1 – Unity in the Body derives from shared purpose.
To move in oneness, the Body must be completely representative of the Head in all its spiritual systems.
- Unity occurs top down, not feet first. The Body cannot simply follow around the feet if it is to fulfill purpose. The Head provides all the spiritual systems of the Body with unifying direction, coordination, and discipline. The exercise of individual systems produces strength and efficiency both in working as a system and working with the total Body.
- So, leadership in the Body prepares and positions individuals to personally excel in created destiny as well as shared purpose. Leaders don’t devise cunning systems copied from Olympic excellence or political models. Leaders discern created destinies and operate by blueprints from the Head. They do not allow individuals to create their destinies or produce their own sets of blueprints for systems that artificially operate like “church” instead of actually being authentic spiritual systems design and directed by the Head.
- Jesus, the Head, operates through leaders who prepare and position people to function. The term Paul uses in Ephesians 4, katartismon, speaks to the preparation that produces order and operation by positioning. As a leadership objective, in other words, “success” means that individual members of the Body are prepared to function in the position for which the Head created, called, and charismatically gifted them.
People are different “on purpose:” that is, Jesus creates people with varied destinies, but the destinies all fit perfectly into the shared purpose.
- No conflict can properly occur between what Jesus wants for the whole or any individual member. Imposing a system upon people, hammering them into a place for which they were not created or called or charismatically gifted produces great limitation upon spiritual life, grace, and function.
- Celebrating uniqueness is based upon discerning created disposition. Leaders differentiate between dynamics of personality that are foreign to what Jesus created individuals to be, areas of life that require transformational discipling and dynamics of personality hidden under the heavy wet moldy blankets of pride, rejection, shame, rebellion, curse, and darkness.
- Created destiny and shared purpose have no conflicts that the Cross cannot resolve through repentance, discipling, and endurance. Jesus provides the entire Body with discipling leadership because this application of redemption moves the whole Body closer to the completeness of the heavenly blueprint for the Ecclesia.
2 – Unity in the Body derives from mutual submission to the purpose that honors the uniqueness of each member because the created destiny of the individual members answers to a greater shared purpose for the whole.
Honor releases anointing.
- Honor appropriates and makes available what the Head has sent and honors the Head who created, called, and charismatically gifted. Honor values equally what is not equal: that is, honor does not make everyone equal but equally honors what is diverse, different, and distinguishable by Design.
- Blueprint leaders discern created destiny in ways that value the living stones, seeing within the stones, the finished product that fits the building. Blueprints leaders develop the individual members with shared purpose in mind that the maturing member functions with greater unity in the shared purpose, and all the systems of the Body benefit from this greater maturity. In this way, the whole Body matures as individual members mature.
3 – Unity in the Body derives from leadership dynamics that prepare and position members to function within the blueprinted spiritual systems of the Body.
In order to properly prepare and position individual members, leaders must have a blueprint understanding of the whole and how individuals function.
- In order for them to produce an effective and efficient systematic matrix, they must discern both individual destinies and shared purposes. Of course, not everyone has the blueprints or has a full set of blueprints. In fact, no one has a full set of blueprints but the Father. Even the Son has the blueprints given to Him by the Father, blueprints to which He is working toward fuller restoration of the Father’s purposes.
- When we speak of “territorial assignments or authority,” we are properly discussing the scope or sphere of leadership assignment any kingdom leaders has been given. Yet, in that assignment the end result of the assignment has to do with the development of kingdom leaders, the preparation and positioning of individual with in that scope or sphere so they can function in the Ecclesia to both take the land and possess the land.
Leaders with a scope of kingdom assignment that includes a region or nation will also have that level of authority and power.
- The amazing levels of endowment, however, arrive to assist them in the preparation and positioning of kingdom citizens called together into assembly to accomplish shared purpose. They are gifted to serve the greater share purpose, and they measure “success” in their preparation and positioning of people.
- Their “success” isn’t measurable by the accumulation of believers, on the one hand, or upon the accumulation of people who can “do the stuff,” on the other. The preparation of a hundreds of people to flop around like a hand or roll around like an eye or be carried on the wind like a severed ear doesn’t accomplish anything in terms of the finished blueprint until prepared people are properly positioned to produce purpose.
4 – Unity in the Body derives from abundance available to the whole and individuals so that none prospers at the expense of another when each is properly prepared and position to operate.
While times of emphasis may send more resources to one region or part of the Body for healing or strength, given a particular moment of function that emphasizes that region or part of the Body, the overall abundance guarantees that no one part suffers while others prosper.
- If one member prospers, he never does so at the expense of other members. The Ecclesia lives in abundance of grace, the enabling capacities provided by Holy Spirit so that spiritual systems never run out of resources.
- When the Body operates in spiritual unity, all the members are properly supplied. That supply is not equal, cannot be equal, should not be equal, but it is always appropriate to individual destiny and shared purpose. To speak into the metaphor, the blood supply to the digestive system increases when processing nourishment, increases to the extremities when cold threatens the skin, or increases to major muscle groups when strenuous exercise occurs. Resting pulse and running pulse differ by demand. Ears never receive the blood flow that legs and arms demand.
Unity is equality of destiny.
- The preparation and positioning of individually created and sent parts the Head knows are needed for the blueprint construction and operation of the Body produces unity. Members do not prepare and position themselves because they lack blueprints, because the Head has a strategy for the preparation and positioning of people. The penchant to cry for position must be surrendered and personal destiny must be submitted.
- The highest of personal destiny cannot be realized apart from the whole because the Creator designed that destiny for a place in His Body.
5- -Unity in the Body derives from love based upon trust that sustains hope. Without trust, love compensates for its vulnerability.
“Faith, hope, and love continue but the greatest of these is love.”
- Without hope, love turns inward. Without love, trust and hope become selfish. Both trust and hope empower love. Love is measurable because love matures. Love is observable because love has consequences and behaviors. Love is personal because it responds to the love of the Father. Terms like ‘mature’ and ‘appropriate’ are validly applied to love.
- To value another part of the Body, embracing the fullness of that member’s worth is a choice. Within itself, this wouldn’t be enough, however, to produce and sustain the systems of the Body. Trust built through sustained submission provides for maturity in love, stability in love. Then, hope becomes a shared value instead of a personalized motto or goal. Love disciplines so love matures; love from outside a person arrives to mature the love of the person loved so that the relationship between leader and follower grows. Then, individual members have greater capacity for love, trust, and hope.
- That is, individual members maintain passion for shared purpose, not just for individual achievement at the expense of the whole Body. To begin with love as a foundational motivation, begin with the love of the Creator who created, called, and charismatically gifted. The basis for our love is His love, so all the summation of His expectations arrives at loving God totally so that love of others and ourselves comes from Him.
Love is sacrifice.
- Love is treasure. When given to another, love is sacrifice. Love never demands expectation be fulfilled as basis for its investment, but love always has expectations. The concept of “unconditional love” doesn’t negate the expectations of love because love’s expectations speak to its passion desire for the object of love to prosper in what the Creator created them to be and do.
- To define “unconditional love” as “I just love you” represents immature love that answers back to a need inside you more than a shared passion with the Father for people. The Father’s love has expectations, the “unconditional” aspect can be seen in the eternal perseverance of love for those expectations: “No matter what you do, you cannot destroy your destiny so that I have no power to redeem and restore it.”
Unity is Not Unifying
Unity is not learning how to get along. Unity requires agreement. “Can two walk together except they agree?” Obvious, two cannot walk together very long is one is walking to New Orleans while the other is walking to New York. Unity divides. Unity differentiates. Unity derives from shared purpose, so that unity of purpose alone can properly define unity. Immediately leaders set about to fulfill a purpose by the preparation and positioning of people to produce purpose, as Jesus designed the Ecclesia, those leaders produce division in order to arrive at unity.
While this strikes strong, thunderous blows at “the accumulation of believers” definition of “church,” it immediately provides for kingdom leadership dynamics to function efficiently and effectively.
Apply the concept to love. I don’t love everybody. God does but I don’t. I don’t know everybody, encounter everybody, or experience everybody. God does but I don’t.
Traveling internationally, I am always struck by this thought: “There are a lot of people in the world that I don’t know.” I will never know them. It doesn’t mean I hate them or devalue them. I don’t know them so I can’t love them.
Jesus doesn’t say, “Love everybody.” He knows better. He specifies how love functions: “Love God with All. Love yourself. Love your neighbor. Love your enemies.” Then, Jesus illustrates who a “neighbor is” and how to “love your neighbor” by the famous Good Samaritan story.
To the point of unity – unity in like manner isn’t “everybody.” Unity is about shared purpose. Amazing effort and money has been thrown away attempting to get everybody to unify when unity isn’t unifying. Unity is clarifying, and love allows for that clarification. That is, I can love you when you aren’t in unity with my purpose and I’m not in unity with yours. I cannot give myself to every purpose under heaven to show unity without failing miserably at the assignment Jesus has given me.
“But,” you say, “We are all doing the same thing! We all have the same purpose. Don’t we?” Nope. We do not.
We have unique individual destinies that require kingdom leadership dynamics for preparation and positioning in order for them to fulfill their eternal purposes. Unity arrives through the submission of what God has created, called, and charismatically gifted to His kingdom blueprint, functioning properly within His Ecclesia. “He who calls you will cause it to happen.”
In conclusion, Ecclesia clarifies shared assignment. The place or position for which you are prepared comes from God. Not you. Not leaders. From the Head. From the kingdom, He calls together into assembly. That is Ecclesia. Those living stones in those Ecclesia’s are called together by Him as well. Obeying His call means responding to a place of assignment, and that assignment will have leaders. You are called to a shared purpose. You called to align with leaders for your shared assignment. You are called to submit your created destiny, calling, and charismatic gifts to that assignment, to be prepared and positioned by those leaders, to fit and function in His Body.
