Mark 1:16-28, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 16:11-15, Joshua 21:32
For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. The poin...
The South African politician Nic Diederichs—a prominent leader during the apartheid era—once made a rather provocative observation: God, he said, dislikes deadly uniformity. I hate to admit that I lik...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Diverse Early Church From the start, the early church was a mix of people from different backgrounds, traditions, and classes. We se...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Diverse Early Church From the start, the early church was a mix of people from different backgrounds, traditions, and classes. We...
Mark 1:16-28, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 16:11-15, Joshua 21:32
For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. The poin...
Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end. With this compas...
Lamin Sanneh, the African theologian who would be pivotal in the development of missional theology, was raised in an orthodox Muslim household in Gambia. He found himself drawn to Christianity after e...
So if we want to get the church right, we have to learn to see it as a salad in a bowl, made the Right Way of course. For a good salad is a fellowship of different tastes, all mixed together with the ...
Today, unlike almost any other earlier period, the money and the strong educational institutions of Christianity are in one part of the world, while a majority of the active believers are located else...
There are three ways to eat a salad: the American Way; the Weird Way, and the Right Way. The American Way of eating a salad is to fill your bowl with some iceberg lettuce or some spinach leaves, some ...
Cultural diversity was built into the Christian faith…in Acts 15, which declared that the new gentile Christians didn’t have to enter Jewish culture…. The converts had to work out…a Hellenistic way of...
A close friend who started a financial loan business took thirty of his executives to the poverty- and violence-filled section of Montreal where he grew up in order to introduce them to the section of...
Acts 17:6, Revelation 5:9-10, Galatians 3:28, Romans 8:17, Matthew 5:3
The kingdom of God turns the Darwinist narrative of the survival of the fittest upside down (Acts 17:6–7). When the church honors and cares for the vulnerable among us, we are not showing charity. We ...
Acts 10:34-35, Acts 2:1-12, John 4:1-42, Romans 12:10, 1 John 4:20-21
God and Father of all, in your love you made all the nations of the world to be a family, and your Son taught us to love one another. Yet our world is riven apart with prejudice, arrogance, and pride....
Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8, Acts 10:34-35, Galatians 3:28, Romans 1:16, John 4:21-24, Psalm 22:27-28
[Speaking of the early church] A cosmopolitan spirit grew, particularly in the cities, that transcended national barriers. Old tribal distinctions and identities were breaking down, leaving people rip...
This blessing includes prayers for the initiative/event itself, the volunteers for the event, the leaders organizing the event, the resources to be distributed at the event, and any community partners...
Galatians 1:10, Jeremiah 29:7, Matthew 5:13-14, Colossians 2:8, John 17:15-16, Acts 17:22-23, Romans 12:2
To reach people we must appreciate and adapt to their culture, but we must also challenge and confront it. This is based on the biblical teaching that all cultures have God's grace and natural rev...
Paul’s insight that Gentiles are co-heirs, co-members, and co-participants in the gospel is not a mere sociological adjustment—it is a radical theological revelation.
Preaching Commentary Background to the Letter and Passage Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was probably intended for wider distribution and use among the various churches around Ephesus. As such, the...
As a black man, I pause when I see that Jesus was taken to Africa as a baby for refuge (Matthew 2:13–18). My blackness will not allow me to gloss over the Ethiopian man whom Philip cozies up to in Act...
Transition is one of the givens in our lives, and we only live well, we only manage our lives well, when we manage these transitions well. Our world changes; the circumstances of our lives change. The...
Isaiah 49:6, Revelation 7:9, John 3:16, Galatians 3:28, Romans 10:12, Acts 1:8, Matthew 28:19-20
The Gospel as such has no native country. He who goes out humbly with Christ in the world of all races will perpetually discover the multiple, but constant, relevance of what he takes. It takes a whol...
Holy Trinity, Community of Love, Draw your children together Across human boundaries Across denominations Draw us together in your creative light Awaken us to collaboration and mutual callings Quick t...
Background to the Letter and Passage Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was probably intended for wider distribution and use among the various churches around Ephesus. As such, there is no particular cri...
Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic...
This scripture guide is adapted from the Summer Settings sermon guide Road Trips II . For more Summer Settings sermon guides, click below. Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered A...
Far too many people, especially within evangelicalism, think that the individual is all that matters, and that the corporate dimension is a distraction or diversion. Of course Christianity is deeply p...
Lord God, You have created us all in Your image and have loved your creation with an everlasting and costly love. But all too often we are blind and fail to see Your image in others. We exclude those ...
Acts 9:1-19, Acts 10:, John 8:1-11, Philippians 2:3-4, Matthew 5:44
Gracious and loving God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We praise you for how wide, how high, and how deep is Your vast love for all people. Incarnate in Jesus, You offered Your life for the healing ...
Luke 10:25-37, Matthew 16:24, Acts 2:44-45, James 2:14-17, Mark 10:43-45, 1 John 3:17-18, John 13:14-15, Isaiah 58:6-7
Free us, Lord, from our obsession with ourselves long enough to care for others; to be so concerned about the well-being of the human community that me don’t have to worry about our place, our church,...