Owen Hylton recently wrote an excellent paper for the Bible Society on the subject of The Reconciled Church. Owen is pastor of Beacon Church in Brixton, London, UK and author of Crossing The Divide: A Call To Embrace Diversity (Nottingham: IVP, 2009). He has also spoken at numerous ChristCentral and Newfrontiers events on similar subjects.

The paper begins by asserting that Reconciled Churches are not just churches which are diverse. We can find diversity in all sorts of different groups and organisations. Owen mentions for example football and how over recent years the England team have demonstrated real progress in the area of representation and uniting the many ethnic groups we have across England. Yet players continue to experience racism on and off the pitch.

It’s clearly not enough for us to simply be a diverse group of people with a common goal, diversity needs to go deeper than this. The biblical picture of diversity shows a gracious act of a sovereign God. Its purpose is to ultimately bring glory to God through reconciling and unifying peoples from every tribe, tongue, people and nation. This act is a sign that Jesus was indeed sent from God (John 17.21) and he becomes the great unifier for all those who believe. The Church needs to actively and intentionally embrace this vision and remember that the world has no equivalent means to bring such unity.

You can read the full paper here: https://cccw.onl/3E0w1Tb