This morning, I’m going to a luncheon for one my clients, the Colorado Christian Business Alliance. I consider CCBA my first legitimate client at Envoi Creative, the online presence company I started in March 2015. At this luncheon, a guy is going to record me answering the question, “Why should Christians work together?” I didn’t really know what to say, so I thought I’d write it out first.

Why should Christians work together?

In the very first chapters of human history, God created something called a vocation.
In doing so, he asked the first people to cultivate a garden.
To call each strange new living thing by name.
To discover new things, and having learned them,
to help new generations discover these things anew.

This vocation included boundaries. Saying no to certain things
in order to say yes to better things.
Making vowed commitments to one another so each one could live in safety and security
without having to strive or perform.

God’s goal was not for men and women to try to be like God. In fact, they already were, just by virtue of being themselves. In fact, to be like God was the goal of the serpent. To reject God’s garden and build up a factory that would allow the serpent to rule apart from God. This was not God’s goal, because this goal, although productive in one sense, lead to loneliness and abuse and power struggles and death.

God’s goal was not for men and women to try to be like him. No, his goal was just for them to be with him.

Together.

In John chapter 17, God became like man. In fact, it was in this chapter of history when he is most clearly human. He is afraid. He is desperate. He is looking for any way but God’s way to go about things. Of course, he does not ever turn from God’s ways even in this time. Which is why we can view his words with certainty that they are the words God Himself would say.

In John chapter 17, God, who became a man, prayed to God. He prayed for, well, us. Christians. Not just the ones he interacted with in that time, but even those way in the future, He said. Of all the things he could pray for, he prayed for one thing.

One.

That we would be
one.
The kind of oneness that God the Son
has with God the Father
has with God the Spirit.

That we would be
one
with God,
And that we would be
one
with one
another.

At two of the most significant points in history —
the beginning of humanity,
and the victory of humanity —
we see two things God has called us to:

A vocation
And unity.

That is why Christians should work together.