Bono in London

As part of the "Red" campaign, Bono became editor of London's Independent newspaper for a day, turned the front page red, and sent Londoners a message about Africans dying of AIDS.

The "Red" Campaign is an off-shot of One and DATA, where Bono partners with companies like Gap to help raise money to send Africans the Western drugs they need.

The Push Behind the Shove

For the past several weeks I have been thinking a good deal about the concept of unity. Unity is one of Monsuun's driving forces, and is also a major driving force behind Project Forever and what we aim to do with artists. Initially, unity is one of those things that seems ideal and beneficial, but I think the concept has become something akin to post-modernism and emergent, meaning that has lost alot of the teeth of what it meant. This way, I think unity is a very powerful force that can be used for great things if dealt with properly, but can turn into a great sin if misused.

The idea of unity seems to be this generation's answer to the problems of the Christian world. Our grandparent's generation focused on big-tent, Billy Graham-style revivials to help get Christiandom to its core important; evangelism. Our parent's generation used, and still uses, mega-church ministries to help Christians become in-focus and evangelical in a friendly, non-threatening way. Our generation has come, or is coming, to use unity to get all Christians to work together and be united.

None of these generational ideals were bad, and great things have come and are still coming of all of them. However, all three of them share the unique distinction of being undeniably inward-focused, helping the Church to prop up its body, power, and population over the needs of the outside world. I believe in its best form, unity can be used to move forward some very powerful causes, and truly make a difference in the world.

I feel the time has passed for us to focus on evangelism as our parents and grandparents had known it, but has come for us to use unity to actually show the world that there is a faith that is deeper then Church on Sunday followed by brunch at Luby's. I do not think that God will judge this generation for a lack of evangelism, but for a lack of furthering world-wide love and understanding of Christ and world-wide love and compassion, on the side of justice, for the least of these. This can all be accomplished through a unification of churches and ministries that is decidely outwardly focused from the get-go.

The point …. in a practical sense? I think is that if two or three churches unite for the sake of unity … we must first ask what this particular unity is for. We already have the greatest unity of all, which is that in Christ, but we seem to be overly anxious to trade that unity for something far less (unity in a local church or group of churches) that has a vision cast far downward from that of the whole body of Christ. That downcasted vision is an inward-focused body, that just exists to lay on each other for the purposes of organizaton, growth, accountability, and financial stability. While none of these are wrong, it does little to benefit the body of Christ if the inward-focus of safety and security is what we're after; if we are out to unify to focus an organized front to fight the forces that stand in the way of injustice and poverty, then less go for it. Otherwise, let our unity in Christ be sufficient, and then we can ban together under that banner to pursue the things that matter.