Bethel Baptist Church never encountered a challenge like this before. The church accepted an invitation to participate in a mission in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Making an appearance in a foreign environment terrified both adolescents and adults. Even with those uneasy feelings, the congregation quickly zeroed in on the goal at hand in spreading God’s love to this needy region. With events such as church cleanup, food ministry, and disaster relief, the church left with a greater appreciation of life, and how lucky many of the citizens in the United States truly are.
Lord Teach Me to Pray #6 Kingdom-Focused Prayer Text-Micah 4:1-5 Introduction-: In Philip Yancey’s book The Jesus I Never Knew he talks about how we live on Saturday, the day with no name: The other two days have earned names on the church calendar: Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Yet in a real sense we live on Saturday, the day with no name. What the disciples experienced in small scale—three days in grief over one man who had died on a cross—we now live through on cosmic scale.
Few religions outline the exact steps towards salvation. They follow this practice with the belief that no mortal can truly know whether they will see heaven’s pearly gates, even if he or she spends years knocking on doors with tracts and Bibles in hand. In Langston Hughes’ “Salvation,” however, a church in the midst of a revival pleads and shouts that a young Hughes simply needs to see Jesus to be saved. But when Hughes can’t see Jesus, he loses faith in both salvation and himself. To help his readers understand his younger self’s reasoning for his loss of faith, Hughes manipulates his syntax to immerse the audience in his naive 13-year-old mind.
Philip Levine’s poem Gospel is about a man’s viewpoint on life while receiving bad information. Throughout the poem the speaker uses similes, metaphors, synechdoches, rhetorical questions, and personification to explain more to the readers. The beginning lines explain and give background information to the readers on how the man viewed the world. As the poem goes on the tone of the poem starts to shift to a sense of depression.
“Salvation” is a short story by Langston Hughes describing a boy when he discovered a significant truth about faith and religion. The last paragraph of “Salvation” functions as an epiphany for the boy. An epiphany is an experience of sudden and striking realization. It can also mean the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi. This event helps shape the boy’s religious understanding far differently from what his Aunt Reed believes.
Ogden, G., Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time (p. 203). IVP
Jesus Made in America by Stephen J. Nichols explores the way that American culture has adapted Christ to align with cultural norms rather than to align culture to Jesus of the Bible. The idea is that Jesus will fulfill the needs of Americans based on what they value and want in their spiritual lives, rather than what is Biblical and upright. The book follows American history from the time of the Puritans to present day, looking at issues like Christian music, movies, marketing and politics tackling all of these issues in the terms of when they were popular in Christian culture. Toward the end of their time together Jesus asked his disciple Peter who he would say that Jesus is, Peter replied by saying that Jesus was the Messiah, the one who had come to create a new covenant between
“Beware of the Easter Bunny” by Charles Colson, “Letter from Birmingham Alabama” by Dr. Martin Luther King, and “Salvation” by Langston Hughes depict the ways human have the wrong definition of Christianity. People often expect from God and what He can do, but do not understand the true concept of Christianity. People often expect acts of God, but they themselves do not act or stand up. In “Salvation”, Langston recalls his aunt telling him how “when you are saved you [see] a light… and Jesus [comes] into your soul” (Hughes 345). Langston’s incorrect definition of Christianity ruined his experience and beliefs.
Bill McKibben in his essay “The Christian Paradox. How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong.” unmasks the paradox underlying Americans' Christianity. The ambiguity lies in the fact that the US is the most allegedly Christian among all developed nations and yet Americans remain the least Christian in their behavior. The author exposes American Christians for who they genuinely are providing numerous examples to validate his thesis, which states that the notion of being a good and dutiful Christian perceived by most Americans has in fact little to do with Jesus' teachings.
Langston Hughes short story “Salvation” epitomizes what is an internal struggle for many people, especially children, who want so badly to believe what they have been taught all their lives by their relatives, elders in the church and the preacher; that to have a relationship with God, you must be saved and only then will you be able to see him. Hughes’ Aunt Reed paints such a vivid picture of that idea beginning in the story’s second chapter: “My aunt told me that when you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside! And Jesus came into your life! And God was with you from then on! She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul.”
Barack Obama is currently serving the end of his second term as the 44th President of the United States. Throughout his two terms as President, he’s said and done many things, most of which have decreased the state of the country. Barack Obama has somehow managed to double the nation’s debt, thus leading us into more economic despair. His current approval rating has been fluctuating, rarely reaching 50%. The state at which the country is now, had been degraded too an extent of no return.
Langston Hughes’ autobiography essay “Salvation” goes in depth about an experience he went through when he “was going on thirteen.” In this narrative, Hughes’ illustrates himself as a young boy, whom decisions at church one evening, reflects the human race intuitive tendency to conform and in a sense obey societal trends. That week Hughes’ Aunt Reed had been pressuring him about approaching the alter, accepting Jesus as his savior, seeing the light and having a spiritual awakening. Hughes’ wanted to see Jesus dearly and experience salvation. Realizing Langston was not able to see Jesus and others could, he found himself in unexpected position with the community in the church.
The Christian Sociological parts, have influenced each other in the past. Christian churches in U.S. society still maintain importance because "approximately 80 percent of Americans...identify themselves as Christian; many of the new immigrants in fact are Christian, e.g., those from Haiti, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Central America" (Caiazza, 2010, p. 190). In terms of their role in the Christian Sociological model, Stuckenberg (1880) holds that the individual "in society is a representative of Christ and of" the "Gospel" (Matt. 5:13-15) where their testimony leads the world to judge Christianity (p. 266). Their "conduct before others should be in harmony with his true worth and dignity" (Stuchenberg, 1880, p. 267).
Whether they apply the method or not there is very applicable knowledge to be taken away from this book. This applies to those who need to close their back door and retain their people coming and going in their church. Even those that need to reconstruct or repurpose their small groups Now looking into the future ministry and church planting this book is riveting to get an understanding of how to successfully engage, evangelize, establish, and equip not only the church but the unchurches. Getting people involved in ministry. This book brings about many simple and effective ideas to make the church growth and spiritual growth flow in a much smoother and proper
The word “critical” often conjures the incorrect image of negativity. If the Four Gospels are to be analysed critically would this study find loopholes only? This need not be the case, as the Four Gospels, and the Bible as a whole, has withstood the test of time. As a stand-alone text, the Bible has proven its accuracy in its portrayal of events, its authorship, and its date of writing. Though scholars have tried to use both textual and literary criticism to discredit the Four Gospels, there are an equal number of scholars, using these same tools, who have proved that the Four Gospels have an accurate portrayal of events.
