Jon Stoe opens this one with a story about a former gang member named Gerber Gomez, a young man from Guatemala who survived a brutal initiation, joined a gang in Chicago for the sense of family it offered, and then had his life turned completely around by a girl at his locker who refused to stop telling him that Jesus loved him. It's a story about belonging and what people will risk to find it. And it sets up the central question of part five of Acts: To the Ends of the Earth perfectly: what would the church look like if it offered that same kind of all-in, show-up-at-any-hour community?

Jon traces the early church's unity through Acts 2 and 4, through the creation account in Genesis, and all the way into Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17, where Jesus prays not just for his disciples but for every future believer, that they would be one with each other the same way the Father and Son are one. That's not a low bar. Jon is honest about what gets in the way, including politics, division, and the enemy who benefits every time the church turns on itself. But he lands in a place of real hope. Unity, he says, is what makes the church's message believable to a watching world. And Jesus already prayed for it.

Litchfield Church of the Nazarene is a welcoming, bilingual community of faith in Litchfield, MN, whose mission is to produce fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ. We gather every Sunday at 10:45 AM. New messages drop on the podcast each week. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. Learn more at litchfieldnaz.com.