a whole Sunday school class about this. We teach once a year about, how can those in the minority love those in the majority? How can those. In the majority love those in the minority, and we intentionally to keep those categories vague, because I think everybody on some dimension is going to feel like I’m the one who doesn’t fit, and everybody on some dimensions give the one who does fit. I know it’s, it’s it’s not insightful, but I don’t know of a good way through that, other than good friendships of people who you don’t understand, yeah, initially, so that you can begin to understand them. And I think so often in the church, when I say to myself, How can you call yourself a Christian and whatever, if I have reason to believe these people are Christians. Namely, they’re members of my church. I should not see that is the end of the conversation. Like, that’s the rhetorical punchline I’m walking away, but an invitation to figure out, okay, how can you call yourself a Christian and act this way or speak that way? And sometimes, as I do that, I will, in fact, find that my initial inclinations were correct, and there’s a serious disparity between their profession of faith and their actions. But sometimes what I find as I enter into that conversation, oh, this is the piece I didn’t understand before, or this is the dynamic I hadn’t appreciated before, which is, I think, so useful, so is, is there a way to do that other than those who don’t fit in, becoming part of your church and building relationships? I don’t know if there’s much you can do beyond that, which means you want a church which is going to preach the gospel so clearly that those who love the gospel even though they don’t fit in, are you going to be compelled to join, and then the job of the majority is to lean forward and say, We want to embrace you. We want to be known and we want to know you.

Collin Hansen
Well, another quote that I love from the book you write this it’s those who share our faith yet disagree with us on non essential matters, who are often best positioned to protect us from error. I think that’s a step further from what you just said. It’s not just to help us in ways where we want to grow and improve, but it’s often essential to protect us from huge mistakes and even very explicit sins. And I have to, I cannot emphasize this point enough from a historical standpoint, when we look back and ask, How could these Christians have gotten this subject so wrong when we can see it so clearly in Scripture, what I often find Jamie is the common thread is those churches had people who shared the same social blind spots. So could you expand a little bit more on how disagreement on non essential matters helps protect us from error, even sin?

Jamie Dunlop
Yeah, well, I’ll work my way toward that, because I think what you described begins with the fact that people who disagree with me on non essential matters can encourage me, especially effectively, because they are often needing to trust Jesus in ways I don’t need to trust him. I gave the example in a book of you know two men from two different tribes in Nairobi that you know have a lot of antipathy in the past, in their history. And you know, the one guy’s daughter is Mary, and the other guy’s son, and that’s a really big deal for the man, for the minority tribe and the congregation around him is particularly impressed at his faith, of embracing this young woman, because she’s a sister in Christ, into his family, and they recognize, okay, you’re exercising faith in ways that we don’t need to. That’s particularly encouraging. And I bring the encouragement up Colin, because a significant part of being protected from error is being encouraged in the right direction. It’s being encouraged to see Jesus is enough. But in addition, I mean, how many times has you bring up the kind of the the unseen cultural assumptions that I bring into a church? How often is it the person who doesn’t share my culture who says, Hey, Jamie, what you’ve always thought of is just basic Christianity that’s actually a lot more your kind of educated, white, upper middle class upbringing, speaking, than it is your Christianity speaking. Let me help you kind of piece these apart fringes of people who disagree with me on secondary matters are really important to help continually to refine what about my motivations are. Can just be from the fact that I’m a Christian, and what is all this other baggage I bring into my Christian faith? So encouragement, yes and oxidation, both are particularly powerful when we discover a church where we honestly don’t share much in common, other than Jesus.

Collin Hansen
Talking here with Jamie Dunlop about “Love the Ones Who Drive You Crazy,” his new book with Crossway and 9Marks, Jamie, what’s the line between celebrating diversity and tolerating heresy? I see a good number of people who claim the former celebrating diversity so that they can get the latter, tolerating heresy.

Jamie Dunlop
Yeah, you know, it’s a book. You’ve mentioned the word diversity many times in the interview. It’s a book about diversity, not mainly ethnic diversity, but all kinds of diversity. And I think is, is 21st century evangelical Christians, we heard the word diversity. We are right to have our hair stand and end a little bit, because it is, you know, calls for unity amidst theological diversity that were kind of the way that the theologically liberal Bible, denying gospel, was snuck into the mainline churches. Exactly it was, you know, I think about Dr King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail to the white pastors of Birmingham, who were saying, we value unity more than speaking truth and justice. And he was right to call them out on that. So we failed in the 20s. We failed in the 50s and 60s. I think it’s appropriate for us to just be a little suspect of calls to unity amidst diversity based on the history of those two concepts, and yet the New Testament epistles do a whole bunch of calling for unity amidst diversity, and the diversity they assumed of these New Testament churches was quite profound. And so, as with so many different things, there’s no safe you can’t sort of fall to one side or the other. To play it safe, we have to recognize error on both sides. And so yes, there, there are churches who have decided for the sake of unity, to compromise on truths that, if not essential to the gospel today, are leading that direction. We have to be careful of that. We also have to recognize, and this is particularly tricky. Different churches will draw those lines in different places. You know, if I picture, you know, I’m in World War pre World War Two, Germany, and we’re going from seeing the Nazi Party as another political party to eventually seeing the Nazi Party as something that no Christian can compromise with. Well, different churches are going to draw those lines at different places along the way, and we need to recognize that’s a fact of life in a sinful world. And so you may find that your church is going to draw that line and say, a Christian cannot vote this way, or a church Christian cannot educate their kids this way, or Christian cannot act this way. And another church, which is also faithful to gospel across the street, is going to say, we’re not ready to draw that line yet. And those two churches can still have gospel unity despite drawing lines in different places. Which means, if you’re wondering, Hey, is this book going to tell me where to draw the line? It is not going to tell you where to draw the line. What it’s going to do is it’s going to say when you know a line doesn’t need to be drawn, but you’re still having trouble loving these people. Here are eight truths in the book of Romans to help you love them. But where you draw that line is where your elders are prayerfully having conversations together, talking to the church, trying to understand, what does it look like to be faithful in our context. If you’re wondering where that line is, I would say, ask your elders.

Collin Hansen
This is a plaintiff question, Jamie, when we get a more diverse church along the lines of the kind of diversity that you’re talking about in this book, do we become more likely to talk about Jesus than small talk about our hobbies?

Jamie Dunlop
Yes, because what else can you talk about? I was it’s funny. I wrote the whole book without thinking about this, but my wife’s very best friends literally shares nothing in common with her, and they got to know each other because my wife, 20 years ago, had just moved to Washington from San Francisco, didn’t know anybody, and her friend had just had a new baby, just dropped out of the workforce, and was kind of feeling lost herself, and they started going on walks together. But they are different in terms of their educational background. They are different in terms of the kind of politics they value. They are different in terms of ethnicity and where they grew up and all kinds of things. And I think the strength of the friendship has been because they don’t have much they share in common other than their shared commitment to Jesus Christ. So that’s what they talk about. And I promise you that. Jesus Christ is a much better foundation for friendship than your shared love of basketball. You can have friends where you are Christians and you love basketball. That’s fine. It’s fine for Christians to talk about basketball, but it’s not the same as Jesus, and so you may well find that those friendships in your church where you share the least in common, somewhat counterintuitively, have the potential to become your deepest friendships, precisely because you have nothing else to build on, other than the foundation of Christ. And those friendships will take longer to develop, and a little bit more patience is necessary, a little more charity. But wow, what a beautiful thing for us to aspire to.

Collin Hansen
I love that that’s a great place for us to end. My guest here on gospel bound has been Jamie Dunlop, his book love the ones who drive you crazy. Eight truths for pursuing unity in your church. Jamie, thank you very much.

Jamie Dunlop
Absolutely. It’s a pleasure, Collin. Thank you.