S2E9: A Biblical Case for Unity in Diversity

Show Notes

Neil Powell, director for The London Project, shares the story of a work he was part of in Birmingham, and the origins and impact of the city-wide network there. He shares his vision for a similar movement in the great city of London. 

What is How to Reach the West Again?

Christianity is declining in the West. How will the church respond?

Redeemer City to City's "How to Reach the West Again" podcast takes the insights of author and pastor Timothy Keller's book of the same name—and explores them in greater detail with a host of guest ministry leaders.

Join us as we examine ourselves, our culture, and Scripture to work toward a new missionary encounter with Western culture that will make the gospel both attractive and credible to a new generation.

Brandon O’Brien: This is How to Reach the West Again, a podcast that aims to inspire and empower a fresh missionary encounter with Western culture. I’m your host, Brandon O’Brien.

This season has been all about cities—what are they? What does the Bible say about them? What does it mean to love them? What unique challenges and opportunities does city ministry present?

This is the final episode of season two. I hope you’ve enjoyed these conversations as much as I have.

We’re ending strong—with a clear, compelling vision for city-wide, transdenominational networks committed to church planting and renewal.

I’m joined today by Neil Powell, director for The London Project. He shares the story of a work he was part of in another city, Birmingham, and the origins and impact of the city-wide network there. He shares with us his vision for a similar movement in the great city of London. I trust you’ll be encouraged and inspired by our conversation.

Brandon O’Brien: So let's start back with your experience in Birmingham. Your book, Together For The City, sort of a record of your experience through the process of trans-denominational citywide church planting in Birmingham. Can you tell us a little about that initiative, Birmingham 2020, and kind of the vision for it and how it played out?

Neil Powell: So we moved—my wife and I—to Birmingham to work with college students. And out of that we started a church with two friends in 1999. I described myself as a somewhat accidental, reluctant church planter, but we were seeing students come to faith on college campuses. We were seeing students really wanting to grow in their faith, but struggle to find a disciple-making, outward looking, contemporary, Bible-centered, gospel-driven church. All of the above was what we hoped to see happen by starting a new church. So I did that with two friends in 1999, and then started to connect with the world of City to City about five years later when one of the team, Al Barth, came to Birmingham on the fifth anniversary, the fifth birthday of the church. And he started to invite me to some of the City to City gatherings in New York where some of the DNA that we now think of as being in a book like Tim Keller's Center Church was being sort of discussed.

And we were being sort of given this vision for our cities and for a sense of not just seeking to be a lone ranger or to plant one church, but to have this concept or this idea of seeing cities impacted by the gospel through movements of church planting. So Al was introducing me to some of that, and through the writings and the talks of Tim Cameron about 2004, and by 2009, I think we reached the point of thinking we should have a go at doing this ourselves in Birmingham. So we had planted, we planted a daughter church, we knew of other cities by name and reputation that also had a vision for planting for the city. And I approached one of those leaders in particular, a man called Jonathan Bell, who came from a different denomination from myself, but I think shared some of that passion and that same gospel DNA and same vision for the city.

And I just invited him for a cup of coffee to begin to talk about the possibility of working together, not necessarily to plant churches together. I think our theological differences, he was a charismatic Christian, I came from a more reformed, conservative background. I didn't think for a moment we could plant together, but I wondered whether we might be able to see more churches planted by working together than we could on our own. So working to see churches planted rather than working together to plant churches.

So that might mean sort of training leaders, raising money together, praying for one another's endeavors and initiatives, mapping the city together and looking at the complexity and the challenges of a large diverse city like Birmingham. So 2009 was when we had that cup of coffee conversation.

And we began to think and to pray and to plan to do something together. And it really was just the two of us right at the outset. But quickly, a few others joined and we thought, let's put a number to these things. Now, British people don't typically do that sort of thing, but we thought, to really be clear what this was going to be, what it would take and what we were trying to do, let's put some numbers to it. So we called it 2020 Birmingham, and our real vision was to see 20 new churches planted in the city in the space of 10 years. So 20 churches by the year 2020.

Brandon O’Brien: It sounds like Jonathan was fairly receptive to the vision. How do you find people respond in Birmingham in these early years to the idea of collaboration? Are people immediately enthusiastic? Are they reluctant? Suspicious? What kind of response did you receive early on?

Neil Powell: Every kind of response. Yeah. So there were some who were nervous about working outside of your own tribe, working with churches that were "not like us."

So there were certainly some who were wrestling with the question of, who can you work with? If you want to be faithful to your understanding of the gospel, how generous can collaboration be? Everyone was wrestling with that question in one form or another.

But there were some who were nervous about being too broad, too generous, and losing the gospel somewhere and some distinctiveness somewhere with working with certain kinds of churches. And there were others who were really enthusiastic but still couldn't see, how does this actually work in practice, because it's not really been tried. I think everyone recognized that what maybe the only time these kind of churches would ever talk to each other was previously when someone like Billy Graham was coming to the UK and all of a sudden the church in this city, gospel churches within a city would say, Hey, we need to come together.

But other than that occasional initiative, like a Billy Graham Mission week, something like that, these churches, we just didn't talk. We didn't try to work together. So who can you work with? How closely do you need to agree on all of your secondary distinctives? That's where it was helpful to say to people, we're not going to try and plant churches together. We've got different ecclesiologies, we've got different pneumatologies, views of the work of the spirit, or we have different views of the Lord's suffering and baptism. You can't bring people from a wide variety of theological traditions and just hope that they can start a church.

So we weren't trying to do that, but we thought we could gather the leaders from church plants across the city and speak meaningfully into one another's situations through peer to peer relationships, training and coaching, prayer, raising money together, recruiting people into the city. And that seemed to be the sweet spot. That seemed to be the place where people were most ready.

Brandon O’Brien: And so you started initial conversation, 2009, I think your book came out in 2018 or 19. So tell me about the progress in that decade. Did you hit your 20 church goal or how did it pan out?

Neil Powell: We did hit the 20, literally just as COVID really began to impact our city. Which was extraordinary in itself. I think the lovely thing was the surprising way in which we found church planters in our city. By coming together under this banner, 2020 Birmingham, and beginning to promote the idea through a website, through an annual conference, that Birmingham was a place where if you came to plant a church, there were others who were ready to walk alongside you. Not to tell you how to do it, but to try to encourage you in your endeavors, who would look to serve you by saying, is there any way in which we can help you with what God has called you to do in this city?

And what we found was people began to be drawn to that vision, and some even decided to plant in Birmingham rather than elsewhere because they were looking for that degree of support. I think it's stats that are in the book Viral Churches that makes the case that if someone is part of both a national network, denomination, something, and also a local collaborative endeavor, the chances of that church plant really growing and becoming a healthy gospel church increases by about 125%.

So it's a very significant thing to have the support of your denomination. Resources, finances, training, but then also to have a peer group in your city who know the city and will pray and stand alongside you and encourage you in what you're doing.

Brandon O’Brien:

Can you give us a couple of really concrete examples of what is it that a person in a city like Birmingham, who has the support of his denomination and possibly ascending agency. What additional kind of value add, for lack of a better word, does that local network provide for them?

Neil Powell: I can give you a couple of examples. One was simply how regularly we would meet. So if you were planting in Birmingham and you were connecting through 2020 Birmingham, if you were doing something like as a result of that City to City Incubator in Birmingham, and then also gathering with the planters in the city for our monthly gathering, that would mean if you were new to the city and starting a church, you were just two weeks away from meeting with fellow planters within the city.

So as you wrestled with particular challenges of maybe people coming to your church that you weren't sure as you started a plant where they would fit, whether this was the right church for them, or whether you were to encourage them to consider going somewhere else. You just wanted some help with particular people, just trying to assess, are they a good fit for us? Or if your wife was looking or your spouse was looking for support in the city, even just trying to find schools for the kids or whether you were looking to raise some money for church planting and needed some invitations sent out to potential donors and supporters to consider you.

We helped an Ethiopian taxi driver who was starting a church. We helped him to find a building. He really was struggling to find anyone who would let him use the building because he didn't really have any sort of letters of commendation. He didn't really have a denomination here in the UK. He could talk about his involvement back in Ethiopia, but he'd come to the UK. He was working in the city. He felt the call to plant a church. And what we were able to do is to talk to the Bishop, the Bishop of Birmingham and say, "Look, we really know this guy. He's part of what we are doing in the city. Would you trust us in a sense to help us secure a building?" And we were able to do that for him.

We helped a Romanian who found us on the website, actually the 2020 Birmingham website. We helped him by literally giving a place for him and his wife to live. One of the other church planters had come and live with us for the first three month that you're in the city.

So lots of small, significant ways in which we could love each other and encourage the good and help each other in our endeavors.

Brandon O’Brien: How would you describe the key obstacles in trying to get that sort of diverse network of people collaborating together? If someone is listening and thinking, I want to do something like this in my city, what kinds of initial challenges might they anticipate?

Neil Powell: It takes time to get to know people and you probably therefore need one or two who will lead the initiative. Ideally, I think it ought to be led by at least two or maybe a third who come from different denominations, who have experience in planting and have been in this city for a time. They generally have the knowledge of the city and if they come from different denominations, then when someone arrives saying, I've come to plant here. If Jonathan and I, from our different theological traditions, looked at this person, met with them a couple of times, thought, yeah, we think this is someone that we could and should help to plant because we believe they're going to plant a gospel church that will enable others to hear and respond to the message of Jesus. Then having one or two leaders who are willing to take that responsibility for who can even be part of it, because it's not obvious from the get go if someone wants to plant a church in a city that they're necessarily going to plant a gospel church.

So I think that is the key is a couple of people who can serve in that role who are trusted, respect each other, aren't going to try and dominate, but nevertheless are going to try and guard and protect gospel DNA for this movement. And I think Jonathan and I worked well together in that regard.

And then I think clarity around what you're trying to do. So we kept saying to church planters, for example, we are not trying to plant a church for you. We cannot be that for you. So we had to be clear with the expectations. So we might be able to help you raise some, for example, money, but we don't have money to give you to plant a church. And sometimes planters, I think, hoped and expected more of this local collaborative endeavor than we could deliver. They almost wanted us to function as their denomination if you like. And so we had to have real clarity around that when we first began to meet with them. So they didn't end up being disappointed thinking, oh, I thought you were going to do so much more for me than we realistically could.

So we had a very limited idea as to how much time and resources we could put into this thing as pastors and planters. And therefore, we said to leaders, we will help you through offering training through city city incubator. We can link you with a coach. We may be able to connect you with a few donors or foundations or others who might be interested, churches who might be interested in sponsoring the church plant in the city. And we can certainly pray and want to stand alongside you in your endeavors. And that seemed to be an agreed shared upon set of expectations that people found, yup, that could be super helpful. I would also say support for you and your spouse as well in terms of walking this line.

But clarity as to what we were offering over against what their own denomination may be offering sometimes required some care and some skill in resolving.

Brandon O’Brien: So you've recently moved from Birmingham to London. Tell me what prompted that move and what you hope to see happen now in your work with the London Project.

Neil Powell: Yeah. Well, as I've said so far in this conversation that the 2020 thing was a sidebar in lots of ways. My main day to day work was serving a local church as a preaching pastor, maybe planting one or two of our own daughter churches from time to time. But the 2020 Birmingham was 10% to 15% of my time. That maybe works in a city of 1.1 million, which is Birmingham in the UK. London is a city of 9 million and rising. So it's a super size city. It's a global city. It's incredibly diverse and complex. The idea of something like a 2020 Birmingham, but for a city like that, the scale, the size, the complexity of the city, I think meant the only way we might see this happen in London is if you staffed it. It would need two or three, four people who could give it most of their time or be the first thought each day. How do we work with other churches, denominations, networks within the city?

And I was asked and invited to consider leaving the role of being a local church leader and just doing some of this on the side to actually being my main thing.

And that's what, the London Project, which is our expression of a collaborative endeavor for London. That's really what started back in about 2020 was me leaving leadership of a local church to working almost exclusively on this big idea of collaboration between churches, networks, denominations, formations within a large global city.

Brandon O’Brien: Do you find that the way local pastors and other leaders respond to the idea of collaboration to be similar here as in Birmingham or different? Is there more appetite for it?

Neil Powell: Well, what we found in Birmingham was diaspora leaders. So people moving from other countries to the UK to plant, particularly amongst their own people group who migrated here, that that need is somewhat similar. Often, they come as individuals, they don't know the city, they want to connect with others in the city. They need the resources to help the support of local leaders who've been here a time to establish the church planting that they're doing. So that seems to be very similar, Birmingham in London. People somewhat isolated looking to connect. So we can meet and help and work with those leaders quite early on and have done. In fact, that's been the most encouraging and most fruitful part of what we've seen even in the two years or so that the London project has been going. We are working with something like 50 different diaspora churches wow from all parts of the world within the city.

What is a bit different, I think, is when you start to work with sort of mainline denominations, because often their headquarters are based in cities like London. And the work here is quite strong. So in other words, they can work within their own tribe and accomplish quite a lot without the need to come together, because this is the big city. This is where everyone comes and this is where they're well resourced and the training centers are and everything. So persuading busy networks, persuading those leaders to give some time to working, to get to know support and resource other networks within the city, that can be a challenge. And the challenge may not be a theological one. It may be a pragmatic one, which is they're saying, "Hey, we are really pushing on with our church planning program in the city. We're busy. There's so much that we can do on our own. We're not sure we've got time or capacity to come together."

So persuading them that, as we look at the long game, there's enormous value in working with and through other networks. Takes a little bit of persuading, but I think we are winning that. And we're winning it in part because people are seeing and experiencing the diversity of London, this sort of super diverse city. In fact, one author who wrote a book recently called Migrant City, his contention, his argument in the book is London is the most diverse city in the history of the world. Not just the most diverse city today, but ever. 300 languages spoken here. People from the whole world moving here. And even the mainline denominations recognize that's an enormous challenge. How do we reach the nations from London?

And maybe they're saying, and they are beginning to say, "We need to come together. We need to think about this collectively and work collaboratively." And the diaspora leaders need to meet the mainline leaders. And the London project can facilitate some of that partnership and connection and collaboration, because that's our main thing. That's what we're doing all of the time is looking to connect leaders across London to one another that we might do more together than on our own. And I think people are recognizing the London project is looking to serve in that way and seeing that this could be a way forward for the church in London. Yeah.

Brandon O’Brien: Is there any difference in working with people, whether in Birmingham or London, are local leaders who have come up in the city who are planting or pastoring in the city versus those who are coming in from somewhere else and planting or becoming involved with local work? Is there any differences in the receptivity? Do they bring different strengths to the process?

Neil Powell: Well, Brandon, let me tell you something about London briefly, which is something that I find hugely encouraging and exciting is that God has been at work in this city in the last 20 years in remarkable ways. To the extent that the growth of the church is out stripping the growth of the population as a whole, the church is growing faster than the city. So something now like 8.7% of Londoners are attending church once a month.

And we haven't seen that for 100 years in London. We've gone through decline and through now largely migration growth within the city. In other words, God bringing believers, bringing Christians into the city, many of them from the African continent. We've seen real new life and they have brought a vibrancy to the church in the city and they have planted in large numbers these sort of diaspora churches in particular. So we see growth and we see opportunity and we see possibility. One author describes London as the first de-secularized city. We've gone through secularization and come out the other side. And what's happened in London, we believe, and trust and pray may happen in the other cities of Europe that have experienced this extraordinary secularization as God brings the nations into the city. So even the established mainline churches and planters and pastors are wrestling with all sorts of new people in their communities that speak a different language, that many of them are believers, but have a different tradition and a different theology and so on.

And everyone is wrestling with complexity. That's the new question is the diversity leads to increasing complexity, and our argument as the London project is we need each other more than we've ever needed each other if we're going to address some of those challenges and those questions. And we sense leaders in the city recognizing that. But a more traditional mainline church may say, we notice, for example, a Nigerian new fellowship that started nearby. We're not sure how to connect. We don't know how to have a conversation. If you can facilitate that for us, we'd love, we think, to meet and get to know them and see what we can learn. And that is reciprocated by the Nigerian church that feels. We don't know how to relate to the historic mainline traditions in the city. And the London Project says, again, "Can we facilitate that? Can we serve the city by bringing you together?" And then we trust and hope that friendships will develop and that new answers to the challenge of a global city like London can be met together by that peer-to-peer training and coaching and growth and understanding.

Brandon O’Brien: You've made sort of between the lines of our conversation a pragmatic argument for partnering, that we can do more together than we can do on our own. Is there a biblical or theological case to make for that kind of collaboration that is somehow, if you were to take away all the pragmatic benefits, that there's still a compelling reason for us to do this together rather than a part?

Neil Powell: Yeah. Great question, Brandon. Yes, I think is the answer. So we all love John 17 and Jesus' prayer for the unity of the church. That he longs and prays and seeks the unity of the church. And I'm not sure as evangelicals we've been all that good at pursuing that unity or seeking to see that prayer answered in our own context and situations. So John 17's a great place to go that we may be won. But the question is, where do we find in the Bible answers to this question of how do you relate to other believers who think differently from you on some quite important issues? And I've looked and wrestled with that question for probably the last year or so. And I've settled on Romans 14 and 15 as probably the most helpful single place to go because Paul, in Romans chapter one, addresses the church in Rome. So he sees this church as one church in Rome.

By the time you get to chapter 16, it's quite clear that this church in Rome is made up of all sorts of house fellowships. So he talks about the church that meets here and the church that meets there and greets it and so on. So he's talking to one church, chapter one. He's talking to many fellowships, chapter 16. And then in chapters 14 and 15, he addresses different, not individual believers, but I think different communities of believers who are part of the church in Rome. And he calls them the strong and the weak.

And in those chapters, he wrestles with the question of, what obligation do you as a group of believers have to another group of believers within the same city who know and love and honor Jesus? And perhaps the key text is found for us at the end of the argument in Romans 15 verse six, where Paul simply says, "Accept one another, as Christ has accepted you." So he says, "Look, people will come to differing views on secondary matters, the strong and the weak. Differing over whether you have to observe particular holy days, what food you're permitted to eat as a believer. Paul can say, "I know where I stand on these issues." And he does, at the beginning of chapter 15, he says, "I consider myself to be the strong in the situation," but he says, "I stand by the weak," the weak meaning people who have a more tender conscience in some secondaries, probably Jewish believers, who would abstain from certain foods and want to still continue to keep certain early days. And he says, "I know where I stand in this debate, but what I want to see in the church in Rome is unity expressed through diversity." In other words, he doesn't say, "I think you should all get together, have a big debate, settle a matter once and for all and then we can move on." He says, "No to the strong, you respect the conscience of the weak and to the weak, you also honor your stronger brothers and sisters."

So it's a unity and diversity model because he neither says you've got to all come to one view, nor does he say have nothing to do with each other, but rather he says it, accept one another. Welcome, embrace, and include one another to the degree that Christ has welcomed you, even as you respect as a matter of conscience, the view of another believer or a group of believers on a secondary issue. So I call it a unity and diversity model. And I think that's probably the single place in the New Testament where we find that most clearly expressed.

Historically, when I'd preach a passage like Romans 14 and 15, I'd preach it about two individuals within the same church. One likes to have the drums in the worship, the other doesn't. That sort of idea. Or one thinks you should never go to the cinema and or drink alcohol or, whatever it might be. But actually when you look at what's going on in Romans 14 to 15, it's about different faith communities. The strong and the weak within the city. And Paul does this quite extraordinary thing. He says, "This side of heaven, there will be diversity in the church, and we welcome that and we accept that, and we work for our unity even through that diversity." So unity around the primary issues, diversity around secondary issues, seems to be a model that Paul says is the way forward for the church within the city.

We have this in our minds, unity and uniformity model. I think we, that's our defaults. So I will be united to those who think exactly as I think on all of the issues. In other words, people within my own tribe. What Paul says is "No, you have an obligation to accept those who think differently from your own secondary issues. You have that obligation to accept them as much as Christ has accepted you, which is basically with open arms." And I think that's the challenge for us in the church, is that we don't believe in unity through diversity, and we struggle with that because it's messy, it's complex. It's not easy to decide quite who and to what extent you can work with someone who thinks differently from you.

So what's crucial is unity in the gospel. That's a non-negotiable for Paul. We know what Paul has to say in all parts of the New Testament letters where people are denying Christ in one form or another. He says, "Have nothing to do with them." But where it's different on secondary matters, where you persuaded someone knows and love Jesus. Paul says, "You have an obligation to that believer to love them as Christ loved you." And I'm not sure we've really ever, in my lifetime, I've not seen that done and done well.

Brandon O’Brien: If you were to close your eyes and imagine London, the Christian community in London let's say in 10 years, what do you see, what do you hope and pray for for London?

Neil Powell: Well, I'm not sure we'll get there in 10. We would love to see individuals coming to faith in great number and a city being impacted by those discipled Christians being salt and light throughout the city. So it's to see a city somewhat renewed, impacted, transformed in some sense by the power of the gospel as it has been in London in previous generations. And we think of the Wilberforces and the Spurgeons and so on. But what I'd love to see in the next 10 to 20 years is the continued growth of the church growing at a faster rate than the population as a whole. If we could get from 8.7% to 10%, we might reach what's sometimes called that tipping point, where the church really starts to be noticed in the city and to grow. So maybe from 8.7 to 10% within the next 20 years would be something that we would pray to happen.

And we don't believe for a moment that the London Project could be responsible in, even in a human sense. Of course, it's God's work at the end of the day. But even in a human sense, we can't do that. We can't. But what we could play our small spot, our small parts, in helping to see new churches planted, to see healthy gospel churches maturing, to see migrant churches going from, say, being Nigerian churches in London to London churches with Nigerians, helping those migrant churches to make the change that many of them want to make and recognize need to happen. And to see those Christians discipled so that they are salt and light in their communities and their places of work, in matters of social renewal within the city and creative arts and so on. So I'm not sure, I've painted a little picture without giving you a clear answer to what might be possible. But it's a great time to be in a city like London, and we thank God for what he's done over these last 20 years, and we'd love to see and pray that he would do more.

Brandon O’Brien: Thank you so much for your time, Neil. It's been a pleasure.

Neil Powell: Absolute pleasure. Thank you, Brandon.

Brandon O’Brien: For more information about the London Project, visit thelondonproject.co.uk.

Alright, that’s all folks. A wrap on season two. Thank you for joining us.

How to Reach the West Again is a production of Redeemer City to City. This episode was produced, written and hosted by Brandon O’Brien.

Our associate producer is Braeden Gregg.

The interview was recorded on location in London by Moises Zetina and Luke Gates of Westway Records and edited by Lee Jerkins.

RCTC is a non-profit organization co-founded by Tim Keller and supported by generous people like you. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform, leave a review, and consider making a gift to support the work at www.redeemercitytocity.com/give.