How to Approach Church Unity

Dear reader,

This is a letter that came to my mind about a year and a half ago, but when God brings something back to mind after so long you must stop and think if it’s important. In this case, it was a very underrated Disney movie. 

By this point, most of you know I am a teacher full-time at a child care center, or in layman's terms I work at a daycare. About 7 weeks ago our weekly theme was Karate, so I taught the kiddos how to defend, run, and be respectful all week long. It was quite a wonderful time. 

On Friday I am able to skip their normally scheduled naptime and watch a movie as a special treat with them, I decided to go with the movie Raya and the Last Dragon which sparked a lot of conversations I had carried out with God and so many others over the last 3 years of my life. 

(SPOILER WARNING) I explain the entire plot throughout the entirety of this letter.

A little synopsis from me to you is this. There are these five tribes, and they all severely hate/distrust each other. 

The leader of one of the tribes invites all of them to come together and eat a meal with one another to discuss a peaceful and harmonious lifestyle with the tribes. 

The ceremony goes extremely wrong when they are backstabbed by one of the tribes and a magical artifact is shattered releasing an evil manifestation into the world. 

Each tribe takes a broken piece and does its best to survive the evil as it turns people to stone. 

Pause. Sounds pretty good so far right? Here is what was pressed deeply into my heart as I watched this for the first time. 

The Church. Christ’s bride is so divided over doctrine and scripture that has been taken in different directions, all of them refusing to agree on the Gospel being enough to come together and worship the same God.  Each denomination seems they have the God-given right to attack anyone who doesn’t line up with them and it is extremely unhelpful and it seems unbiblical.  

The disunity is so real it's so depressing to see God’s children fight with one another. 

As I watched this I was surrounded by conflict. My family, my friends, and everyone I cared about. Everyone had a reason to not trust others, and there was no glimpse of grace or forgiveness in sight. It was haunting me. I wanted to change it, I wanted to lead a revival or revolution in which we could all love and serve each other in a community where Christ was at the center and the Holy Spirit was clearly alive and moving. 

Just like in the movie, it seemed to get worst the more I tried. So I stopped cold turkey, I read a book by Francis Chan called “Until Unity” and it helped me see that Unity is in God’s hands. Not mine. 

I let go of my hopeful unity-focused reality and walked with God away from all the conflict. 

Back to the movie. 

The protagonist Raya is the daughter of the chief that wanted peace. She goes looking for a dragon that will bring magic and help unite all the tribes as they should. 

Raya finds the dragon and slowly goes to each tribe to collect a piece of the magical artifact, but realizes she needs one of the members of each tribe as well. Every person has a part they need to play, if they don’t the rest of the group struggled to survive. 

*Cough, sounds like 1 Corinthians 12…

The band of misfits continues on and as they do they are brought to the last tribe, the one who started all the conflict in the first place. The dragon urges Raya to give grace to the tribe who hurt her, but in a moment of weakness Raya lashes out and attacks the ambassador of the tribe. 

Which costs her greatly as the dragon is shot and killed. 

Anger swells between all the humans and the evil manifestation start to turn everyone to stone. 

My heart hurts at this part of the movie. Seeing that everything was so avoidable, and if the work of Christ and His Spirit were alive and well just like in the Church, grace, and forgiveness would be clearly present as a mediator for all parties. Everything would work out, right?

…Right? 

I watched this with another teacher and she expressed her anger towards the overall selfishness of the characters, and the humility to acknowledge where they were clearly in the wrong. 

I’ve had people try and explain why the church is so divided. Why denominations are important, and how we can all benefit from being so split up, but I can’t help but wonder what Jesus thinks of it. 

It’s almost as if his Church, his Bride, is divorced between them. The amount of hurt and brokenness that is within the local church, and yet for some reason we think it's okay to branch off one another due to not agreeing on what God’s infallible word says.

I’m not a genius. I will not claim to be smarter than the average man. But I will say it makes me very upset when there are so many churches that are near to one another and yet the ‘brothers and sisters won’t even give each other the time of day. That is not the love Jesus told us to have for one another. (John 13) 

The film ends with Raya realizing that laying her life down for her enemy was the only way for evil to be vanquished. One by one each of the characters lay down their lives to place their shard of the magic artifact to recreate what was once shattered. 

If you can’t see it yet I will be extremely blunt. We must all pray for supernatural unity amongst God’s people. To seek out living in such a way that glorifies our Lord and Savior. To emulate a lifestyle of generosity and love. 

If the world sees us, ‘The Church’ so divided, why would they want to be a part of that family? 

My prayer I give to you is this, may God give us the heavenly desire of Unity, and pursue it at all costs. 

(Ephesians 4:4-6)

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called;  one Lord, one faith, one baptism;  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Most people wouldn’t think so much could be drawn from a Disney movie, I beg to differ, God is a creative being, and He can and does use whatever He desires to get his point across. When you are reading, listening, or watching something and it feels like God pricks your heart a bit, don’t ignore it. Seek Him out and see what He wants to show you. 

Yours truly, a teacher using Disney movies,

-Mitchell