SIMPLE CHURCH: LOVE GOD. LOVE PEOPLE. BUILD COMMUNITYIssue #1, January 2010
JANUARY AT SAINT JAMES
The Epistle of James
What do we look like?
Join us at worship during January and February for a sermon series on the Epistle of James. The Letter of James is about how one’s relationship with Jesus Christ causes one to live. James challenges us to consider whether our faith produces fruit. What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? (James 2: 14) James is certain that the effect of faith in Christ is radical changes in behavior, so that our love for God, for one another, and for the disadvantaged make up the fabric of our life. At Saint James the way we express the life to which we are called is our vision statement: LOVE GOD, LOVE PEOPLE, and BUILD COMMUNITY. Or, to put it another way, the letter of James is about the relational shape of the Christian life, the shape modeled in the Trinity and expressed as a triangle:
Or, to put it another away, James is about what the world can expect to see in a Word-shaped community. If we are disciples of Jesus Christ, you will be able to tell it as you observe our worship, our relationships with one another, our concern for the poor. James is writing to believers who faced the same challenges in the first century that we face in the 21st: a world full of suffering and need, a culture that encourages individualism rather than community, a world view that does not understand the power of God to transform.
Please enter into the world of James and allow the 2-edged sword of Scripture to shape and refine you, to the glory of God!
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