DNA 0f A Dangerous Church - Launch Week 01

Welcome to Week One of the DNA of a Dangerous Church Reading Plan! This reading plan is designed to partner with Compassion Christian Church’s sermon series of the same name, which you can find information about right here.

Before We Start
A unique aspect of the Christian faith is Jesus' teaching that those who followed Him would become a completely new community, a new family, a new Kingdom of people unlike any other on earth. A people whose identity would be rooted in their love for God and others. People of every nation, regardless of race, nationality, language and socioeconomic background. None worthy, all loved, all united by Jesus. Pastor Marcus Johnson shared in his opening sermon for this series that, “There are those in our world who look at the church and stifle a yawn, but the heavenly beings, who have existed from the beginning, they look at this and gasp in wonder… and then they shudder in fear”. In this series we’re going to explore the characteristics of the church, and the practices of every devoted disciple of Jesus, that make us the beautiful, dangerous force that God is using to change the world. 

Looking Ahead
In the first week of this series we are focusing on the practice of becoming like Jesus by engaging in a life-transforming community. God Himself is communal: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ ministry on Earth he began by building a small group of twelve disciples that he could teach to become like him and then send out to share that experience with others. It sounds wonderful, but for those of us who have been following Jesus we also know it can be an uncomfortable, sometimes even painful process of refinement and renewal. For what it’s worth, it wasn’t easy for the disciples either, or for the early church. The good news is that since the church has been full of imperfect people from the very beginning, God has given us a template to follow through his Word that will help us navigate the very real challenges of living in community. And while it may not be easy, God promises us that it’s worth it, because not only will living in community with other believers change the world around us as we love and serve each other - it is also a gift that transforms us in the process. 

We are going to use the book of Galatians this week to dig deeper into this idea. Take a few minutes to watch this video for a helpful overview of the book and it’s context:
https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/galatians/
 
Here is a list of this week's verses:

Monday, August 12 - Galatians 1
Tuesday, August 13 - Galatians 2
Wednesday, August 14 - Galatians 3
Thursday, August 15 - Galatians 4
Friday, August 16 - Galatians 5