“For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14).

We see in the second chapter of Ephesians that there were two distinct groups making up the Ephesian church. Both groups were believers, but one was of Jewish background and the other Gentile. One group thought they were more entitled to be followers of Jesus than the other.

When we were in Biharamulo, Tanzania, we were forming churches where different groups had been forcibly moved from their traditional lands to common villages. Each group thought they were the blessed of God. As they became followers of Jesus, this division was a problem, and we needed our Lord’s insight to find an answer.

As we prayed and asked friends about this issue, we found that each people group had a totem sign—a symbol that represented their group identity. The Lord helped me to apply the concept of totem to our churches. I first acknowledged that we came from different people groups with different traditional totem signs. But when we become a follower of Jesus, He becomes our totem and the blood He shed on the cross is applied to our hearts, making us adopted children of God.

Over the 10 years that we were in Biharamulo, God increased the number of churches from 3 to 45! These churches are made up of different groups, but they all have the common totem of Jesus Christ superseding their traditional ones. We all come from different backgrounds, like the believers of Biharamulo. We need to recognize Jesus is our common denominator and that He binds us together as God’s adopted children.