The way in which the Spirit of unity brings his people to a level of maturity where they are able to look beyond themselves, laugh at their differences, and dwell on the importance of listening to one another continues to amaze me.

Have you heard a pastor of a church emerging from a Classical Pentecostal tradition asking questions about spiritual formation? Have you seen the words of Henri Nouwen printed on the bulletins of such churches? I saw all that this past weekend. For me, there was a phenomenal beating of the heart.

I am witnessing a tremendous coming together of various streams of Christian spirituality, which I never saw when I was younger in my ministerial journey. I never thought that a “mainline Christian” like myself would one day be found preaching amidst the people who jump, who play loud music, and who lift their hands when they hear the preacher say something that “speaks to them” – the people who love God.

And for all the “depth” my mainstream tradition claims to possess, I see these people, and I observe a passion to rekindle in my own journey towards the partaking of the divine. I hear the stories they tell one another, as if God was working in their midst in the here-and-now, and I realise how this dimension of the Spirit’s work has often been missing in the circles I’m familiar with. And it dawns on me, how dull it would have been if everyone’s spirituality had looked exactly like mine.

The spirit of self-critique is one that speaks of humility, one which brings us into a greater magnitude of depth. It speaks of self-awareness, understanding where we have come from that we may know how to move forward in our spiritual journey. And it is empowering when we meet others like ourselves who, in being different, also ask questions which reflect the same concern about things that matter in the Christian journey.

True unity is not about reducing everything to a lowest common denominator. It is also not about avoiding discussions on our differences when we come together. True unity is when we are at real liberty to express the richness of our diversity in contribution to the beauty of the larger whole. It is when we are able to come together and perform the different and yet magnificent expressions of our dance of life together, so that all of these expressions result in the artistic reflection of what the divine dance of life must look like.