FCS Blog

Unity in Christ

I was reading Ephesians 4 the other day which is about unity in the church.
4 I, therefore, the prisoner [a]of the Lord, [b]beseech you to walk worthy of the calling

with

which you were called, 2 with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing
with one another in love, 3 endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your
calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all,

and through all, and in [c]you all.

I thought that most if not all of the principles of the chapter could be applied to a school
as well. In Ephesians 4, it talks about how the church (we’ll say school) should keep its
unity in the Spirit of the bond of peace. Or in other words, it’s unity of purpose. Just like
the church, we are to keep, not create our unity in the purpose to disciple our kids to be
future Christ followers who are also good at math and english and all the subjects. God

gives us a spirit of unity. It is our job to keep it.

We have probably all at one time or another in our lives been on a team of some kind
where you could see a unity of purpose and others where you just existed. I was once
on a summer baseball team that lost 44 out of 48 games and 2 of those wins came
before I even got there. We, to say the least, did not work together towards one goal.
I’ve also been a part of other teams where every player worked together to achieve
excellence. My first year as a head baseball coach, I inherited a team of kids who were
really talented, but also loved being around each other. There was almost no jealousy
and everyone played their role to their best ability whether they agreed with it or not. I
even had one almost blind kid that kept the book who played fewer than five innings all
year and never complained. But when we won the state championship, nobody on the
team made him feel less important than anyone else. We ended up winning the State
Championship the next year as well because those kids were unique in their character

of purpose and their love for each other.

One of the other principles Ephesians 4 goes on to say is how God gives us gifts such
as being apostles, prophets, evangelists, and some preachers and teachers.
Interestingly, he lumped the final two preachers and teachers together. We are not only
to be just teachers of our subject, but to be preachers who shepherd our students to live
for Jesus. Like a great team, we are to use our gifts and work together to achieve

something great for the students God has given us.