Consider Your Call

The fools that we are called to be does not diminish us as people, but rather reminds us of the source of our strength and our wisdom. If we are able to move our egos out of the way and truly focus on the unity of the body and the centrality of the call, it just might be possible to be in mission together as the church of Jesus Christ.

Planning Notes

The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

February 2, 2020 - 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Liturgical color: Green

Primary Actions, Symbols, and Images: The Cross, Disciples, A Collection of Call Stories (Biblical and Personal)

Somos del Señor: Consider Your Call
….the Lord has need of you.

A Changing U.S. Church

Post-1965 immigration has turned the United States into the most culturally diverse nation in the world. The majority of these new immigrants are Christians. Immigrant congregations represent the fastest growing segment of American Christianity across all traditions. “[T]his unprecedented immigration of non-Western Christians represents a new missionary encounter with American society. . . [E]very Christian migrant is a potential missionary.”

America may be the foremost missionary-sending nation in the world . . . but patterns within contemporary global migrations have arguably transformed it into the foremost missionary-receiving country in the West.”[1]

Ways of Listening, Sharing, Welcoming the Call

How can your congregation create a culture that offers authentic welcome to the stories, languages, smells (baked breads from various cultures for the sacrament of Communion), sights (paraments, banners created from global fabrics), of “other” contexts.

Describe what listening for, hearing, and obeying the voice of Christ means for you.

When did you last share your own story with someone outside your homogeneous community?

When did you last hear the voice of God through the stranger? How did you respond?

How might you listen for and hear God speaking through the voices of “others?”

In what ways do you think your congregation can more intentionally invite voices from other contexts to be heard in corporate worship?

[1] Jehu Hanciles, Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration, and the Transformation of the West (Orbis, 2008), 7, 378-79.