5th Sunday After Pentecost

Embracing Hospitality

By Trisha Welstad | June 30, 2023 |

A part of the disciples’ call is to be recipients of hospitality from those to whom they are sent, even as they anticipate the hardships and risks of following Jesus into the unknown. However, they are assured that provision will be made for them on their journey — God will be with them.

Go and Do Likewise

By Gideon Ochieng | July 8, 2022 |

This year 27 leaders from the Kariadudu area in Nairobi will graduate from our center. These are leaders who started small churches in their neighborhoods and have accompanied those churches for years. Out of love, many have chosen to serve and live in one of the most challenging parts of our city,

Power

By Joel Kiekintveld | June 25, 2021 |

At first glance, the fifth chapter of Mark is full of stories that appear to be mostly about healing. At the beginning of the chapter, Jesus casts out demons from a young man; and today, we see him heal a woman and raise a girl from the dead. Healing is clearly an important and wonderful part of the narrative.

The Hospitable Iconoclast

By Lina Thompson | August 16, 2020 |

To be clear, this love isn’t just another law… It’s not another demand for perfection. Quite the opposite. It involves a healthy dose of failure and forgiveness from everyone involved. They are also key elements in our journey to becoming a force in creating true human community.

A Tale of Two Daughters

By cody | August 23, 2019 |

Life had been slowly bleeding out of her for 12 years, so in one final act of desperation she reaches out to touch her last remaining vestige of hope: the edge of the robe of a great teacher in whom she would now put all the faith she had left. Note here that Mark emphasizes the woman’s faith rather than Jesus’s power.

Hostility and Hospitality

By Fred Laceda | July 12, 2019 |

Filipino Muslims are our closest siblings, yet we are divided by our differences and a lack of trust. We were not prepared to address this lurking and lingering issue. We walked, as it were, down the road Jesus describes in his parable, asking whether we would continue to affirm the ossified lines of our identities, or transcend that which divides us?

Missional Hospitality: Blessed by Grace

By Joel Van Dyke | June 30, 2017 |

Our Gospel reading this week draws from just three little verses at the end of an incredibly dense Matthew 10. The chapter is full of missional directives, which are bookended by the topic of missional hospitality we find in verses 40-42.

Seized By Fear

By Lina Thompson | June 17, 2016 |

The man in the tombs we see in this passage is tormented by demons that will not go away. They have “seized” him. They have overpowered his life and isolated…

Deficiencies

By Kris Rocke | July 11, 2014 |

And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow…
some seeds fell on the path…
rocky ground… thorns… good soil.
(Matt. 13:1-9)