GOD’S GLOBAL FAMILY

Despite our many differences, God’s dream has always been that his people would unite in love, peace and unity as family.

“You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation...” -Revelation 5:9

If you walk past a fabric stall in an African market, your eye will be drawn immediately to the bolts of cloth stacked layer upon layer to the ceiling. The contrasts hold so much beauty and draw you in. The intricate patterns and intermingled, bold colors are impossible to ignore.

Intentional clashes of bright hues have a kaleidoscopic effect, drawing the eye and imagination into their swirl. God’s global family similarly reflects incredible beauty, intricacy, and intentionality! (Check out the new video “Woven Together” on page 8).

I saw so much gorgeous fabric this summer in Kenya and Tanzania. Our family had the opportunity to travel and serve together at the 2026 Lahash conference. My husband, Dan, and I took our kids to work alongside and encourage the incredible leaders from Lahash partnerships across East Africa.

This year’s conference theme was “God’s Global Family,” and every morning we dug into Scripture together, uncovering God’s desire to be known and worshipped by a people made up of all nations, tribes and tongues.

Throughout the Old and New Testaments, we see people invited into God’s family, blessed and converted through immeasurable grace. Ruth, Naaman, the prophets, the many Gentiles who found Jesus and the early Church all show the variety and difference present when God’s grace freely abounds.

Like beautiful African fabrics, the global and historic Church’s diversity comes together in the beauty and delight of God’s good plan.

In fact, the Bible features our differences as God’s family again and again, reminding us that our diversity reflects God’s pleasure. Scripture is clear that God desires His people to be a global community that weaves praise and obedience together into a tapestry of worship.

It culminates in Revelation with the global choir singing God’s eternal praises in every tongue, a final crescendo to mark what pleases God forever: it is all of us, beautifully different, together in unity of heart and worship.

At the conference, as we poured over Scripture, no one missed the exceptional gift of our context. There we gathered: different languages, cultures, and ethnicities. We read the Bible in our native tongues and shared insights in awkward attempts to speak each other’s language, often with help from our more capable multilingual translators.

We sat at tables of varying nationalities, undeniably more aware of the cultural assumptions that we had invisibly carried into the room.

My favorite moments were when we worshipped together in song and prayer. We joined our voices at different times in Swahili, English, Kinyarwanda, and Zulu. Whether or not we could understand the words filling the air around us, there was a deep unity in the sincere expression of each heart.

Worship itself is a common language. We felt the joy of being a small preview of that global Revelation choir which God chooses to surround His throne. It was powerful.

This invitation to unity and the joy of living as a global family cannot be taken for granted. Around the world, the Church has paid a steep price in division and grief when we have narrowed our view to a human definition of family.

My friend Pascal survived the devastation that corrupts community when we reject God’s plan. After his parents and six siblings were murdered in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Pascal had every reason to fear people different than him and retreat to only his own. Arbitrary lines of separation had cost him everything. He shares more about this in the video on the following page, “Woven Together.”

From discrimination to the heart-wrenching atrocities of slavery and genocide, we cannot look away from the consequences that grow from sin and selfishness when God’s people narrow their view. The beautiful fabric of community God designed is at risk of being ripped to shreds.

Instead of modeling the kingdom-vision of unity in diversity, we often permit ourselves to choose people like us over others who are different or distant. This tempting preference is, at its core, a rejection of the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic vision at the heart of God’s kingdom.

Here again, God speaks to our cultural preferences through Scripture. The invitation in Philippians is to “let each consider others better than himself,” an uncomfortable call when applied to what I consider my cultural preferences. Have I considered my brother or sister around the world “better than myself,” or do I continue to reinforce the foundation of my own cultural worldview?

And if I can open myself up to truly consider others better than myself, then Scripture is clear: I must then look out for their interests, not just my own. This radical, globally-minded, de-centering of ourselves starts with the Kingdom of God!

“Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” – Philippians 2:3-4

When we can start to break out of our own assumptions and build our lives on Scripture, it becomes obvious that our true family is much bigger than we often see. This is a perspective-shifting invitation for all of us. My friend Pascal lives out this narrative as a godly example.

Through God’s grace, he has experienced healing in a much bigger family. His life is now built on serving those who are most in need in his community, regardless of tribe or family, a living testimony to the beauty of God’s better plan.

Making this leap takes so much trust. Delighting in the beauty of an integrated, global community requires the real risk that those differences may at times be painful. But stepping out in faith honors God, and it is the only path to real unity, real relationships and mutual transformation.

As our family traveled and served together this summer, I was again struck by the incredible gift of being part of God’s global family, so much larger than our small group on the trip. We are one people woven together like a beautiful fabric. Our differences create the beauty that will cause the world to stop and stare.

This bigger, beautiful family is our true home. Only together, as God’s people, the global Church, do we become the best version of ourselves. Far from visiting as strangers in a foreign land, our hearts share so much more: a bond of faith, the shared language of heart-worship and an eternal promise that we will all be truly home together someday.

Watch the new feature video “Woven Together.” LAHASH.ORG/FAMILY