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7. Christ's Worldwide Body 
The words, "Our Father, who art in heaven," make all people kin. Paul tells the Roman Christians, "By him we cry, 'Abba, Father.' The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."(1).
The basic purpose of this chapter is to show that the Worldwide Body of Christ was the model of ministry for the New Testament church and is also God's choice for ours at the close of the Twentieth Century. This model, when rediscovered, will bind together what we now call "the church" into a clear and focused body around the world.
A Multiracial Body
The children of God in the Body of Christ stretch across the globe. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and communications, Christians of different races can now know what each other are doing. They are truly united as one. Luke writes, "From one man, he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth"(2). Yellow, red, pink, white, brown, black, all stand on a par in God's created order. Their common faith-premise, springing out of the Mystical Body, evokes unity and gratitude. Black is beautiful, brown and white are beautiful, pink is beautiful, red and yellow are beautiful. All are beautiful.
THE WORLD'S STRONG SUPPORT THE WEAK
The International Body
Because the Body of Christ unites all Christians, the world's strong support and encourage the weak. During the last three centuries, North American and European churches sent out thousands of missionaries to darkest Africa and the dense jungles of South America to bring the Good News to the whole world. This trend is now reversing.
As new third world churches are growing strong enough, they are dispatching their own emissaries to a declining western church. Congregations in Africa are developing while others in the West are shrinking. Archbishop Mannases Kuria of Nigeria was asked, "Is it true that there is a new church opening every day on the continent of Africa?" He replied, "I can only speak for my own Archdiocese. There is one new Anglican congregation developing every week." On the official photograph of the Lambeth Conference in 1988, there were more black faces among the Anglican bishops than white. Roles are now changing as one national church supports another. One part of Christ's Body builds up the other.
The global Body draws together all nations, every language group, different cultures and many races. Rebecca Manley Pippert writes of this international Body. "What a tonic to my student doubts it has been to see Christ manifested in cultures vastly different from my own! To watch Thai believers witness to illiterate villagers through dramatization of the Prodigal Son story. To listen to a beautifully saried Indian woman, a member of a Hindu family, speak of what it cost her to love Jesus. Or to hear Messianic Jews in Israel sing in Hebrew their love for the Messiah......All of us from cultures so varied and different, yet all have bowed our knees to Jesus' name, the only name in heaven and earth that can save"(3). One might add, "the only name in heaven and earth that can unite."
A color on a canvas can be beautiful in itself. However, the artist normally excels not by lathering one pigment across the painting but by positioning it between contrasting or complementary hues. The original tone then derives richness and depth from its milieu of contrasting tints and shades. "The basis for our unity within Christ's Body begins not with our similarity but with our diversity"(4). All are beautiful.
Question for Discussion
1. In what ways can my fellow Christians in other parts of the world help me?
Notes
(1)Romans 8.15,16. (2)Acts 17.26. (3)Rebecca Manley Pippert. (4)Paul Brand.
"We are living members of his mystical body"
