The Generous Center
When the roots go deep enough, the branches can stretch wide.
Last Thursday morning, I attended a prayer breakfast for the National Day of Prayer hosted by For Richmond. Every year, pastors and ministry leaders from all over metro Richmond gather to pray for our city, for the vulnerable, for the unity of the church.
At the very end of the gathering, it’s become tradition to all stand in one enormous circle around the room, holding hands while someone offers a closing prayer. It’s always moving. Hundreds of people, different races, traditions, personalities, ages, all praying to the same Lord.
But this year, something struck me that I had never really considered before. What moved me wasn’t just what we held in common. It was all the things we didn’t.
Standing in that circle were women pastors holding hands with people who believe women should not be pastors. There were Pentecostals praying in tongues, standing beside people who believe speaking in tongues is theologically suspect. There were Christians fully affirming of LGBTQ+ inclusion standing beside Christians with a traditional sexual ethic. Democrats. Republicans. Charismatics. Presbyterians. Baptists. Episcopalians.
And somehow, for that moment at least, we all agreed that what united us in Christ was greater than what divided us.
Experiences like that feel increasingly rare. Not just in society, but in the church.
As I argued in my previous essay on the “Deep Center,” communities can only sustain this kind of difference if they are deeply rooted in something more fundamental than ideological agreement. When the roots go deep enough, the branches can stretch wide.
At For Richmond, we’ve* tried to organize around the historic center of the Christian faith: the life, death, resurrection, and Lordship of Jesus Christ. Ten years ago, that would not have sounded especially controversial. Today, it increasingly does.
Because in our polarized age, many of us have quietly begun moving secondary things into the center. Political instincts. Social analysis. Ethical conclusions. Cultural markers. Increasingly, Christians on both the Left and the Right seem uncomfortable remaining in meaningful fellowship with those who do not share their convictions on every important issue.
But a center that cannot hold difference is not actually a strong center at all.
The New Testament envisions a church that is both deeply rooted and radically generous.
In Romans 14–15, Paul addresses a major conflict threatening to tear up the Roman church. The disagreement appears to involve food sacrificed to idols, as well as the observance of sacred days. These were not trivial matters. The debates touched worship, holiness, ethics, and obedience to God.
And yet Paul does something fascinating. He does not demand total agreement between the disagreeing parties. Instead, he writes: “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Romans 15:7).
That word “acceptance” matters. Paul says accept, not agree. Not endorse. Not affirm every conclusion. Acceptance is deeper and harder than ideological uniformity. It means receiving one another as brothers and sisters even amid unresolved disagreement.
That’s uncomfortable for many of us. We would often prefer clarity to tension. Uniformity to complexity. Tribes to tables.
But Christian community has always required people to remain at the table with those who frustrate them.
Marriage teaches us this. Any healthy marriage eventually discovers that love is not the elimination of difference but learning how to live with difference generously. You stop trying to turn the other person into yourself. You learn how to remain connected without demanding sameness.
The church is no different. A deep center makes possible a generous center: a community where people can hold strong convictions, wrestle honestly with difficult questions, and still remain bound together by the love of Christ.
That doesn’t mean “anything goes.” Paul clearly believed there were boundaries to Christian faithfulness. But it does mean that when it comes to disputable matters, Christians are called to practice humility, patience, and mutual honor rather than immediate separation.
And frankly, in our current moment, that kind of community feels almost miraculous.
And perhaps that is exactly what the church is meant to be: a kind of miracle of sociology. Not a community where everyone thinks the same thing about every issue, votes the same way, or arrives at identical conclusions on every difficult question. But a community so rooted in Christ that it can hold disagreement without fracture, conviction without contempt, and difference without fear.
In a society increasingly sorted into ideological silos, even the simple act of remaining at the table together becomes a form of witness.
The early church astonished the Roman world not because Christians agreed about everything, but because people who otherwise would never have belonged to one another somehow became family. Jews and Gentiles. Slave and free. Rich and poor. Men and women. Zealots and tax collectors. The church was not held together by natural affinity but by the reconciling love of Christ.
That kind of generosity still has the power to astonish. And honestly, I think many people are starving for it. Beneath all the noise of our moment, I suspect many people are longing for communities where they can tell the truth, talk openly about disagreements, wrestle honestly, grow slowly, and still be loved.
The generous center does not eliminate disagreement. It simply refuses to let disagreement become the final word.
* full disclosure: I serve on the board of For Richmond.
