Our River Sunday worship gatherings are jumping into a new summer series we are calling, “Stories from Another World: the parables of Jesus.” A parable of Jesus is a story about life in the kingdom and what the king is like. Jesus told them on purpose to comfort, to describe, and to provoke. I like what Malcolm Muggeridge said, “All happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks. The art of life is to get the message.” God is speaking, right now, into your life, and into our collective community we call The River Church. I am going to walk us through what we call the Parable of the Prodigal Son [though I’m going to give it another title I think is more helpful] in Luke 15. I see three themes: compassion, confession, and celebration, so join me as we discover whether Jesus, through this parable, might give shape to us individually and as a community, for the good of the world.
