Sermons
Turn and leave your life behind.
More beautiful words have never been spoken.
My passage through seconds, minutes, and hours
could hardly be called life. Enticing.
Those words waft toward me like smells from Mom's kitchen.
They drift toward me supremely, like the love from Coltrane's saxophone.
I realize that those words, follow me, are just an invitation back home.
-Drew Jackson, "Follow Me" in God Speaks Through Wombs
The gospel imperative for the church is not simply the call to a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. In that way of expressing the gospel message, a radically individualistic emphasis overwhelms the definition of what it means to be a Christian. While no one would argue against the idea that the Lord saves individuals and reconciles them to himself, the gospel is so much more than that. It must include the fulness of what it means to be made in the image of God. The finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God, is the entirety of redeemed community. - Irwyn L. Ince, Jr., The Beautiful Community
The blueprint of the household of God looks nothing like the blueprints of our own cultural and social cliques. If we want to know how to embody the household of God, we need look no further than to Jesus. While on earth, Jesus modeled this new reality by connecting with every type of person around - conservative theologians, liberal theologians, prostitutes, divorcees, children, politicians, people who party hard, military servicemen, women, lepers, ethnic minorities, celebrities, and so forth - and inviting them to be part of his group and to work together to bring wholeness to their cracked and crumbling world. - Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart
