What does it mean to be a local church in Houston, TX? Pastor Mike Yager poses this question to us as we can become quickly default to the comforts of homogeneity over the messiness of inhabiting and navigating that diversity, clinging instead to those that look like us, live like us, worship like us, vote like us. Pastor Mike invites us to consider how we are seeking the welfare of our neighborhood, community & city.
Live Teaching Podcast
Scripture & Quotations
Jeremiah 29:7
But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Hebrews 10:24-25
24 And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Jeremiah 29:10-13
10 For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.
11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. 13 When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, 14 I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
Matthew 25:35-40
35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’
“Encountering another human being is as close to God as I may ever get — in the eye-to-eye thing, the person-to-person thing — which is where God’s Beloved has promised to show up. Paradoxically, the point is not to see him. The point is to see the person standing right in front of me, who has no substitute, who can never be replaced, whose heart holds things for which there is no language, whose life is an unsolved mystery. The moment I turn that person into a character in my own story, the encounter is over. I have stopped being a human being and have become a fiction writer.”
— Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World
“Anything less than real life contact creates caricatures of the Other; and caricatures lead to cruelty. It’s simply too easy to talk about ‘those people,’ when Others are distant, amorphous, and unknown. In the absence of first-hand knowledge, Others can easily become inhuman.”
— Sean Palmer, Unarmed Empired: In Search of Beloved Community