A New Community

For Meditation

This weekend we welcome David Bailey, our mission partner with Arrabon, and the Urban Songwriting Interns to lead us in worship and teaching.

David attends East End Fellowship and is the Executive Director of Arrabon, a ministry that equips churches and organizations with cultural intelligence and reconciliation practices to be a "foretaste of heaven." We are privileged to have David with us this week, and look forward to exploring how the second chapter of James calls us into a new type of community altogether.

Our worship will be lead by the interns from Arrabon’s Urban Songwriting Internship. This internship is an intensive eight-week leadership development program offered in partnership by Arrabon and East End Fellowship. Interns participate in experiential learning of biblical theology and exposition, worship studies (with a focus on multicultural worship), race, class and culture, songwriting, and community engagement.

We are excited to welcome David and the interns to worship with us this week! In preparation for this Sunday, please read and meditate on James 2:1-13, asking yourself what this passage says to our church family about building a counter-cultural community founded on our common belief in Jesus as Lord.

James 2:1–13

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. 2 Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. 3 If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,”4 have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?

8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. 11 For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

12 Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, 13 because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.