Our mission at Midtown is to invite people into a transformative relationship with Jesus by being with Jesus, belonging to community, and blessing the world.
Listen as Pastor Clint explores how we are stepping into this together as a church in the coming year, and the ways you can take your next step in our community!
Sermon Resources:
1. Letter from Pliny to Trajan in 112 CE about the early Christians: www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontlin…20third%20centuries.
2. Journal article on the explosive growth of early Christianity: www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?scrip…hor%202009%3A481).
3. “Never in so short a time has any other set of ideas, religious, political, or economic, without aid of physical force or of social or cultural prestige, achieved so commanding a position in such an important culture.” -Kenneth Scott Latourette (Yale), A History of the Expansion of Christianity
4. “More than any of its competitors it attracted all races and classes… Christianity gloried in its appeal to Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian. The Greek and Roman philosophies never really won the allegiances of the masses; they appealed primarily to the educated, the morally and socially cultured. Christianity drew the lowly and unlettered multitude, yet also developed a philosophy which commanded the respect of many of the learned…Christianity, too, was for both sexes, whereas at least two of its main rivals were primarily for men. The Church welcomed both rich and poor…No other group, therefore, took in so many groups and strata of society. Here, the query must be raised: Why did it first appear in Christianity?...It is the uniqueness of Jesus which seems the one tenable explanation. Without Jesus Christianity would not have sprung into existence, and from him and beliefs about him came its main dynamic.” -Kenneth Scott Latourette (Yale), "A History of Early Christianity"
5. “Though we have our treasure-chest, it is not made up of purchase-money, as of a religion that has its price. On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts are…not spent on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house…for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession.” -Tertullian
6. “The impious Galileans support not only their poor, but ours as well.” -Emperor Julian of Rome
7. “They abstain from all impurity in the hope of the recompense that is to come in another world. As for their servants or handmaids or children, they persuade them to become Christians by the love they have for them…when they see the stranger they bring him to their homes and rejoice over him as over a true brother.” -Apology of Aristides
8. “People caught up in the love of God not only began to give thanks for their daily bread, but daily offered to God whatever they had that might speak that gracious love to others. What is far more dangerous than any plan of shared wealth or fair distribution of goods is a God who dares impose on us divine love. Such love will not play fair. In the moment we think something is ours, or our people’s, that same God will demand we sell it, give it away, or offer more of it in order to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or shelter the homeless, using it to create the bonds of shared life. This will be the new direction born of this movement.” -Willie James Jennings
Join us below:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/midtownpreschurch
Instagram: www.instagram.com/midtown.pres
Website: www.midtownpres.org
Community Groups: www.midtownpres.org/community-groups
Sunday Services: www.midtownpres.org
