Crossmap Podcast: Author Jimmy Rollins on Looking Beyond the Boundaries of Race and Cultural Preference
Throughout His ministry, Jesus specifically bridged the gap with the ostracized, the outcast, and the overlooked. He told His followers to do the same.
To do this, we must make every effort to make disciples of Jesus, and not duplicates of ourselves. This means we must live and love one another, even when we don’t want to. We must build relationships with those who are different from us. We must go beyond the boundaries of unspoken rules and invisible lines.
“As Christ followers, that conversation has to start with, tell me where it hurts, what’s been your experience up to this point?” shares author Jimmy Rollins. “As we begin to share with one another, we have to have this understanding that me sharing information about my past is not an indictment on who I’m talking to. It’s actually an opportunity for who I’m talking to, to provide ointment, to provide healing, to provide encouragement.
Rollins, a former megachurch pastor, believes we must embrace God’s kingdom of truth. And in doing so, we are better together than we are divided. In fact, in his latest book, “Love Outside the Lines: Beyond the Boundaries of Race, Difference, and Preference”, Rollins encourages us to exemplify a life of dynamic diversity at church, at work, at home, and most importantly within ourselves. This is the path to unity. This is what will build a flourishing Christ-culture in our lives as well as others.
“I feel like I was put on this planet to be a bridge builder,” Rollins explains. “We allow our differences in our preferences to sometimes prohibit proximity to people that aren’t like us, that don’t look like us. And I believe that the great commission is for anybody, everybody and anyone, and I think it’s incumbent upon us to follow in the same footsteps as Jesus, to love outside the lines and love all people.”
Rollins joins us on the Crossmap Podcast to talk about the pursuit of unity by listening to each other’s pain and through that experience discover the beauty of culture. Listen as he shares effective ways to address division, racism, and microaggression through family conversations.
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