Sermon: Investing in People & Place

Scripture Text: Philippians 1:3-11 and Acts 16:6-34

Quotes for Reflection

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles
The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world.

Ralph Ellison, Interview on Invisible Man, 1974
I think most of us Americans are challenged, to be very, very conscious of where we are and that’s not an easy thing to do, and I do believe that knowing where we are, has a lot to do with our knowing who we are.

N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone
We sometimes think it would be nice if life were not complicated, but it is, and the complexities matter. They are part of God’s world and God’s work.

Michael Keller, Contextualization in the Late Modern West
It ought to be our goal to know our friends, our neighbors, and our cities and areas so well that we know the cultural stories around us. What makes the gospel unique is that its storyline—its answers to these questions—can encompass and complete every other culture’s storylines. Whereas other cultures identify some created thing as being the problem and another created thing as the solution that will make things right, Christianity says the root of all problems is sin and the ultimate solution is Jesus.

Application Questions

1. God can call us to a people over our personal preference. Where have you experienced this in your own life, and how have you seen God at work?

2. Why is our embodied, faithful presence essential to God’s work in the world? Where do you see that taking shape in your own context?

3. The gospel is not only comforting, it is also disruptive. In what ways do you see the gospel confronting the status quo of our city?