“How can we be one when we believe so differently?” I often hear this question – in ecumenical settings, among church members, or in everyday conversations. It’s a valid concern. Christian diversity can feel overwhelming. Different traditions, teachings, and liturgies are undeniably real. And yet, I’ve come to believe that the deepest unity doesn’t begin in discussion, it begins in action.
Although I am ordained in the Reformed tradition, I have spent much of my ministry immersed in Lutheran practice. I trained with a Lutheran mentor during my vicariate, lived for four months in a Lutheran women’s monastery singing Psalms, and spent a year in Istanbul working in a Lutheran church – even singing the liturgy. These experiences have shown me that unity often begins not in theological debate, but in shared service. In the context of action, differences fade away.
One of the most powerful experiences of unity in diversity came during my time in Istanbul, working with a refugee project. Orthodox Christians, Free Church volunteers, German Lutherans, English Anglicans, Austrian Roman Catholics — we didn’t always share a common language or theological vocabulary for each other. But we understood what mattered most: people needed help. Medical care, clothing, food, comfort, education, and prayer. So, we served, side by side. In that shared work, theological boundaries were not important because they were overtaken by a deeper calling: to love our neighbour.
Especially in today’s time of increasing fragmentation, I believe ecumenism is strongest when it is practical. Not in solemn declarations first, but in shared bread and burdens. The words come later, born from what we’ve done together. When we stand side by side at the same soup kitchen counter, visit the hospital ward, or pray together in grief, something happens. Quietly, but unmistakably, unity begins to take root.
Of course, dialogue matters. We must also talk about our differences. But unity does not grow from neat theological formulations alone. It grows from shared life, from the experience of serving and being served by one another. Perhaps this is ecumenism’s gift to the world today: not grand institutional mergers, but small, faithful acts of cooperation. A funeral planned across denominational lines. Collaborating for climate action. Sharing a church building with different denominations and reaching out to the people in the neighbourhood together. The decline of some churches may be an opportunity—a chance to discover how much we can accomplish when we work together.
We often speak of ecumenism in terms of “dialogue tables” but I wonder if we also need more workbenches—places where faith becomes tangible. Where the question is not, “What divides us?” but, “What can we do together?”
When we stretch out our hands to work alongside each other, conversation naturally follows. And with this understanding, we may even discover that the other is not as strange as we once thought. Perhaps we’ll find that Christ has already been at work between us — long before we found the words. In doing so, we also demonstrate to the world that true unity is not a matter of agreement on every theological point but of shared service and compassion. The way we work together, despite our differences, can serve as a witness to a world increasingly divided by identity and self-interest. The goal is not to erase difference, but to build connection through service — not of one opinion, but of one heart.
Rev Silke Halfmann is pastor of the United Congregation of the Bonhoeffer Church in Sydenham and two Lutheran congregations: St Mary with St George in London, and St Albans with Luton. Since April 2024, she has served as Senior Pastor of the German-Speaking Synod in Great Britain and was elected Vice-Chair of the Council of Lutheran Churches (CLC) in December 2024. She studied theology in Germany and the Netherlands, completed an ecumenical placement in Istanbul, and moved to London in 2022 from the Protestant Church in the Rhineland.
Photo credit: © C. Fahlbusch