Relationships and Community on Diversity

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Cultural Diversity: Baked into the Early Church

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Scripture

Acts 15:null, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, Ephesians 2:14-16, 1 Corinthians 9:19-22, Titus 2:11-14

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...

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Author

David W. Swanson

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Most mainline denominations have intentionally pursued racial diversity for decades, yet the scholar Jennifer Harvey notes that segregation remains the norm in these congregations. So, if “the premise...

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Author

Henri J. M. Nouwen

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Scripture

Acts 17:26, Genesis 1:27, Romans 5:12, Romans 3:23

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...

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The Solution to Divisions

Author

James Bryan Smith

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The solution to gender, race and social divisions is not to eradicate our differences but to see them in light of Jesus. The Pentecostal movement in the United States in the early twentieth century wa...

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God Dislikes Uniformity

Author

Richard J. Mouw

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Scripture

Genesis 1:20, 22, 24, Deuteronomy 10:17–19, Isaiah 56:6–7 , Acts 10:34–35, Galatians 3:28, Psalm 104:24

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...

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Lord, we come before you this day as

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Lord, we come before you this day as part of the human family. Inspire us, O God; open our hearts. We come in our diversity to catch your vision of unity. Inspire us, O God; open our eyes. We ...

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Race and Friendship

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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Scripture

Colossians 3:11, 1 Corinthians 12:25-26, Romans 12:10, James 2:1, Galatians 3:28

In a 2009 stand-up special, Chris Rock made a funny, and perhaps true, statement: “All my black friends have a bunch of white friends. And all my white friends have one black friend.” It turns out, R...

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Author

Esau McCaulley

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Scripture

Revelation 7:9-10, Colossians 3:11, Psalm 117:1-2, Revelation 14:6

God’s vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united b...

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O God, you created all people in your

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O God, you created all people in your image. We thank you for the astonishing variety of races and cultures in this world. Enrich our lives by ever-widening circles of friendship, and show us your pre...

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The Diversity of the Early Church

Author

Scot McKnight

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Scripture

Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 10:34-35, Galatians 3:28, Revelation 7:9, 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, Psalm 86:9

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 ...

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For the Human Family

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Scripture

Ephesians 2:14

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the ...

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God of all nations and peoples, Lord of

Author

Roy Pearson

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God of all nations and peoples, Lord of all places and lands, who didst form man of the dust of the ground, and make of him a living soul, we praise thee for the infinite variety of thy human creature...

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Contact Theory: A Roadmap for Reconciliation

Author

Brenda Salter McNeil

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Contact Theory proposes that if diverse groups spend extended time together, their intergroup conflict and the negative effects of racism and ethnocentrism will gradually decrease and possibly even di...

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Lord, you whose Son did pray that all

Author

George Stewart

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Lord, you whose Son did pray that all your children might be one, we come with repentance for the sin of useless division and for the secret vice of pride. We beg forgiveness for harsh judgment, for p...

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In Christ there is no East or West, In

Author

John Oxenham

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Scripture

Galatians 3:28, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, Colossians 3:11, Romans 3:29-30, Ephesians 4:4, Romans 10:12

In Christ there is no East or West, In Christ no South or North; But one great family of love Throughout the whole wide earth. In Christ shall true hearts everywhere Their high communion find; H...

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Father God–You are a God of grace and

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Ephesians 4:2-3, Micah 6:8, John 16:33, Psalm 147:3, Romans 15:13, Jeremiah 17:14

Father God–You are a God of grace and abundance, who blesses us with more than a shower of blessings but a downpour of mercies. We rejoice with friends in new marriages, and in the strength of lasting...

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Lord—you not only know all things...

Author

Richard Herman

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Scripture

Matthew 28:19-20, Isaiah 41:10, John 11:25-26, James 5:14-15, 2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Lord—you not only know all things... You notice all things. You notice when we are joyful—and You laugh, too. You notice when we are in grief or despair—and you cry with us. When we are alone or confu...

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Spirit of the Living God—Fall afresh on

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Philippians 4:6-7, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Romans 8:26-27, John 14:26-27, Psalm 51:10-12

Spirit of the Living God—Fall afresh on us this day. Spirit of God present and powerful, Spirit of God fruitful and faithful, Spirit of God filling and fulfilling us as children of the Father and foll...

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School Segregation Continues

Author

John M. Perkins

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Today the public school system in Jackson is about 98 percent black. Some of this resegregation came about simply because of where people live—after all, the population of Jackson is about 80 percent ...

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The Image of God Is Far too Rich to be Contained in a Single Person

Author

Irwyn L. Ince Jr.

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This is the beautiful community that Herman Bavinck gets at when he writes, The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human bein...

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Three Ways to Make a Salad

Author

Scot McKnight

Keywords

Scripture

1 Timothy 4:4-5, Proverbs 15:17, Acts 2:46, Matthew 5:13, Romans 14:17, Psalm 104:14-15

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 ...

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Lord, we come before you this day as

Author

John E. Skoglund and Nancy E. Hall

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Lord, we come before you this day as part of the human family. Inspire us, O God; open our hearts. We come in our diversity to catch your vision of unity. Inspire us, O God; open our eyes. We ...

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Author

David W. Swanson

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Though some denominations are racially diverse, the individual congregations within them are overwhelmingly not. Using a sociological definition, no more than 12 to 14 percent of American congregation...

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Author

David W. Swanson

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The segregation within white Christianity is not fundamentally a diversity problem: it’s a discipleship problem. Addressing white Christianity’s lack of diversity without first reckoning with our disc...

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Author

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves - in Man... For no man seeks to hear his own echo, or to find his refle...

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Author

Dorothy L. Sayers

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Scripture

Romans 12:4-8, 1 Corinthians 12:, 1 Corinthians 14:12, Ephesians 4:4-6, Romans 12:4-6, 1 Peter 4:10

The Power—the Spirit—is thus a social power, working to bring all minds into its own unity, sometimes by similarity and at other times by contrast. There is a diversity of gifts, but the same spirit.

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Author

Leo Tolstoy

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Scripture

John 11:1-44, Luke 15:11-32, 1 Samuel 18:1-4, Ruth 1:16-17, Mark 12:30-31, 1 John 4:7-8

“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

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Gracious God, in Christ Jesus, you

Gracious God, in Christ Jesus, you teach us to love our neighbors but instead we build dividing walls of hostility. You show us how to love one another as sisters and brothers but instead we hide from...

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What Exactly Is Racial Reconciliation?

Author

Brenda Salter McNeil

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What exactly is racial reconciliation? If you asked ten different people, it’s likely you’d get ten different answers! At a gathering I attended of national multiethnic leaders—pastors, professors, di...

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Science And Race

Author

Ken Wytsma

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The concept of humanity’s being divisible into different races has no scientific validity. This has always been the case, even before the advent of rapid global travel enabled the further mixing of pe...

relationships and community on Diversity

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