Anyone who has tried to lead collaborative or unity-driven work eventually runs into a frustrating paradox.

If you build a unity effort around something specific – foster care, mental health, prayer, workforce development, really anything – you immediately lose most people. It’s not their issue. It’s not their lane. They politely opt out.

But if you don’t make it about something – if you try to keep it broad, relational, or values-based – you lose everyone. It feels vague. Abstract. Like “lowest common denominator unity” that asks people to be less, rather than inviting them to be more.

This is the catch-22 of unity work.

We often talk about unity as if it’s a communication problem, when in reality it’s a design problem. People don’t disengage because they don’t care; they disengage because the work either feels too narrow to belong to or too empty to commit to.

True Kingdom-level unity doesn’t start with an issue, and it doesn’t end with abstraction.

Healthy unity creates space, not sameness. It allows people to remain deeply committed to their specific callings while still being connected to something larger than themselves. It doesn’t ask leaders to shrink their convictions or flatten their passions. It asks them to stay relationally connected while they pursue different expressions of the same underlying good.

This matters deeply in workplaces, partnerships, and cities. The most resilient forms of collaboration are not built around one cause or one banner, but around shared responsibility and mutual trust. People aren’t united because they’re doing the same thing; they are united because they’re moving in the same direction.

Whether we are talking about an institution, a community, or a city, we are talking about something that is one AND many. Instead of trying to abandon one in pursuit of the other, let us leverage a connected world to be more of the fullness of both.

One and many. Unified and diverse.
For Cincinnati.