Westwinds Teaching

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Mahatma Gandhi

[the ever advancing technologies that this generation has grown up with] “have made it possible to communicate in ever more extensive and complex ways. But they have also facilitated lifestyles where people are in touch with conversation partners on the other side of the planet, but not with next-door neighbors; where insurance lies in investments and pensions, rather than in friendships and extended families; and where face-to-face human interactions ceasing to become the encounter of choice for a generation who are used to having plentiful alternative ways to make themselves known to one another. The flipside of making ourselves more independent and self-sufficient is that we are simultaneously becoming more isolated and more alone. ... If you see the central quest of life as overcoming isolation, rather than morality, your notion of mission will change accordingly” - Samuel Wells, from the Nazareth Manifesto

“Evidence of the presence of the Kingdom of God is thick wherever and whenever people stand on the promise of God that there is more to this world—more to this life—than what we see. There is more than the getting over, getting by, or getting mine. There is more than the brokenness, the destruction, and the despair that threaten to wash over us like the waters of the deep. There is a vision of a world where God cuts through the chaos, where God speaks and there is light. There is a vision where there is protection and where love is binding every relationship together.” - Lisa Sharon Harper

God is active and present in the world. We are invited to join in the work that God is doing.

“Christian simplicity empowers us to go to new depths in life and love. It removes the extraneous. Perhaps there is no place where simplicity is more important than in our basic understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.” — Phil Stout

This week and next week, we will examine the mission that Christ called us to, in Matthew 28.

You are worth letting Jesus love.

God doesn't turn away from you, even when you turn away from God.

Anger is an energy that must be released at the appropriate time to defend and protect against an injustice.

Who do you need to invite to your table?

We can trust the story of Jesus. We can trust that we are to live our lives so they are not about ourselves.

By understanding the cosmology of the writers of the Bible, we can more deeply understand what they meant us to understand about God's character.

You have been invited into a new identity.

Stop showing people religion. Show them a relationship with Jesus.