Letter #3 - Unity in Church

September 26, 2014

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

I want to thank you so much for your prayers, and especially as I go through the most difficult times. As I travel through the valley of the shadow of death, your prayers mean so much more to me.

I want to take this opportunity from my hospital bed to share another core value of our church that is dear to my heart: to preserve and foster the unity of our church.  Please forward this to those in our church who may not be on the google group mailing lists.

For example, in our church, you would see right away that there are three different language congregations. We need people who are willing to cross over language groups.

This effort toward unity in our relationships must be intentional. Crossing cultural and linguistic differences is a missions mentality.

Some of you may notice that during prayer meetings, I intentionally make it a point to spend some time praying with each of the three language groups, which is symbolic of my commitment to illustrate this mindset of unity. In the past, the prayer meetings were primarily in English.  Starting in 2014, we have language translation during the prayer meeting, and if possible, some part of the meeting in each language, to foster unity and participation of all language groups. 

We need some among us to cross over the language difference. This may mean using another language (broken or well-spoken) instead of your most comfortable language depending on who you are speaking to. Speaking in the other person's language is one way of counting “others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4 ESV)

For all, are you willing to cross over in friendship?  This may mean learning a few words of another language, like a greeting or "how are you" words.  Or perhaps you need to cross not a language difference, but a socioeconomic difference, or a generational difference, or a difference in marital/family status. A good example is for some of you younger people to simply to say a friendly hello to one of our elderly.

Our unity in our diversity reflects Jesus Christ to the world.  The second most important commandment is to "love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:31 ESV).

As our Lord Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35 ESV) This love for one another is the hallmark of discipleship.

God bless. 

Pastor To