church

Dr. Shawn Okpebholo on composition:

[I was] energized by my devotion to Christ and his church, recognizing that the gift music is not limited to one era or to one region of the world. So as a Christian, I could not help but explore.

Tim and Kathy Keller on Psalm 72:8-14:

Lord, empower your church to win the world by not just proclaiming your Word but also embodying it. Make our congregations places where we see the races and classes reconciled in ways that they are in no other place on the face of the earth. Amen.

Watson Jones in CT:

Although I’m nine years older, [Chance’s] lyrics still resonate. In “Summertime Friends,” he takes me back to walking with “socks on concrete,” eating “jolly ranchers,” and “catching lightening bugs.” Listening, I envision kids running as the ice cream truck slowly makes it way down the street. The girls are outside jumping double-dutch.

Watson is pastor at Restoration Church.

Russell Moore:

Our national divisions increasingly make it difficult for us not just to work together, but even to pause and weep together. We become more concerned about protecting ourselves from one another’s political pronouncements than we do with mourning with those who mourn.

As I stepped from the platform into the car, the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of the subway assaulted my senses: a suit-wearing executive barked orders on his iPhone before losing coverage, teens sporting Yankees caps and loosely-laced Nikes slap-knuckled one another in greeting, a beggar entered from an adjacent car jingling his donation cup, most folks read books and screens strategically avoiding eye contact, and white earbuds blasted loud enough for all of us to sing along to Coldplay.

This wasn’t New York City. This was a typical ride on the subway in Mexico City. It was experiences like these on Mexico City’s sprawling transit system that helped me to understand a new global phenomenon: major cities often look and feel a lot more like each other than they do their local regions. In other words, in many ways, Mexico City is more like New York City than its neighboring state of Morelos. And the same could be said for almost any global city.

This is important, because we are increasingly finding ourselves in a world where the predominant mission field is urban. For the first time in history, more than half the world’s population lives in major cities. That means that there are more people in the world’s cities today than ever before — both as a percentage of the population and as a raw number. And the trend is accelerating. This has enormous implications for Christian missions and evangelism. People — the subjects of God’s great rescue — are increasingly located in cities.

This article originally appeared on OrchardGroup.org

Acts 1:3-9

—Tim Keller

Psalm 56:4

—Jen Pollock Michel

—Jen Pollock Michel

–David Dark