A few weeks ago someone preached about unity from Ephesians 4:1-13. How important that is for us at this time! Our new minister will be blessed by our unity, and with the eventual transition to a new youth minister, unity must be there to under-gird his work. But what do we mean by unity? What is the theology of unity?

One idea of unity is team spirit – we are all pulling together and encouraging one another. After all, we are a family in Christ. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, that is true. We need to pull together – this is really important and a good thing. These things need to be sensed and seen in CCY.

Unity is working together. How else can the church get things done? The church is portrayed as a body with all members working together, each using his gift for the common purpose of showing Christ to our community. A church has no personal dignity nor worth unless it is God’s people for this time and this place. We do have to show oneness in our working together.

But the theology of unity puts a different twist on it. In the middle of noting all the ones in Ephesians 4, Paul interjects different gifts given by Christ to bring us to the purpose of unity – to grow in faith and knowledge of Christ and attain a maturity in Christ, as individuals and a congregation. Faith is truth content – theology. Knowledge is experiential knowledge that comes through daily discipleship, as Philippians 3:10 says, "to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings and becoming like Him...." Notice in Ephesians 4:13 that this maturity in Christ comes by attaining. CCY works at it. That is our theme for the year, you know: To Be Like Him.

One of your shepherds –
Jim McWaters