The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity, and the Church at Its Best
Ebook
Overview
Outreach Resource of the Year
The Gospel Coalition Book Award
The church is at its best when it pursues the biblical value of unity in diversity.
Our world has been torn asunder by racial, ethnic, and ideological differences. It is seen in our politics, felt in our families, and ingrained in our theology. Sadly, the church has often reinforced these ethnic and racial divides. To cast off the ugliness of disunity and heal our fractured humanity, we must cultivate spiritual practices that help us pursue beautiful community.
In The Beautiful Community, pastor and theologian Irwyn Ince boldly unpacks the reasons for our divisions while gently guiding us toward our true hope for wholeness and reconciliation. God reveals himself to us in his trinitarian life as the perfection of beauty, and essential to this beauty is his work as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The gospel imperative to pursue the beautiful community—unity in diversity across lines of difference—is rooted in reflecting the beautiful community of our triune God. This book calls us into and provides tools for that pursuit.
Foreword by Timothy Keller
Introduction
Part 1: Seeking and Knowing Our Beautiful Creator
1. The Holy and Beautiful Habitation: Our Relational God
2. The Beauty of the Lord: Our God Is Beautiful Community
3. The Perfection of Beauty: Knowing Ourselves
4. A Crown of Beauty in the Hand of the Lord: Beautiful Community as God’s Image
Part 2: Restoring and Cultivating Our Beautiful Community
5. Your Beautiful Crown Has Come Down from Your Head: Ghettoization of Humanity
6. I Will Beautify My Beautiful House: Identity and Formation
7. Put On Your Beautiful Garments: Culture and Community
8. How Beautiful Are the Feet: Gospel Message—Devote to the Doctrine
9. The Beauty of Holiness: Probe the Preferences and Count the Cost
10. Our Holy and Beautiful House: Toast to the Truth
Acknowledgments
Notes
"In John 17 Jesus prayed that the church would be one, just as he and the Father are one. The Beautiful Community is a clarion call to the church to image our triune God in both our unity and diversity—to see and cherish the beauty of a diverse and unified body of Christ. The church needs this book more than ever, and I’m thankful Irwyn Ince has written it."
- Title: The Beautiful Community: Unity, Diversity, and the Church at Its Best
- Authors: Jr. Irwyn L. Ince, Timothy Keller
- Publisher: IVP
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Pages: 176
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780830853410, 9780830848317, 0830848312, 0830853413
- Resource ID: LLS:9780830853410
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2026-03-05T02:27:47Z
Irwyn L. Ince Jr. serves as a pastor at Grace DC Presbyterian Church and director of the Grace DC Institute for Cross-Cultural Mission. He is a graduate of City College of New York, Reformed Theological Seminary, and holds a DMin from Covenant Theological Seminary. In 2018, Ince was unanimously elected as the forty-sixth Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) General Assembly moderator—the first African American to hold the position. He and his wife, Kim, have been married twenty-eight years and have four children.