About a decade ago I remember looking across the row I was sitting in at church and noticing that the CEO of an international company was sitting next to a welder. This is the body of Christ; there is no hierarchy in the Kingdom, just all of us coming to the cross and the table. In everyday life, this kind of interaction isn’t very common. Our society is stratified in so many ways. But in church we have the opportunity to sit as equals.
That image of the welder and the CEO came back to me recently when I was working on a freelance article assignment. I was doing a profile piece on a super-accomplished 40-year-old who had worked in the halls of power in DC, saved a rainforest in Borneo, and now interacted with next-gen global philanthropists at the highest financial level.
After I did the background research for our interview, I was intimidated! Who was I, in the waning days of my career, to try and write something fresh about this extraordinary person?
We did the zoom interview, and she was nice—and open and humble about the amazing opportunities she had experienced. She also operated from a faith perspective—that all people are valued—the tribal person in the rainforest and the 30-year-old with an enormous family fortune.
At the end of the interview she talked about her family. She wondered how to raise her two young girls to have compassion and a heart of working for social justice.
So I took a few moments to share my daughter’s journey in social justice. I encouraged her that as she lets her girls interact with people from different life experiences, they will grow to see the problems in our world, and the people working for good. It was a short part of the conversation that felt like we were sharing over a cup of tea. Maybe I had something to offer her that went beyond the main purpose of the interview.
This experience reminded me that I get to meet amazing people through my work. Some people have noteworthy accomplishments during their life. And some have lived faithfully on a quieter scale—such as a welder who makes sure the pipes don’t leak.
As humans, we are all fundamentally equal and valued by God. As you look around on Sunday, remember that the beauty of the church is found not in sameness but in the diversity of gifts, backgrounds, and callings represented in the body of Christ. It’s this blending of welders and CEOs, students and retirees, dreamers and doers, that makes Christian community so powerful and so beautiful.
Carla Foote