Where Are The Real Christians? Unity That Endures Ep 29

Unity sounds beautiful until it’s tested by grief, injustice, and the pressure to keep quiet. We open up about the difference between cosmetic diversity and courageous unity, tracing a biblical arc from God’s promise to bless all nations to Revelation’s vision of every tribe and tongue. Along the way, we unpack how politicized faith and silence around race fracture communities, why lament is a necessary muscle for spiritual maturity, and what it takes to move from disillusionment to honest, embodied love.

Collin Packer shares hard-won wisdom on solidarity—showing up before we have perfect words, standing beside neighbors when systems fail, and refusing to use “unity” as a tool to protect the status quo. We talk about the moments when leadership stays quiet and people of color feel abandoned, the spiritual bypassing that replaces lament with positivity, and the pain of friendships where race is never named. We also recover the deeper meaning of hospitality, philoxenos—love of the stranger—and how curiosity, presence, and shared power make churches resilient when crisis hits.

You’ll hear practical ways to build multiethnic community that can hold tension: craft liturgies of lament, believe people’s stories even when they unsettle you, engage in public advocacy, and practice the ministry of presence. Most of all, you’ll be invited to a simple, daring prayer: “God, help me see the city as you see it.” If this conversation challenges you, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review telling us where you’ve seen real solidarity show up. Your voice helps this message reach those who need it most.

Connect with Collin Packer of LTR Ministries https://ltrministries.com/.

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Transcript

Stepping Away And Speaking Up

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I stepped away from that in 2021 after uh raising these issues about racial injustice and really my suburban white church, it was a challenge to raise those things. They saw me on the TV cameras as we were walking through that trial, as I spoke up about George Floyd in particular. And so it was a choice for me at the time. Am I going to lower my voice and love these people a long way to see things better? We certainly need people to make that more patient decision. But for me, in the midst of the calling, it was a, it was not a time I felt like I could be silent. And so I've stepped away and since then I've done uh several different roles. But right now I'm it's taken three years at this point, really, for me to walk away from that experience of pain of feeling like I was speaking to the gospel and having white Christians not receive the message I was trying to help them see. And the pain of that, and the, you know, not wanting to go back to those spaces, but realizing that's the space I'm called to.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

I friends, this is Kelly Johnson, and you're listening to a bonus episode of In the Flow. This is where I step outside of our normal season themes to share what God is placing on my heart. Sometimes a story, sometimes a prayer, but always spirit-led. If you're new here, make sure to check out past episodes and full seasons where we go deep on themes that really matter. And don't forget, you can also watch the video version of In the Flow on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a beat.

Host Intro And Part Two Setup

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Now let's get into the flow together. Welcome back to part two of my conversation with Colin Packer. If you haven't listened to part one yet, I really encourage you to go back where we laid the foundation by talking honestly about the pain, confusion, and spiritual disorientation that many of us are experiencing. In this episode, we pick up the conversation with a more zoomed-out view, diving into the church's role, the impact of politicized faith, and how to move from disillusionment into spiritual maturity and alignment with the kingdom.

What Biblical Unity Looks Like

SPEAKER_01 2:02

I would love to get your perspective on how do you see that? How do you see biblical unity? What does that maybe look like biblically and practically today?

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yeah. Well, we can talk all day about a Bible study and like a theological trajectory of what scripture gives us because it is like uh God, you know, through the Exodus story and through the Genesis mandate to Abram, there is this sense that God's gonna bless all nations. He works particularly through the the Hebrews and the Israelites, you know, early on, through Abram and his family as they uh go on to the promised land and so forth and have their own failures. Uh, but we see in Jesus a calling back together. And and Jesus interacts certainly in synagogues, but he's also interacting with people that are outside of the Jewish faith, and there's a larger picture. But you know, I look to the end of the scriptures in Revelation 7, 9 about a picture of when people of every tribe, tongue, and language are together praising God. Um, and that's what we long for one day. And it's not our current reality, but I think unity in that conversation is a conversation about how do we begin to put on display God's future in this present moment. There was a sermon I heard one time by a guy named Will Willeman. And in that sermon, he gave an image that has just stuck with me in this conversation. And it is about, he talks about the flames of heaven, which is not how we often think about, we think about the flames of hell. But he says, you know, for some who've nurtured racism in their lives, the flames of heaven may be hotter than the flames of hell, the sense that every tribe, tongue, and language is gonna be in the new heavens of the new earth in God's redeemed world. But if you've been nurturing your whole life this animosity toward other groups, if you've not begun to build into this unity that the church should be putting on display that so often we fall short of, then we're not really prepared for the kind of heaven that's gonna be this multi-racial, multi-ethnic picture that God has always been about from Genesis 12 of blessing all nations. And we see that beautiful picture in Acts chapter two of that reality. And so, how do we begin in this current moment not to wait on heaven for that to happen, but in this current moment begin to put on display God's future in the present? We are the ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven, that we lean into that picture. And so I would love for us to have more multiracial and multi-ethnic churches, but also know that the reason the black church exists is because of racism in the white church. So we have to be honest about that history to know we don't just have a church, we have different ethnic churches as a result of racism that has played itself out in our world. But I think there are ways that we can overcome that. There are ways we can come together, certainly in our service and advocacy and allyship together in moments. And I think also we see a picture of a growing multi-ethnic church. But what uh what we've also found uh in our ministry is that often in this desire to see diversity, in this desire to have a multi-ethnic church, sometimes that it's not multi-ethnic in leadership, it's not multi-ethnic in culture, privilege and supremacy can still interact in those faces. I think we saw this in key moments over the last decade or so where people thought they were sharing communion together, they were sharing unity in the spirit together. But when it came to a particular moment, uh, nothing was said from the pulpit. And that was really harmful and painful. Kelly, I heard you talk about that on the last uh podcast as you were talking about this is how painful that's been for you and your story. And I think what we're trying to help people lean into is diversity is a beautiful thing. We want to see more of it. But what the white church needs to

Diversity Without Shared Power

SPEAKER_00 5:24

focus on in this moment is learning. It's a posture of humility and curiosity, but is also solidarity. Solidarity. Standing beside people in those moments. And that was the opportunity that I got to step into when both of them was murdered in the city of Dallas. His pastor, Sammy Berry at the Dallas West uh church, he reached out to me and he said, Colin, we're going to city council. They're trying to sweep this case under the carpet. It would mean the world to have a multi-ethnic, multi-racial uh group come to city council and make sure they do the right thing, at least bring this to grand jury. And so I called up some of my uh white pastor friends, and there were about six of us that showed up that day, and it made a difference. There were some that were struggling with. Can I do that? I want to see exactly what's going to be said because I'm going to be representing my church. And what I had to say to those leaders is look, I know you want to have answers to all these questions. We as white people are used to having the microphone and crafting the announcement. But in this moment, solidarity looks like showing up without having uh all the language and the words, because this is what it looks like to stand beside our brothers and sisters in Christ that are hurting right now. And so I think what we've seen is a failure of solidarity over the last uh decade in particular, as we've seen churches become more diverse, but then lose that diversity because in the moment we're needing solidarity most, it's not showing up. We're not seeing the allyship show up. We're we're hearing the story like you shared in South Africa, and that's the end of the conversation. It's not leaning in to say, what can we do? How can I stand beside you in this moment? And so that's what we're really pushing for is we don't want to push against diversity. We we think that's a beautiful thing, but diversity without solidarity is a recipe for pain and for those old wounds to be opened up. When we create the hope of diversity, it also creates the opportunity for a lot of pain to happen if we're not doing our work and if we're not gonna stand beside each other in moments uh of tension. So I think true unity cannot just be worship services that we have together. It can't just be unity services at the courthouse. As beautiful as those moments may be, the testing ground for true unity is when a crisis happens, are we gonna stand beside one another? Are we gonna work to advocate alongside each other to make sure that everyone is available the same opportunities in this culture? And right now, those opportunities are not the same, and we have a lot of work to do.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

I love your focus on solidarity, especially in tough moments. But I think it's Romans 12 that talks about, you know, weeping with those who weep, mourning with those who mourn. You know, I think that's a part of solidarity.

Solidarity Over Silence

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Can I cry with you? Can I sit with you when you're upset? Can I rejoice with you when you're happy? And there's this moment after the last, the 2024 election, I think it was like the next day, and I was a mess. I was a mess because I felt, you know, it was like this this betrayal thing, right? That's really just a word I've I'm wrestling with, or a feeling, I should say, that I wrestle with when I feel betrayed by people who say that they love the same Jesus that I love, but you don't care about the harm that you are inflicting on me and my family, my well-being, my livelihood, when you vote a particular way or when you say certain things. And you know, I wrestle with it because on the one hand, you know, our confidence can't be in the government, but on this kind of human relational level, I struggle with how can you ignore the harm that voting for certain candidates is going to create to big portions of of the country, of society. And I was I was in a meeting um with some women. I was I was serving on a board for Christian professional women and we were having a meeting. Um, I was on a call with two other white women and they they sat with me. Like I'm trying to have a meeting. I'm trying we're we're the three of us were trying to have just a regular meeting, a planning meeting, and I couldn't do it. Um and they let me have my moment. Right? Like they honored the moment. They couldn't fully, you know, maybe they related in some ways, in some ways they didn't. But they didn't try to fix anything. They didn't try to justify anything. They just allowed me to be. And I kind of forgot about that moment, but I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful that they sat kind of in the ashes with me in that moment. And I would say that it also allowed them to talk about what they were feeling. I think that they wouldn't have brought it up. I think that they would have just sort of moved on. Interestingly, we were we were collaborating on a Bible study about unity. So it was very, very poignant, and I shared with them that the word unity is has become triggering to me. And it's triggering because the context that I tend to hear it is, well, you just need to conform, you know, kind of agree with me, let go of your uniqueness, let go of how God created you, let go, let go of your flavor, your seasonings, your whatever. You need to fit in the box that I think is the right box, you know? And they appreciated that

Grief, Elections, And Betrayal

SPEAKER_01 10:55

I shared that because for them, unity isn't triggering. I think they meant it in sort of the purest, the best of intentional way, but they appreciated my perspective and me sharing it. And so I think that that's what you're talking about with solidarity. Like, how do we sit with people? The the ministry of presence, right? The ministry of showing up, which you do beautifully, by the way. But I think we we miss the church misses the mark of the ministry of presence, the ministry of asking those questions. And like what you said, if you're a white person and you're friends with a black person and you've never talked about race, your your level of friendshipness is probably not the same as that other person's, or it could be. I don't want to speak for every black person, but for many of us, that would definitely be the case. Because if I can't talk to you about the experiences that I've had, if I can't tell you that when we moved into the neighborhood we live in, the builders still had some work to do. And so we had this one door in our house that if the wind blew a certain way, it would just open. And so it tripped the alarm. We weren't home, and the police came, thankfully, because the alarm was tripped. And so we we kind of we we pulled up right after the police had gotten there. My husband gets out the car and he's questioned, is this your house? And he was like, Yes, of course. You know, we just moved in and um and he was like, Are you an athlete? So the assumption was black man, first of all, is this your house? Thankfully no guns were drawn or anything like that. But the idea was we could only live in the house we live in if he was a professional athlete. That's right. And we're just like, what? I mean, we're we're rushing home thinking, you know, we forgot about the whole door issue, but we're thinking somebody could be in our house, and we're having to sort of justify how we live here.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

And if the first thought you have when Kelly tells that story is to try to defend why that isn't what it is, it's not leaning in with the kind of solidarity, empathy, curiosity to say, maybe my experience is just different than other people's experience. And how can I how can we create the kind of society neighborhood where um suspicion is not the response in those situations, but it's welcome, it's hospitality. As I've been thinking about unity and just kind of this theme you're you've been focused on and how it can be triggering and painful versus what the best kind of unity is, I've seen in in my own life how unity has been a tool of keeping the powerful in power and keeping the status quo. As a preacher, I experienced this. Well, be careful what you're saying in a season because it's a divisive time. But when you experience and walk into church and you've been through, let's just talk about an individual grief, like you've lost a family

Unity As Conformity Trigger

SPEAKER_00 14:05

member or a friend, or there's a tragedy of some kind that's happened somewhere else that you're connected with in some way. And when you walk in the doors of that church, even though everyone may not be in the same place you are, to not have lament or uh a time of quiet or grief or sadness, if it's just praise worship, you can feel pretty isolated in that moment because even though no one may have intended to harm you, that's not where your spirit is. That's not what you're coming needing on a Sunday morning. And of course, we're entering into worship every Sunday with things that people are all over the map. But there are key moments and clear weeks that we know the kind of grief and sadness is there. And where is the center of gravity when it comes to race in the church to where some things are considered grief and some things aren't? Uh, I remember back uh in, I think it was 2016 when Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were killed by police. And then uh on Thursday evening later that week, there were five officers that were killed in in Dallas as a part of a protest that took place. And I knew in the city of Dallas that in my predominantly white church where most of my people's minds were gonna go. But I had African-American members in my church that were probably sitting with a different kind of grief than just what had taken place at the end of that week in Dallas. What does it look like as a pastor, as a leader, to bring all that grief together and to sit there and to be able to lament that? I think we often try to shortcut our grief by moving through it and acting as if it doesn't exist. Sometimes it's celebration and praising God to kind of move around it. Often that's spiritual bypassing of not really dealing with the emotions in the body that God has given to us. And so lament is, I've seen in promptly white churches, that is not a muscle that we have. We've not developed it. I think back to the story of Job and Job who's experienced all that suffering. And for seven days, it's wonderful. His friends are there, they're sitting uh beside him, sitting, and uh, there's no words spoken. But when they open their mouths, even trying to explain how this has all taken place, quoting the scriptures themselves to say, Job, maybe you've done something wrong here, because we know that blessing comes to those who do good and curse comes to those who do evil. And he's he's trying to say that's not the situation. This is not bringing me help in this moment. And so, how do we begin to sit in the midst of that? And so these are some of the things around unity that I'm thinking. And I guess also just why do we presume that unity is already present and by bringing up some sort of tension or struggle we have is the one that is the divisive one. We know in our marriage, as people that are married, I'm married, that often we can have uh a peaceful home, seemingly, but no, there's tension that's under the surface. Or maybe you go to a family gathering, right? And you know that uh so-and-so voted this way, and just don't bring up this topic because that is not the fullness of unity. That is not the fullness of peace. That's not shalom. That may be the absence of conflict or the agreement that we're not going to talk about these things because that's the only way we can come together. And sometimes that's the best we can hope for. But in churches and true relationships, unity and shalom, right? The presence of God's wholeness only happens when we're able to talk about the most difficult things, what is true. We can only be loved to the degree that we're known. And if

Lament As A Missing Muscle

SPEAKER_00 17:15

our experience isn't known, going back to this story about what that experience in your neighborhood, people can love you in your neighborhood, but if they don't know what that's like to have that experience and the pain that that was, you know, you can't you can't necessarily call on them because they don't know that story. That's you're not as fully loved as you can be until you everyone can know the depth of what's going on in your life. That's what I want us to move toward, is not these shallow views of what peace is or what unity is. That's just let's not talk about these things. That's the only way we can keep and maintain the unity uh that God wants for us. I have a hard time thinking that's the unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17. I think it is a knowing of one another, or being able to air out all of our grievances of hearing and and understanding one another, but being able to move toward one another in that moment, support one another uh when the moment's needed most. And so, yeah, I think this topic of unity is a very important one. And it's our shallow understanding of it that really caused harm. And we see in moments of tension when when there's not the lament that's needed in that moment, when there's not even the recognition of pain in the room, it can be a very alienating and isolating uh moment. And that I think that's what you're describing, Kelly, in your experience.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

That is so good. And I think the the unity without the lament process is a huge part of what's missing in the church. Um I just wanna, as we get ready to close out, I wanna paraphrase a post I saw on Instagram by Ian Simpkins, a pastor. And he's talking about, you know, how the world says, you know, you resolve conflict either option A, option B, but that the kingdom gives us a option C. And he's talking out of Matthew 5, 38 through 48. Jesus read letter talking. Um, it's the passage where, you know, your ancestors were taught an eye for an eye, or um, you know, to kind of take vengeance on your enemies, and Jesus gives another option. And it personally feels very extreme. Um, if someone slaps your one cheek, you give them the other, like, whoo, this is hard. I don't know, I can't do that, Lord. I'm not there. But he goes on, Ian Simpkins goes on to talk about how even Jesus modeled this sort of transforming conflict through his 12 disciples and the diversity of their backgrounds. So he had Simon, who was a political revolutionary, he had Matthew, who worked for the man. Like they were together doing ministry together. And Jesus could have chosen 12 men who thought the same way, kind of had the same professional background, but he didn't. And he chose someone that he knew would betray him. If you're wrestling with how to stand firm in your faith in the middle of a very divided and unjust world, I'd love to invite you to check out my Bible study, Infinite, the Power of Love. It's rooted in scripture and written for moments just like this. Grab a copy, it's available on Amazon, and I'll put a link in the show notes. Like, there's so much that Jesus modeled in just the three years. And I talk about this in Infinite, the Power of Love, my Bible study about DEI. And, you know, when when Jesus went to have dinner at the tax collector's home and he didn't show him hospitality. And so it's like Jesus goes through this whole kind of meal process, and the tax collector, he doesn't give them anything to wash his feet. He doesn't, you know, I think, I think he doesn't kiss his cheek or something, but there's like these key moments of traditional hospitality that were very cultural that he simply did not extend to Jesus at all. And yet he wanted to point out what Jesus allowed um the woman to do

Shallow Peace Versus True Shalom

SPEAKER_01 21:18

at the time that he was his feet were anointed.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah, with her tears too, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

With her tears. You know, he won't thank you. He wanted to talk about like scandalous. How could you do that? And it wasn't until he pointed that out that Jesus was like, Well, you didn't do this, this, and this, right? This woman with her tears clean cleans to my feet. And I think we have lost that art of hospitality, true hospitality. I'm not, I'm not talking about offering somebody a drink. You know, that's surface, that's that's patty cake version of hospitality. But what am I doing to create a welcoming experience that resonates with Colin? Right? How do I how do I get to know Colin enough to say, hey, welcome to my home, welcome to my church, thanks for coming to this meeting. Spending just enough time to understand where are you today and what could I do to help you feel like you can belong and contribute to whatever space that we're occupying together. And that to me is our elements of moving towards true unity.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Absolutely. It's a great example. The the Greek word for uh hospitality there is the word philozenos. So philos is love, xenos is stranger. So think about xenophobia, right? Is the fear of stranger. But hospitality is more than just being able to, you know, host people in your home or provide a meal. Like philozenos is the love of the stranger. And that's that's the greatest command, right? I mean, that's this opportunity to love God, but it's not enough just to love vertically. It is, it means our neighbor as well. And who's who's exempted from that? Well, we find out in the Good Samaritan story that you don't get to even exempt the outsider. And so there are people that are different from us that we can easily put in a box, that we can imagine a particular way they view the world, but each individual is an opportunity to lean in, to know them, because the only way you can love a stranger is to know them, to ask those questions, to listen, to be curious, to receive. And my experience has been that's how the scales have come off of my eyes is a prayer, God help me see the city, the opportunity to sit in front of people, to love a stranger who's seen the city far different than my experience has been. And when I love them, all of a sudden I learn to believe them. I see in completely new ways. And I begin to love God more, I think, when I begin to see the image of God in all of these people. And they have been the greatest blessing of my life. I've lost some relationships over the last decade. But the number of rooms that I walk into with people that are far different than I am religiously, in terms of gender and sexuality and denomination and all of these different differences that divide us, I'm so much more comfortable in those rooms because I've been afforded hospitality by others and I've learned to live across love across difference. And I wouldn't go back. I would not trade the small world I was in with fear of the other, xenophobia. Instead, it's filozenos. It's hospitality. How do we love the other and what's the gift that's just waiting when we do that well?

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Wow. I feel like we could definitely keep going. I'm so grateful that we got to know each other through our service together. I want to give you an opportunity just to see if there's anything else you want to share. But one thing that's highlighting to me right now is that first of all, I love that you gave us the Greek for that hospitality word, because I'm a word nerd and I love it. So now I want to go look it up. I I'm just thinking about how much you model this in very practical ways. You know, I think about some of the people that you have connected me with, and we've gone and had coffee with them and the conversations, and some people have a different experience. Um, a particular person that you introduced me to um from the LGBTQ community. And I was able to have coffee, I was able to hear their story,

Option C: Transforming Conflict

SPEAKER_01 25:12

they heard my story, and you know, we both got misty-eyed together and all of that. Um, and even at the end of the day, um, there were areas where, you know, I I wasn't there. We weren't a hundred percent in agreement in some areas and in some ways. But I walked away from that conversation, feeling loved, seen, and heard, um, feeling respected, and I learned. I learned, I learned, I learned. And I hope that I gave a little bit of that back to that person. Um, I hope that I, you know, gave as much as I received in that moment. But I just want to highlight how much you model that in ways when nobody is really looking, or maybe you feel like nobody's looking or seeing, but I have seen it and I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing publicly and privately by connecting people, by sitting down and having those conversations and listening to people, listening to their stories with that curiosity and vulnerability. I there's just so much that I think we can all learn from you, Colin. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Thanks so much, Kelly. It has been such an honor to be with you. I appreciate all you're doing with this uh podcast and these conversations. You're modeling the very thing that we need to see all around our city and all around our nation right now. And so I hope that people will listen and not just wait on the next podcast, but begin to engage in these conversations themselves. That's the power of this venue and what we can learn and what we can grow in. And pray that prayer. God, help me see the city like you see the city. And I promise you, if you pray that prayer as you drive around the city, you'll find answers to that prayer all around. And often it's in the uh people that are far different from us that are able to help us see things we couldn't see otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

So beautiful. Thank you, Colin. Thank you for flowing with me today. Subscribe to In the Flow on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and be sure to grab your free devotionals on my website, iamkellyjohnson.com. Until next time, stay in the flow.