When you get more than 400 people from 65 countries in a room – and throw in that they’re Baptists – you are amid a very diverse bunch. Difference is all around you – be it language, skin colour, dress, equity, cuisine, theology, worship style or preferred football code. And given we were meeting in Africa, those who had the dance moves and those who didn’t (read me) were easy to spot!

In such a context, I was challenged again to consider my difference default. I was challenged to consider my response to people who don’t look like me, who don’t think like me, who come from a different cultural background, who don’t share my opinions and who arrive at different biblical views on some important issues.

Surrounded by difference, I’m confronted with challenging questions like:

Do I genuinely celebrate diversity or seek to foster conformity?

Do I focus on what unites or what divides?

Do my actions and attitudes model respect or disrespect of people not like me?

Am I committed to building bridges or strengthening barriers?

Do I – as a Baptist – genuinely value liberty of conscience and the freedom of others to hold to different views?

Will I champion the things I hold to passionately, but do so in a Christ-like way? And seek forgiveness for when I get this wrong?

Will I accept the inherent power that comes with my gender, cultural background and being the leader of a western organisation?

Will I intentionally seek to amplify the voices of female, global south and minority leaders?

Will I be courageous in confronting my own prejudice and racism?

Will I repent of those things in my life and leadership that hinder genuine unity in the body?

All of these questions are being answered in my life, one day at a time. I am a work in progress. And I desperately need the Holy Spirit to be continuing his renewing work within me if I am to live, love and lead more like Jesus and authentically accept others, as Christ calls me to do.

As I look at our deeply divided world, I am struck by Jesus’ calling to his followers to live as peacemakers and people who build loving and just community.

I head home from Africa enriched by the beautiful diversity of those I have gathered with. And challenged to humbly, yet intentionally, continue to shape circles where different voices are welcomed, heard, valued and celebrated. That seems to me, to be the way of Jesus.