June 7 2026 | The Church S1E2 | Unity and a New Humanity

“Unity and a New Humanity” · The Church Series, Episode 2 June 7, 2026 · Sea Change Church · Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · Ephesians 2:11–18

Week one was about identity — knowing who you are as a church. Week two is about what that identity demands: unity. And according to Pastor Adam Stadtmiller, the entire mission of the church rises or falls on this one thing.

Working through one of the densest theological passages in Ephesians, Adam unpacks what Paul is actually saying to a room full of Gentile converts in a city steeped in idol worship, surrounded by Jews who wanted nothing to do with them. The word Paul keeps reaching for — separated, alienated, strangers, without hope, without God — paints a portrait of what every person in that room was before the cross. And then comes the hinge: but now.

The cross did three specific things, and Adam traces each one through the text. It brought near people who were far off. It broke down the dividing wall of hostility. And it created one new humanity out of two groups who had no business being in the same room. Jesus didn’t just die to save individuals — he died to create a people, and the unity of that people is how the world is supposed to recognize that he was actually sent by God (John 17).

The sermon is deeply practical. Adam draws the line from the Jew-Gentile conflict in Ephesus directly to your living room: the same self-righteousness that kept those groups divided is the same thing that calcifies conflict in marriages, families, and friendships. The move that breaks it isn’t winning the argument — it’s starting from remember. Remember that you were far off. Remember that you were equally dependent on grace. The Berlin Wall illustration lands the point: when that wall came down, people danced. That’s what the church is supposed to look like.

Adam closes with a direct challenge to reevaluate commitment to the local church — because you can’t have unity on the other side of a TV screen, and Jesus didn’t design a plan that starts with political movements or strategic frameworks. He started with individuals, pulled them together, and changed the Roman Empire from the inside out.

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