An Engagement Model for Unity

Unity is Elusive

Individualism and social cohesion

I grew up with this gibe in my native community: put five of us in a room for an hour, and we will establish six different church denominations and seven sports teams that compete to the point of death. In the place that I call home, individualism has proven itself incapable of healing our fractured society.

The tenuous social fabric of my country of birth, South Africa, has come undone in a post-COVID-19 world. In 2021 social unrest further slashed South Africa’s frayed social compact. My twenty-something-year-old son Andreas asked me: “Dad, our country is burning, what are we going to do?” I responded, “Son, I don’t know how to repair all the tears, but I do know that it will require all our combined effort.” At the time, the collective efforts of the Christian community in South Africa dispatched 600 tons of food to 52,000 people in two weeks, staving off impending food riots.

Competition

As an investment banker working in Sandton, South Africa, on Wall Street, New York, and in the City of London, the engagement model of competition was proffered as the most remarkable innovation of contemporary times. The meeting structures engendered competition amongst colleagues. Monthly team meetings would conclude with the individual league table being put up on the screen. Your worth to the team was determined by how much money you made. Your worth to society did not feature as a performance indicator.

Collaboration

The world started embracing the notion of collaboration as a replacement for competition. Collaboration refers to individuals or groups coming together to achieve a common goal, often by pooling their knowledge, skills, and resources. It was, however, in the world of social development and in the church that I experienced the misgivings of collaboration as an effective engagement model. Collaboration is limited in achieving a common goal because we only come together to the point of mutual self-interest.

A new contender — Contribution

NXT Move is a global ministry focusing on turning around the trajectory of Christianity in the next generation. This single-minded endeavor is based on the fact that 52% of the global population is under the age of 30, 80% of Christians made the decision to follow Jesus before the age of 18, and 38% of millennials are leaving the church.

It is here that I experienced the power of contribution as an engagement model toward unity. I have seen young people from Cape Town, South Africa, contributing their skill and expertise in the digital space to a ministry in Europe that mobilizes followers of Jesus to reach young people who would not walk into a church. I have seen how Africans contextualize what they have been gifted from the USA into cities and slums, reaching the next generation with the Gospel.

The new generation is leading the way toward unity

It is the new generation that authentically and naturally achieves unity by contributing to each other, beyond the point of mutual self-interest. They give of themselves, and beyond themselves, towards a bigger goal — uniting in turning around the trajectory of Christianity in the next generation.