The Transformed Life | Week 5: Fellowship + Giving | Acts 2:40-47 - Clint Leavitt

At Midtown Presbyterian Church, our mission is to invite people into a transformative relationship with Jesus Christ. We borrow this language of transformation from the scriptures, where we are encouraged as Christians to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds" (Romans 12:1-2). Being a Christian isn’t simply about information - it is about transformation, becoming people whose entire beings embody the way and work of Jesus in every part of our lives. With this goal in mind, we at Midtown have developed an introductory curriculum, alongside a library of resources, events, sermons, and podcasts, designed to help transform our community into Christlikeness. Listen as Pastor Clint explores the characteristics that made the early church so transformative in the world: their inclusive and diverse fellowship, and unselfish and sacrificial giving, and their connection to the ultimate source of such thing - Jesus. Learn how we can become that sort of transformative community in our own community today! Sermon Resources: 1. Letter from Pliny to Trajan in 112 CE about the early Christians: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/primary/pliny.html#:~:text=These%20letters%20concern%20an%20episode,the%20second%20and%20third%20centuries. 2. Journal article on the explosive growth of early Christianity: http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222012000100076#:~:text=The%20calculation%20of%20Stark%20to,%3B%20Schor%202009%3A481). 3. “We slaughter a fierce ox; we strangle a mad dog; we plunge the knife into sickly cattle; children who are born weakly and deformed we drown.” -Seneca, early Greek stoic 4. Study on the divisiveness of American politics: https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/frenchpress/activism-and-apathy-are-poisoning-american-politics/ 5. See redlining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining 6. See John Brown University for prohibitions of interracial marriage until the 21st century: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGUwcs9qJXY&t=14s 7. “God’s vision for his people is not…to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united by faith in his Son as a manifestation of the expansive nature of his grace. This expansiveness is unfulfilled unless the differences are seen and celebrated, not as ends unto themselves, but as particular manifestations of the power of the Spirit to bring forth the same holiness among different peoples and cultures for the glory of God.” -Esau McCaulley, "Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope" 8. “Their founder [Jesus] taught them that they should be like brothers to one another, and therefore they despise their own privacy and view their possessions as common property.” -Lucian of Samosata, early opponent of Christianity 9. “The impious Galileans support not only their poor, but ours as well.” -Emperor Julian of Rome 10. “This was an angelic commonwealth, not to call anything of theirs their own. Forthwith the root of evils was cut out.… None reproached, none envied, none grudged; no pride, no contempt was there.… The poor man knew no shame, the rich no haughtiness.” -John Chrysostom