When I was in college there was a fellow student who told me that he and his father had an ongoing competition to name and locate different cities on atlases. I am not much for geography, that especially overwhelmed me. I couldn’t have done that with Springfield in every state, and to even consider foreign cities in other nations. So when considering the core value of “Everyone” in The Grove Church, it could potentially stir some of that same type of anxiety. Why?
Everyone, it is an intimidating word to even say when any thought is truly given to what is meant by it. I can’t even for a second begin to comprehend what everyone means when thinking of numbers, varieties, and kinds of people. I can’t begin to wrap my mind around the number of people who comprise everyone in my own life, much more my city, state, or nation, you get my point.
That being the case, why we would include this word as a core value of The Grove Church. Well let me assure you of this, we didn’t intend for it to mean everyone in terms of individuals. Instead we mean it to be inclusive of everyone in respect to categories. We live in a diverse world, yet one doesn’t have to travel very far to experience that diversity.
They dynamics of my family speak to this. The first meeting for Katie and I ended with the appearance of conflict over the university we rooted for, she for Georgia and I for Georgia Tech. You see both of us had parents who attended the respective schools and the rivalry pitted us against one another immediately. To this day we have a house divided plate that hangs over our bedroom door as a silly testimony to our history.
However, there is a reason that everyone should not be intimidating. Within each of our spheres of relationships there are a diversity of people. There is diversity in social background. There is diversity in economic position. There is diversity in race, age, and culture. There is diversity of upbringing and even within a rural county like ours school loyalties. All of these thing could potentially create opposition to the advancement of the gospel. We believe that we are to instead embrace the distinctions by possessing a core value to see everyone from the perspective of Christ and embrace them accordingly in a kind, merciful, and gracious way so that they can experience the gospel as His ambassadors.
The everyone we refer to may not ever extend beyond our region, though in time it might and then in really powerful ways. No matter how far the everyone extends though, we ought to love everyone as Jesus loved, for he was surely no respecter of people.