Must We All Get Along?
In His grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well.
Romans 12:6 Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free.
1 Corinthians 12:13 How strange a body would be if it had only one part!
1 Corinthians 12:19 Allow me to imagine what heaven must have been like when God was bringing the earth into existence. Out of a timeless infinity, the Creator of everything stepped into time and started painting from a limitless palette. We know from Genesis that God merely spoke and things happened.
I wonder what it was like to have been an angel watching all this happen, especially on the days when God created birds, fish, and animals. Imagine the whirlwind of color and excitement: “Look, there’s one with red wings and a blue tail, and one with green feathers and a yellow head.”
“Oh my. That one in the water has purple stripes, eyes that bug out, and a tail that flips up and down rather than back and forth.”
“Can you believe all the different things He created to eat? Some are sweet, and some are sour. Have you heard about the banana? It’s yellow, and you can’t eat the skin the way you can an apple.”
My point is that God “went wild” and created a world full of diversity. The variety is almost endless. Even today, scientists are finding new plants, animals, and other living things they didn’t even know about before.
It’s no different with God’s most-favored creation. Scripture says each of us was knit together in our mother’s womb. The God whose imaginative power fills museums with countless species of butterflies made every human being unique.
It’s not just our fingerprints and DNA that set us apart; it’s our personalities—our souls. There is not another person on the planet who is exactly like you.
When I was doing the research for this chapter, I was struck by the amount of attention Paul focuses on this idea of diversity, of being different. One of the apostle’s recurring themes is that God made each of us different and that we are subsequently made one through the Spirit of God.
Paul never argues for us to ignore our uniqueness but to use the strength of our diversity for the benefit of all.
Different, But With the Same Objectives
Near the end of John’s Gospel he records a long prayer in which Christ entreats God the Father to bring unity among His followers (see John 17). He doesn’t ask God to make them all the same but rather asks that they would have the same objectives despite their diversity.
It’s impossible to know the mind of Jesus, but I sometimes wonder whether He might have been thinking of Matthew and Simon, two of His handpicked disciples. Matthew had been a governmental tax collector—the very symbol of Roman oppression over the Jews in Palestine. Simon was a member of the Zealots, a radical political group dedicated to the violent overthrow of Rome.
If Jesus was so committed to unity among His followers, why did He handpick two men of such opposing perspectives as part of His inner circle? Why invite the disagreements that certainly must have occurred between Simon and Matthew? I’ll bet there were some doozies.
Jesus knew that populating a team with differing opinions and experiences is the best way to take advantage of the power of God’s creative genius. We aren’t all created different because God became bored with one model and decided to try something else. We are diverse because God, in His infinite wisdom, knows that our differences will add to the mosaic in tangible ways that no other combination of personalities can.
The Purpose of a Contrary View
If your team sings “Kumbaya” at every meeting, you have a problem. If two or more people always agree on everything, at least one of them is redundant.
Peter and Paul disagreed fiercely over issues facing the early church, and yet God blessed them both. Lack of diversity results in incestuous amplification, a situation in which people with shared opinions and perspectives feed off one another and become convinced that their ideas are the correct ones. Without the benefit of a contrary view, members of the group amplify their positions to unreasonable, and often tragic, conclusions.
Why do we always assume that disagreements will end in division? Demanding that everyone share similar views is an affront to the creativity of the One who made us different in the first place.
What criteria do you have for selecting members of your team? Look around the table. On a scale with diversity at one end and sameness on the other, how does your team stack up? Do you have a Matthew and a Simon?
In Acts 13:13, we read that John Mark left the company of Paul and Barnabas and returned to Jerusalem. There’s speculation as to why, but what you don’t see is God’s displeasure at what may have been a difference of opinion. Both Paul and John Mark were blessed with full ministries, and their writings are part of the Scripture we read today. If they didn’t march along to the beat of the same drum, there’s no reason to require the members of your team to do so.
When was the last time someone on your team was passionately opposed to one of your ideas?
When you put an important team together, look for people who don’t come from the same place as you. Hire from outside your industry. Instead of asking, “So, are we all in agreement on this?” look around the room and challenge someone to disagree: “Come on, there must be at least one of you who has a different idea.”
If the ideas coming from your leadership team are feeling a bit cold, remember that friction creates heat.
Taken from Leadership RE:Vision by Jim Seybert. Copyright © 2009 by Jim Seybert. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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KeVin
Killiany
Wilmington, NC
Thank you for this article. It is both illuminating and useful -- it provides an insight into Scripture and gives us (or reminds us of) tools for doing God's work.