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"Contagious Faith" Page 1  | 2 | 3
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Mike Slaughter  |
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| Acts 8:1 1: And Saul was consenting to his death. And on that day a great persecution arose against the church in Jerusalem; and they were all scattered throughout the region of Judea and Sama'ria, except the apostles. 2: Devout men buried Stephen, and made great lamentation over him 3: But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. 4: Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. |
 We're
talking about God's mission to reach the world. Acts 8:1. Here is God's
strategy. "That day a severe persecution began against the church in
Jerusalem. All except the apostles were scattered throughout the
countryside of Judea and Samaria." The apostles were the professional
ministers. The church staff. Everyone but the professional ministers was
scattered throughout their networks of influence. In verse 4, "Now
those who were scattered went from place to place proclaiming,
demonstrating the word of God."  God uses ordinary people who are
contagious, not religious professionals. Ordinary people who are not
exempt from the daily crises of life. God scatters these people through
their communities and networks of influence - from person to person
God-life spreads and reproduces itself.This is
the way it came into my family of origin. Both of my parents were from
families that were virtually unchurched. My dad was the first one in his
family to become involved in the church when he was converted to
Catholicism. One time I said to my father, "Dad, there is no one else
in your family that is part of a community of faith. How did you start
going to the Catholic Church?" He said, "It was on the
battlefields of Europe during World War Two. I met a priest who was just
one of us - plain, ordinary. Laid in the muddy foxholes with everyone
else."  My maternal
grandfather, newly married in 1924, owned a series of grocery stores in
Little Rock, Arkansas. This young marriage didn't quite work the way they
wanted it to and by the 1940s my grandfather was a deteriorating
alcoholic. A Baptist man - I only know him as Brother Malone from my
grandfather talking about him - kept coming into the grocery store my
grandfather owned in Covington, Kentucky. He came day after day and talked
about baseball until finally he broke down the resistance of this lost
alcoholic who was born a new man. |
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We're
beginning the new year reminding ourselves of the mission of Jesus Christ
in the world - to reach the lost and set the oppressed free. Last week we
reminded ourselves on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend that our unique
mission is reconciliation. We're going to continue talking about our
mission for the next three weeks. I am here in the community of faith as a
servant of Jesus because I was exposed to people who were infected with
the presence and power of Jesus Christ. I caught it from someone else. It
altered my spiritual DNA. It changed my worldview. It affected the way I
thought about other people. My sense of social justice. My accountability
to God. If you are in a relationship with Jesus Christ it is because you
were exposed to a person with contagious faith. You have been infected.
Some of us are in the incubation period.