These days, it’s hard to avoid the divisive rancor that characterizes so much of our public life. In times of deep contention, how can church leaders equip people to bear witness to the gospel in a deeply convictional way, yet still be a source of unity—so that their communities can continue to grow and multiply? Navigating these turbulent times is no easy task for anyone in leadership.
I am not a pastor, but this is a question that I contend with all the time in my role as a university professor and the director of an institute charged with (among other things) trying to bridge divides in our campus community. The unprecedented levels of polarization in our society have tempted me to throw up my hands, achieving peace simply by avoiding the most contentious topics.
But working on this book, “Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in the American Church,” made me realize how important it was not to give in to the temptation to avoid the hardest issues.
The book traces the journey of four congregants at the Crossroads church in Cincinnati, Ohio—two men, one Black and one white, and two women, one Black and one white—who were all part of a racial justice program called Undivided in 2016. They each became animated to take on the work of contesting racism but then had to grapple with inevitable backlash from their friends, family, workplaces and, at times, their church community. They were each tested in their conviction to take faith-filled risks for racial justice—and none of them came away unchanged. Neither did I.
One of the core lessons that emerges from “Undivided” is that leaders play a crucial role in designing the settings within which people learn to take on the risks that can come with bearing witness to the gospel in word and deed. Too often, we think about the challenge of discipling people as a challenge solely of individual development—what business people might call a “demand-side” problem (as in cultivating the demand among people to live a life consistent with the teachings of Jesus). But programs like Undivided teach us that is only half the challenge.
The other half is the “supply-side” problem—how do we design and distribute the opportunities people have to practice bearing witness to the teachings of the gospel? Living a convicted life can be hard work, especially on issues as divisive as race in America. Most people are not born with the capabilities they need to do it. In the same way that people need gyms to develop their physical muscles, people need gyms to develop the muscles they need to live lives of faith.
But we all know that some gyms are better than others. By paying careful attention to the social and structural conditions in the community they created, Undivided was able to create a “supply” of opportunities that pushed people to become more courageous in their commitment.
Two design principles are worth noting here. First, they created communities of radical belonging, creating the social conditions that made people feel safe enough to ask hard questions, try new things, and come to own the work of racial justice as their own. Undivided organized people into intentional mixed-race groups and spent a significant amount of time helping people develop bonds of trust and relationship. Those small groups became ground zero in shaping a new set of behaviors amongst people in Undivided.
Second, they scaled the work through a honeycomb structure that connected small groups operating at a human scale to each other. Linking those groups to each other allowed the work in those groups to have larger ripple effects through the community in ways that enabled it to bend without breaking under the weight of disagreement.
