Who Do You Love?

I keep coming back to John 17. This high priestly prayer is beautiful and rich, and continues to bear weight on my life and ministry.

For years, I taught this chapter as part of training leaders for missional communities. I loved it then for its clarity. Jesus ties the unity of his people to the love within the Trinity and to a purpose that is explicitly outward-facing. “That they may all be one… so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21, ESV). A few verses later, he prays, “that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:23, ESV).

The logic is simple and staggering. The Christian community is not only for mutual encouragement and survival. It is meant to function as a public witness. There may be sharper arguments for Christianity in the abstract, but in God’s providence, there are few things more persuasive than a reconciled people whose life together cannot be explained apart from Jesus.

When I used to teach this passage, I would remind people who Jesus had been forming. Fishermen. We tend to imagine evangelism like a solitary man with a rod and reel. But fishermen who catch large amounts of fish do not work that way. They used nets, and nets required a crew. Picture five men wrestling a net into the water and then hauling it back in together. That kind of fishing does not happen without a community of fishermen.

The image helped us feel something true about God’s mission. The gospel advances not primarily through isolated individuals but through a people. In John 17, Jesus prays not only for the Twelve but “for those who will believe in me through their word” (John 17:20). Our oneness is meant to tell the world something about God. It is meant to demonstrate that the Father sent the Son and that we have been drawn into the love that has eternally existed between them. And this side of Pentecost, the Spirit in us testifies to that same truth, and that’s what binds us together as God’s people.

In those years, we called this the community apologetic. And we would argue that the single most persuasive argument for the Christian faith is the Christian community. When outsiders are invited into the life of a gospel-shaped people, the gospel becomes more plausible because it becomes visible. As we would often say, belonging often comes before believing. Not because belief is optional, but because love creates the kind of relational space where belief can be honestly explored.

In that season, the application felt direct. We were trying to move people from small-group instincts to missionary-family instincts. We were trying to shift the definition of success from attendance and curriculum completion to obedience and witness. We were trying to help consumers become self-feeders, individuals become a family of missionaries, and knowledge becomes obedience. The primary challenge was not whether unity mattered; it was whether unity could be achieved. The goal was communities that would become concrete enough and open enough to function like a net that could actually be cast.

Fast-forwarding, what I did not anticipate then was how much the broader evangelical ecosystem would fracture and how that fracture would raise the stakes of John 17.

The years from 2020 through 2022 exposed fault lines that many of us did not fully realize were there. COVID, racial injustice, the 2020 election, January 6th, vaccine debates, Supreme Court rulings, and a constant stream of cultural flashpoints functioned like diagnostic tests. Christians who confessed the same creeds interpreted the same events in radically different ways. Pastors I know describe those years with one word: exhaustion.

The article “The Six Way Fracturing of Evangelicalism” gave language to what many leaders were already feeling. It described how evangelicals were increasingly self-sorting into distinct subgroups, often unable to recognize one another’s instincts as faithful. Whether or not one agrees with every category, the broader point is hard to deny. Many of the bonds we assumed were theological turned out to be cultural, political, or generational. The tectonic plates shifted. Churches sorted. Leaders grew wary. The word evangelical itself became more political than theological in the public imagination.

Following that season of time, John 17 feels heavier.

And as we form the Greater Austin Mission Society, we are working in a collaborative space among churches and leaders who deeply desire the flourishing of our city under the reign of Christ. But we are doing so in a post-fracture moment. Coordination is not enough. Shared mission statements are not enough. The question underneath the question is whether we can love one another in a way that is visible and credible.

This is where I have begun to sense the difference between networking and kingdom building. I’ve always been deeply interested in people and love making new connections, but the term “networking” makes me recoil a bit.

In my estimation, networking asks, “Who do you know?” It is oriented around access, influence, opportunity, and leverage. It is not inherently wrong. But it can produce proximity without devotion and partnership without affection. In a fractured environment, networking can create the appearance of unity without the substance of love.

And I think Kingdom building asks, “Who do you love?”

Do we love the Father, the Son, and the Spirit? Do we love one another sincerely from a pure heart, as Peter exhorts us (1 Peter 1:22)? Are we eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, as Paul commands (Ephesians 4:3)?

Jesus prays in John 17 not merely that we would agree but that we would become perfectly one. He anchors that unity in the life of the Trinity itself. “I in them and you in me” (John 17:23). The source of our unity is the eternal love of the Father and the Son. Before there was a mission, there was love.

And the purpose of that love is public. “So that the world may know.”

In a culture that has categories for alliances, coalitions, political blocs, and institutional self-preservation, visible love stands out. The world understands strategy. It understands branding. It understands power. It does not easily understand leaders who genuinely rejoice in one another’s fruit, who defer to one another, who absorb misunderstanding, who repent quickly, and who continue to labor side by side without contempt.

That kind of love is not sentimental. It is costly. It requires maturity. As we grow in Christ, our capacity for love stretches beyond preference and similarity. It stretches across real differences in temperament, background, and emphasis. It does not ignore conviction. It does not flatten theology. But it refuses to let secondary differences become ultimate dividing lines.

I still believe that belonging often comes before believing for those outside the faith. But in this season, I am increasingly convinced that leaders and churches also need to relearn how to belong to one another in Christ. Not superficially. Not transactionally. But devotionally. Rooted in shared submission to Jesus. Shaped by prayer. Sustained by repentance and humility.

The community apologetic was never a tactic. It was always a testimony.

So beneath our strategy sessions and collaborative efforts is a deeper question. Not merely, “how do we work together?” But, “Are we becoming a people who love one another in a way that makes the gospel visible?”

In a fractured age, that may be the most urgent apologetic of all.

Not, who do you know? But who do you love?

Because the most persuasive argument that the Father sent the Son is still what Jesus prayed for: a people who are one, even as he and the Father are one, so that the world may believe.