Divine Community

Main Focus: To sustain a multi-ethnic community, we must practice reconciliation. The last few verses of this passage supply a vision for the church, while the rest of the passage explains the work that it takes to get there. All this work starts with God, who’s taken...

Main Focus: To grow into a multi-ethnic community, we must be relationally strategic. In Acts 13:1-3 we read about the church in Antioch, which is a great case study in the practices of a multi-ethnic church. In the first century, Antioch the city was a radically...

Main Focus: Gospel advancement, meaning discipleship, is the strategy for multi-ethnic community. Discipleship is not merely a ministry of the church, it is the ministry of the church. In Acts 1:6-11, Jesus charges, indwells, and empowers his people by his Holy Spirit...

Main Focus: Love is the fuel for multi-ethnic community. We’re now transitioning to the second portion of our series, the practical outworking of all we’ve discussed thus far. Over the past ten weeks we’ve established that God is building a multi-ethnic community for...

Main Focus: Multi-ethnic inclusion is a necessary and intentional ingredient for and outcome of the gospel. In his Gospel, Matthew sets out to prove that Jesus is the promised Messiah-King of Israel, and he starts by tracing Jesus’s lineage. But don’t be fooled, this...

Graham Michael is a beloved lay elder at Vintage Church Downtown. Main Focus: The Lord’s faithfulness warrants multi-ethnic praise and worship. Psalm 117 is not only the shortest of all the psalms, but it’s also the shortest chapter in the entire Bible. As you can...

Main Focus: The beauty and the glory of the Kingdom of God is shown in its multi-ethnic, multicultural makeup. This week we’ll stop in the book of Isaiah to get another glimpse of what God will achieve in the end. Isaiah 60 describes Zion, the New Jerusalem, in the...

Main Focus: God offers salvation to people from every nation. This week we explore God’s heart for all cultures and people groups. Psalm 67 is a song of praise meant to be sung in the context of worship; God is praised and beseeched for mercy, blessing, and salvation....

Main focus: God wants all people—people who look, think, and act differently—to know and celebrate his saving goodness. A stop in Deuteronomy may seem like a strange detour from our Divine Community series, but hang with it. This week we’ll look at two key festivals...

Main focus: Embedded in God’s promises to humanity is his redemptive love for a diverse people. In Genesis 12:1-3 we’ll see the integral way in which God’s desire for a multi-ethnic people is woven into his plan for salvation. There we see God visit Abram (later...

Main focus: God’s glory is demonstrated in an earth-filling, diverse human community. The Tower of Babel may or may not be a familiar story for you, but often it’s taught simply as a tale of God thwarting human arrogance. And it is that—the tower builders wanted to be...

Main focus: God purposefully created humanity, in all of its diversity, to reflect his creativity and complexity. Last week we looked at the separate persons of the Trinity and their diverse-but-unified triunity. This week we’ll see what that theological reality means...

Main focus: God has always existed in perfect community. After starting at the end, we’re headed back to the beginning. In Genesis 1:1-3 we’ll find God at the very start of his work in creation, but we’ll also have the opportunity to ask, what was God doing before the...

Main focus: Worship is the ultimate goal of God's multi-ethnic people and the common bond in a church full of people who look, think, and act differently. This week starts off our Divine Community series and, to put it in Stephen Covey’s words, we’re beginning with...