Hey Rowan Students,
It was awesome to be a part of the Rowan Vendor fair again this year. We just wanted to take a minute to invite you into our little community in your community. We are a small church with big hearts for Glassboro, and we wanted to invite you to connect with us if there is anything you need. From counseling, prayer, questions, and community, we would love to engage you and care for you in any or all of those ways. Our regular meeting times are Sunday at 6PM for a church worship service and Community groups on Wednesday at 7:15PM (Dinner at 6PM) and Thursday at 900PM.
Last Sunday was our first week teaching through a book in the Bible called 1 Corinthians. It was the first of two letters written to the church that was in the city of Corinth. It was written by Paul or St. Paul as you might know him. A quick catch up is that Corinth was a place of great wealth and idea. It was a very busy port City allowing other ports in the Aegean Sea and further west an efficient and faster path towards Rome and east. Bottom line: tons of money flowing through the city, mixed with lots of blue collar jobs and sailors coupled with some intense Greek Philosophizing. It was crazy. Open philosophical discussions like battle raps, prostitution everywhere for the sailors who enjoyed their short lived shore leave, gods of all kinds requiring all kinds of worship, and crazy wealth like Trump, all mixed in.
“Corinth was a place of great wealth and idea.”
Then the People of the Way came. That is how you would have identified someone who worshipped Jesus as Lord and Saviour at that time. As they reasoned together, and some started to follow the Way of Jesus, they had to decipher what their new lives would look like given all the stuff they were involved in previously. Jesus was calling them into some very different things and the changes and lifestyles got a bit mixed.
In our first week we highlighted the main issue that the church in Corinth was having was division (1 Cor 1:10-17). Division over who they listened to. They thought that, like Greek philosophy, perhaps different leaders of the Way had different philosophies on how to live life. They got stuck here and it affected their pride. They thought each one was better than the other because of interpretation, leadership, their own giftedness, etc.; it was leading to a lot of confusion. The rest of the letter looks at how a church can get totally nuts when it begins to worship everything except for God.
So join us as we continue this journey in the weeks to come, and don’t forget to hit us up if you have any questions or need anything. Ever.