McLean Bible Church Blog

By Julie Stoll, former Director of MBC Missions

Yes, cake! A baker takes strikingly different ingredients, mixes them in a certain order, and when heat is applied over time, you get a chemical change. A new entity exists. Not just a bunch of ingredients thrown together to make a mixed salad where all the individual characteristics of the vegetables can be separated again. No. A cake is an organically changed, new composition. One can’t recognize the original ingredients anymore, yet each ingredient is absolutely essential to the new creation. Unity is like cake! This new thing is beautiful to behold, tastes heavenly, and actually will draw people to the table. Few are not attracted to a fresh cake. That, my friend, is unity. When you see true unity, you recognize it as rare and desirable.

A highly diverse, multiethnic group or nation is usually characterized by conflict and disunity. Our own government representatives haven’t been a model of agreement. The United Nations isn’t always so united. Peace hasn’t exactly broken out worldwide. Peoples are in constant disunity—within families, communities and on national and international levels. Why? Because true unity is supernatural and is ultimately based on forgiveness and reconciliation. Only our great Triune God can unify. He alone is the master baker.

He is demonstrating this to the world as the Global Body of Christ emerges as a model of multiethnic unity. When empowered by the Holy Spirit, we, His body, are able to demonstrate His attributes and operate in true brotherly love. We are mandated to put on the perfect bond of unity, which is His love (Colossians 3:14). It cements His living stones (1 Peter 2:5) together, even though many of us are from distant quarries. Our love and unity becomes our main witness of God’s character and power. That is how people will see that we are His disciples, by our love … and our unity becomes our witness to a fragmented world.

So, as we talk about multiplying and evangelistic outreach, how intentional are we in pursuing multiethnic unity as an evangelistic tool to draw a desperately divided community? Can others see us as one united local church, indeed one Global Body, participating in God’s great commission to disciple all nations? Have we lost ourselves yet in abandoned surrender to become His cake?

“I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity, to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17:23­­­­

Julie is speaking at a breakout session at the MBC Women’s Conference in March. Sign up for the conference and breakout session while a few spots remain.