Being a Diverse Church in a Divided Culture

There are a lot of things that I love about our church.I love the emphasis on accurate and practical Biblical teaching. I love the God-honoring and powerful worship music that is led by musicians who live out their faith. I love the stories of transformed lives I get to witness on almost a weekly basis. I love the family atmosphere––the genuine friendliness and sincere welcome that new people sense when they start attending. But more than anything, I love you…the people.One of the things that makes the people of our church so special is that it is the most diverse church I have ever attended. We have grown and we are growing in all segments of society. We have young and old, kids and senior citizens, white collar and blue collar, people from all different religious backgrounds and many with none. We have accents from multiple primary languages: Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Middle Easterners, Indians, and Eastern Europeans. We have people from virtually every ethnic group in every service. And the cool thing is,  when you look around the lobby before and after church, they are integrated and mixed. They say that Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the world. Not so at The Bridge. At The Bridge, cultures, ages, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds are linked together by Jesus. We haven’t arrived as a diversity utopia, but The Bridge screams “We love and celebrate our differences!"But things are not that way in our world around us. I’m not sure I’ve ever known a more divided time in this country. The division between blacks and whites seem higher than at the height of desegregation. I’ve never seen this level of animosity against immigrants and vice versa, or such stated discord between urbanites and suburbanites, and between rich and poor.So how does a diverse church like The Bridge function in the midst of this kind of division and enmity between people groups?We recognize that in the darkest of times, light has the greatest opportunity to make a difference.I wish things were better in the world. But how could they be? Conditions might improve for a time, but eventually the sinfulness that is a very real problem for all people, will corrupt the best environments. It’s the natural outcome of being separated from our Creator.But in the church, it's supposed to be different. Our loyalty isn’t to a race or language or political party or even a nation. It’s to the God who rescued us from all of that and gave us a much higher purpose and a far greater reason for living. We’ve been unified by something that is much more powerful than nationalism or cultural affinity. We’re united by blood––the blood of Jesus Christ! We have more than the brotherhood of man, we are siblings of Jesus.So in this divided age filled with anger, vindictiveness, and animosity, we get to be God’s beacon of unity, displaying before the world how our Creator intended diversity to be celebrated and enjoyed. We will not let this world's divisiveness infect our unity. We will not allow Satan, the great divider, dissect the body of Christ.Here at The Bridge, we intend to continue to cross every cultural divide, and thereby provide for the rest of the world the hope that they desperately need.