I was talking recently with a friend about the upcoming Mennonite Church Canada Assembly in Saskatoon that I plan to attend. Like many denominations, ours is wrestling with some familiar trends (aging, shrinking congregations and the institutional challenges that go along with this) and predictable issues (same-sex marriage, how to respond to our nation’s history of colonial attitudes and actions toward indigenous people, among others). And, like many (all?) denominations who live and move in the 21st-century western world, we do not agree on how best to negotiate these trends and issues. On top of all this, our polity is of a radically congregational nature, so every major decision comes with years of consultation and clarification and feedback and response. And, at the end of all that, we usually come to the unremarkable conclusion that — surprise! — we have a wide range of opinions on a wide range of issues.

“Do you see a way through all this?” my friend asked, after we had rehearsed the above scenario. My honest answer was, “No, I don’t.” I can’t imagine us all coming together from our disparate perspectives and diverse contexts and suddenly all agreeing on what the Bible “really” says about sexuality or about how we’re supposed to interpret it. I can’t imagine us all coming together and having this collective blinding moment of insight whereby the way forward for the shape of our institutional structures will become crystal clear. I can’t imagine us all being of one mind when it comes to our collective response to our indigenous neighbors or to the Israel/Palestine conflict or to the best approach to evangelism or whatever.

I’ve been to enough of these kinds of events to know that people tend to come armed with their positions on this or that issue, determined to make sure their voice is heard. Is there genuine dialogue at these events that is meaningful and productive? Sure. Often it takes place far away from the official settings, in pubs or restaurants or hallways of meeting halls, but it does exist. But I don’t think that we will depart from Saskatoon a wonderfully united bunch who see eye to eye on all these temperature-raising controversial issues. I just don’t.

Unless… Unless we decide at the outset that we will have a different criteria for what will count as a successful gathering. And what will count as unity.

I recently read somewhere that you can’t truly know someone — even an enemy — until you love them. So maybe that ought to be the goal of coming together this week in Saskatoon. That we would love each other well. That we would genuinely make an effort to see from the perspective of the other. That we would be patient with one another and ask good questions. That we would be genuinely curious about the answers to those questions, rather than just assuming we know what people will say. That we would refuse to assume the worst in people who don’t share our views. That we would resist the temptation to put people in boxes. That we would say “no” to easy and self-serving categorizations of image-of-God bearing human beings who really are often doing their best to love God and their neighbor as themselves. Whatever else “love” means, it surely at least means committing ourselves to these things.

At one point in our conversation, my friend (who isn’t part of MC Canada) said, “I hope all this doesn’t lead to an exhausted and divided church.” I hope the same. I know that it very easily could. I know that there are many tired people out there — tired of fighting, tired of “discerning,” tired of being dismissed by the “other side,” tired of church being a battleground rather than a shared space of joyful witness and reconciliation. I also know that division is our natural human state. We are experts at building walls or walking away from one another (oh boy, are we ever!). We are remarkably skilled at defining ourselves by what we are against or by who we are not (i.e., all those wrong-thinking people!). The road to exhaustion and division is an easy and well-traveled one.

I hope we will take a different road. I hope we will come together knowing that we will encounter difference, knowing that we will disagree, knowing that it will be tempting to just wash our hands of those who don’t see things with the luminous clarity that we do, but deciding nonetheless that God has bound us to one another and has called us to love each other well as a witness to the watching world.

Anyone can love when it’s easy, after all. Anyone can love those who are constantly reaffirming their own positions about everything. The true test of whether we really mean what we say about all this “love your neighbor as yourself” business comes when our neighbor comes in the shape of the one who annoys and frustrates us, the one we can’t understand and don’t want to. That’s when love is hardest. That’s when it’s needed most.

Ryan Dueck is pastor of Lethbridge Mennonite Church in Lethbridge, Alta., Canada. He writes at Rumblings, where this post first appeared.