I wish we could blame the COVID-19 pandemic, political derision, and social anxiety for all of the church’s challenges. But the real culprit is our basic humanness. And the church is full of people. And last time I checked, people are a complexity of differing beliefs, identities, personalities, communication styles, cognitions, and so much more. So we are heterogeneous creatures made in the image of God’s great complexity.

Of course, our diverse characteristics are something we must celebrate about how God designed us with such diversity, perspectives, and experiences. Our humanness comes in so many different shapes and forms.

While we can celebrate our heterogeneity, we also have to recognize the challenges that come with it. Human beings are fashioned with an array of emotional, psychological, physiological, and social mechanisms for dealing with ourselves, others, and the world around us.

A natural byproduct of heterogeneity is conflict. At the heart of what we think is political division, theological disagreement, culture wars, and desired rightness over biblical interpretation is our inability to understand what makes us all unique and different. As social creatures, we often allow our differences to create emotional, communicative, and social gaps between us.

I led a panel conversation at CBF North Carolina’s Annual Gathering on “Why Investing in Healthy Congregational Relationships = Flourishing.” The group featured clergy and laity from different expressions of churches, including Sarah Blackwell (lay leader) and Dane Jackson (Minister with Students and Their Families) of Providence Baptist, Charlotte, Becky Bryant (lay leader) and DeNeal Fowler (Minister of Invitation and Hospitality) of Ardmore Baptist, Winston-Salem, and Brooke Nugent (lay leader) and Stephanie Parker (Pastor of Children and Families) of First Baptist, Clayton.

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Andy Hale is the creator and host of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Podcast. Hale is the Associate Executive Coordinator of CBF North Carolina. He’s also served as CBF’s Church Start Specialist, the founding pastor of Mosaic Church of Clayton, and the senior pastor of University Baptist Church of Baton Rouge. Follow on Twitter @haleandy.