Friendship Can Save the World: The Book of Ruth and the Power of Diverse Gospel Community

God uses diverse friendships to fulfill his miraculous will in the world.

In an increasingly polarized world, our collective ability to navigate friendships with people whose backgrounds, experiences, and views differ from our own has diminished. Along the way, valuing diversity has come to be seen by many Christians as a secular pursuit. However, we love and serve a diverse God (being three unique persons himself) who taught us to love those we tend to have a hard time loving: outsiders, enemies, foreigners, the poor, and the weak.

In Friendship Can Save the World, Carrie and Morgan Stephens offer an invigorating retelling of Ruth, Boaz, and Naomi to help us love people unlike us. Weaving in real life stories from their multiethnic, multigenerational, and socioeconomically diverse church, they highlight the power of unique friendships in God’s greater missional story. Readers will find inspiration to love and be loved more courageously as we all forge a path into a more redemptive future.

Carrie Stephens

Carrie Stephens is a writer, speaker, secret donut hoarder, and mom of four. She loves Jesus and His church more than coffee and good Tex Mex. Her first non-fiction book, Holy Guacamole (Shiloh Run Press), released in February of 2020. Carrie was also a contributing author in The Christian Mama’s Guide to Having a Baby by Erin Macpherson (Thomas Nelson, 2013). Her essay, Broken Prayers, was included in Kathy Lipp’s book, Praying God's Word Over Your Life (Revell, 2013). Carrie loves communicating through story, humor, empathy, and Christ-centered teaching. She regularly speaks at churches, conferences, women’s retreats, Bible studies, on panels, and in leadership settings.

Carrie and her husband, Morgan, started out as campus missionaries at the University of Texas, and have helped lead Mosaic Church, a richly diverse community of faith in Austin, Texas, since 2010. For more information or to inquire about having Carrie speak at your event, visit carriestephens.net.