Lord–bless your people this day. God our Father—in Your love and compassion; Jesus, God the Son–with Your grace and truth; Spirit of God–in Your power and with Your love. Triune God, pour out Your bou...
We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness...
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
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.
Preaching Commentary Besieged from All Angles The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Jar...
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...
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...
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...
Nearly every racial minority in the US understands Euro-white culture pretty well, but we whites are far more ignorant of how the cultures of others operate.
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.
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...
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 ...
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...
Notes on the Passage Besieged from All Angles: The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Ja...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
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...
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...
It was the reception of the Holy Spirit that first offered the church hope of a social and spiritual community composed of people from “every tribe and nation” and unified by the centrality of Christ.
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...
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...
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...
Individuals from diverse cultural and denominational traditions have vastly differing expectations about the Sunday worship service. For some, it is too formal in its use of hymns, liturgy, and the ch...
Summary of the Text Ancient Context What’s the historical context? The Tower of Babel The story of the Tower of Babel comes after many chapters relating the story of Noah, the flood, and the ...
Holy and just Lord, we come before you today guilty. Guilty of reducing Jesus in our minds and hearts. At times we make him our personal savior, forgetting that his love and mercy are for all tongues,...