Just a reminder, that tonight we are working through Ephesians 3. The menu is Brunswick Stew (chicken fingers will be available for the children). Please do not bring anything unless it is a bottle of wine or someone new.
This weekend I finished a short book by Bishop Seraphim Sigrist of the Orthodox Church in America called A Life Together: Wisdom of Community from the Christian East. The book is about recovering the model of the church as a self-complimentary community of different believers with different gifts and opinions through which Christ becomes known. See, 1 Cor. 12:12-31. In the book, +Sigrist shares this brief observation which I hope that we have and can nurture:
I have seen the model in Bible study. After a discussion on the first chapter of Revelation with a group of Bible teachers from many backgrounds (Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Baptist) in Moscow, I remarked how the exchange seemed like a kind of wonderful play. A friend replied ‘We are all teachers. We are free to propose ideas which might be wrong or heretical and to consider them and turn them around. No one will be shocked or frightened. It is a very wonderful time of spiritual relaxation for us.’
So please come with your ideas, your insights, and your questions, and by God’s grace, we can have a wonderful play, turning them all around from our differing perspectives. Dinner begins at 6. Hope to see you here.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20-21