Editor’s note: Dr. John H. Armstrong is the founder and president of the ministry known as ACT3, an acronym for

My experience with UBF has been one of the great joys of my life over the last five-plus years. It began with a student in a graduate class of mine at Wheaton Graduate School. The student’s father has been a UBF leader for many years. This led to growing friendships with UBF leaders and invitations to get to know even more leaders and to speak for UBF. This created even more new friendships.

I wrote openly about these friendships with leaders and members of UBF and received quite a bit of negative feedback from unknown respondents around the world. I listened and prayed that I would be “shrewd as a snake and harmless as a dove” (Matt. 10:16, NLT). I answered each criticism and kept asking my own questions to my friends inside UBF. In the process I came to love these wonderful people, their vision and the mission that is called UBF. I believe the love that we have shared has been mutual and very beneficial. I know my life is better for knowing these dear brothers and sisters that I have met in UBF. I am open about these friendships regardless of what others might think or say. Loyalty is a high priority for me thus I am very determined to be a loyal friend to UBF.

At the same time I have been allowed to see UBF, as the saying goes, “warts and all.” Love is not blind. But true love “never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance” (1 Cor. 13:7, NLT). I have learned to interact with my UBF friends and thereby offer counsel wrapped in faith, hope and love. I have felt the same given to me in return.

I am delighted that members, and former-members, have found ways to address past hurts and to grow to new maturity in Christ. Not everything done in the past will be fully corrected in this life but Christians can work for the new day and “never give up.”

I discovered early on that one of UBF’s favorite portions of Scripture is 1 Peter 2:4–10. I have heard it prayed and quoted as much as any text within this movement. I love this text and still recall how preaching through it almost 25 years ago changed me and my congregation profoundly. We made it our goal to be the people of God in mission and to send our best into every place possible for the kingdom of God. This is how I was eventually launched into a worldwide ministry through a church that saw my gifts and gave me their blessing to use them as widely as possible.

Peter makes the point in this text that community is vitally important to Christians. UBF seems to have discovered this point very early in its history. In an individualistic culture, like that of North America, this comes as a breath of fresh air to young believers whose family life has been broken and who long for friendship, belonging and deep bonds of filial love. UBF, in my estimation has come to many such young adults as a drink of cool water on a hot and muggy day. One reason this has happened is because this very text has been so central to its mission. This, I believe, is where the Korean background of UBF contributes so deeply to the North American scene where so many families are in crisis.

Though each of us is individually converted to faith in Christ, and born of God to new life (cf. 1 Peter 1:23; 2:2), none of us is ever to remain in isolation. God has saved us for community. God’s design is to build us together “as living stones” in his “spiritual temple” (1 Peter 2:5). Whereas God inhabited a building, on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, under the Old Covenant he now resides in and among his people as a community. Think of it this way—the Triune God comes to lives in each of us! But he lives in us in order to live among US, to live in our midst, to actively share his life in our community of faith. If this were not so then why is there all the concern that we find in the New Testament letters about our oneness, about our unity and about our peace in personal relationships?

God promised to rebuild his temple (cf. Ezekiel 40–48). I believe this temple has been rebuilt through God’s dwelling among us, his New Covenant people (cf. John 1:14). We, i.e. our congregation whether large or small, constitute God’s holy temple in this age. When we join together in worship (from liturgy in the Greek, which literally refers to “the work of the people”) and minister to one another and the world we function according to God’s plan. When we function as we should we become God’s missional people, a community engaged in manifesting Christ to this age by the Holy Spirit. The New Testament refers to this as a “great mystery,” reminding us that this is a work of God.

This is why the church is (1 Peter 2:9) what Israel was, “a chosen people” (cf. Deut. 7:6), “royal priests,” “a holy nation” (cf. Exodus 19:6) and “God’s very own possession” (cf. Exodus 19:5). UBF is right to make this text so important. I love it when I hear this text recited, prayed and used so powerfully.

But with this emphasis comes a very real danger. Israel easily forgot its own calling. In some ways this is her story, forgetting who she was and what she was to be before her neighbors. She was called to proclaim God’s grace and glory to the nations but found ways to keep this truth to herself. She focused upon how she was so different from surrounding nations and prided herself in finding out the differences. She grew complacent in her distinctiveness and thus forgot her true purpose. She saw her strengths, as I put it, and lost sight of her weakness. She forgot “to show others the goodness of God” (1 Peter 2:9) and created her own forms and phrases, marks of what made her so different from those around her, and then grew comfortable that she was following God’s purpose for her in the covenant given to Abraham was to make him “a blessing to others” (Gen. 12:2).

The “holy nation” is to be a blessing to others. We are not to become a cul-de-sac where we talk to one another, learn from each other and stay close to each other without the input of the stranger and those who are part of God’s family from many corners of his kingdom. We must continue to humble ourselves before God and be reminded that we too can fall and fail. We must seek the mighty hand and heart of God for his renewing grace for each year, each month, even each day. A movement like UBF could well be a blessing to the nations for decades to come. Or it might well turn inward and promote its own distinctive insights over the good news of God’s grace for all, believing all the time that it was doing precisely what the Lord required.

If I have learned anything in six-plus decades of life and ministry, in many corners of the earth, I have learned that God desires us to never isolate ourselves from his people in order to faithfully follow him. He wants us to take what he has given to us, his love for our neighbors, to both our non-Christian neighbors and our neighbors who are brothers and sisters throughout the world. This begins in our own family, in our own community and in our own city. Who do you know and love that is really very different from you? Who do you associate with who stretches you beyond your comfort zone? Who do you share the vision of Christ’s kingdom with that is not exactly like you in the small things that we are all prone to turn into the big things because they are “our” unique contributions? UBF has a great future if it loves in this way. It has a limited future if it closes its borders to the whole people of God and promotes certain distinctive understandings of truth over the one who is Truth!