Jesus prayed His followers would be one, like the Father and He are one (John 17) describing deep, intimate friendship, or theologically, unity. In that prayer He is clear that building unity will cause people to recognize Jesus as God’s Son. Unity is evangelistic in witness to a divided world and in power, since we see God using it to do more than anyone had ever considered.

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While there are wonderful examples of that unity in the Church today, most of us operate in networks that tend to align to race, ethnicity, class, sex, age, and politics. Sometimes this is the byproduct of something ugly, and sometimes it's for practical reasons. But in either case, it’s not what Jesus prayed for and is not different than society. To have the unity for which Christ prayed, we must disadvantage ourselves to build bridges across divides that have no place in the Church.