A Diverse Church on Mission

A Diverse Church on Mission

I. Introduction

A. King imagined a future in which “the sons of former and the sons of former slave ” could “sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” a future in which his four children are judged not “by the color of their but by the content of their .”

B. King made the distinction between and .

C. Desegregation is to changing laws and social norms regarding the mixing of the races.

D. “Integration is rooted in a principled belief that how we started was and . It acknowledges that, as a people, we are not our best when we’re .

E. Matthew 28:18-20 (NLT) ¹⁸Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. ¹⁹Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. ²⁰Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

F. If we have eyes to see it, we see diversity as a Kingdom ideal and not a .

G. We (still) have one common : To go and make !

H. The Mission of God: The whole taking the whole to the whole .

I. Christ sends us out with the Word, in the power of the Spirit to do the ministry of with a because there are walls everywhere.

J. We are called to walls.

K. Go and make disciples of because without a specific mandate to go to everyone, everywhere, we’d likely just go to .

L. Galatians 3:26-29 (NLT) ²⁶For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. ²⁷And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. ²⁸There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.

1. This doesn’t mean that our unique racial, gender, generational and social realities are unimportant!

M. Diversity is the , not the .

N. Our Christian community is a . A place where you learn to love people you don’t . A Christian community is even better.

O. A diverse Christian community can teach you to see in places and in people where you likely have missed it.

1. We don’t champion diverse Christian communities just so we can look good together in a .

2. We champion diverse Christian communities because real and formation happens there in ways that can’t happen in a homogenous Christian community.

P. Are you a church that’s simply or are you a church that’s ?

II. Conclusion