This Sunday, we will begin a series on Galatians. During the summer months we will be slowly and carefully working our way through The Letter of Paul to theGalatians. The Apostle Paul wrote this letter about 2,000 years ago.
What do you know about the Apostle Paul? According to the Book of Acts he oversaw the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. The gruesome story ends with the verse, “And Saul approved of their killing him.” (Acts 8:1 NRSV) It’s interesting that our Christian faith is based, in part, on the writings of a religious zealot who approved of the killing of someone because that other person’s beliefs were thought to be so odious that he deserved to be killed.
In this series on Galatians, we will be inviting you to rethink Paul, aka Saul. Therefore, you might want to begin reflecting on what you have learned in the past about the Apostle Paul?
And, what do you know about the letter of Galatians? A friend of mine recently suggested that the structure of The Letter of Paul to the Galatians might be summarized by “me, you and us.” What she meant was that the first few chapters of Galatians are about Paul. The middle of the letter is about the Galatians. And, the last part of the letter is about Paul and the Galatians together and how they might move forward in the future.
This also got me thinking about you, Missio Dei and me. Recently, we have been talking about identity and Missio Dei. The series on Galatians will help us to continue the conversation about our Christian identity. It might help us to better live into the distinctive marks of Missio Dei: holistic, missional Christian community. We can’t have this conversation without you. I hope you will be at The Studio@620 on Sunday.