SELAH Commonwealth

Who is Jesus, according to Jesus? We will answer that question by exploring seven scandalous claims he makes in the Gospel of John, known as the "I AM" statements.

In John 15, Jesus declares, "I am the true vine." Often, we focus primarily on His command to "abide." We rightly understand that this passage holds a profound truth about our need to be rooted in Him as our ultimate source of rest and life. However, we sometimes overlook the fact that this text has just as much to say about what we produce. Because we are rooted in...

In this interview, we hear from Erin Popova who is the Dean of Students of EnterMission. EnterMission is a guided gap year program that seeks to help students navigate life, faith, service, and their future. They partner with domestic and international partners to help their student discover how to live missionally wherever God takes them.

Who is Jesus, according to Jesus? We will answer that question by exploring seven scandalous claims he makes in the Gospel of John, known as the "I AM" statements.

In John 8, Jesus declares, "I am the light of the world." Interestingly, this is the only "I AM" statement he also attributes to his followers (Matt. 5:14). We are called to be the light of the world as we walk alongside the ultimate Light.

The interactions surrounding this claim demonstrate that light reveals what is hidden—not to destroy, but to restore; not to shame, but to he...

Who is Jesus, according to Jesus? We are going to answer that question by exploring seven scandalous claims that Jesus makes in the Gospel of John. These are known as the "I AM" statements.

In John 10, Jesus declares: "I am the good shepherd". We live in a culture that prizes self-determination and independence, yet we often find ourselves exhausted, anxious, and aimless. Jesus reveals that we cannot find true security while we are busy trying to be our own protectors. When we stop trying to outrun our vulnerabilities and look to the Good Shepherd, we realize that...

Every year, as we enter into the lenten season, we are invited to reflect upon our brokenness, our mortality, and our deep need for Jesus and His resurrection. 

This exercise of writing your own epitaph will encourage you to consider your life - as it has been, as it is, and as it could be. What matters most? How do you want to be remembered? What does it look like to live life to the fullest? As we do this, we turn towards God, who is the author of our lives, and discern what it looks like t...

Who is Jesus, according to Jesus? We are going to answer that question by exploring seven scandalous claims that Jesus makes in the Gospel of John. These are known as the "I AM" statements.

In John 6, Jesus declares: "I am the bread of life". We all have this tendency to seek fulfillment in things that will never truly satisfy, leaving us perpetually disappointed. Jesus reveals that we cannot find satisfaction in him, while we are looking to be satisfied by something else. When we turn away from those things that we are looking to for fulfillment, we...

Why does God allow pain and suffering? It’s one of the most frequently asked questions about God and one that keeps many from choosing to follow Him. Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t offer clear and concise answers to every question we have about suffering. Suffering is unpredictable, messy, and deeply personal. The good news is that Scripture offers us stories of real people who live through suffering and still draw near to God despite not having all their questions answered. 

Acts 27 is one of those stories. After years of trials and suffering , Paul finds himself in the m...

What do we do when we are overcome with the brokenness in the world around us? Often, Christians respond in one of two ways: we separate or we assimilate. We remove ourselves from the culture so that we are not affected by the brokenness; or we assimilate so that we are not bothered by it. Both of these responses prevent us from being able to have any meaningful impact on the world around us. Instead, Jesus offers a third way: We call this contextualization.

In Acts 17, Paul is overwhelmed by the brokenness that he sees in the...

In this episode with have a conversation with Larry McCrary, missionary and founder of The Upstream Collective. Larry and the Upstream team train marketplace missionaries to go abroad and engage their context through their vocation. They partner with churches to send well and support people during their time overseas.

Larry shares a helpful tool for assessing the unique rhythms of your neighborhood or missional context and identifying the best times to build relationships and connect with people on a deeper level.

If you want to learn more about The Upstream Collective, visit https://www.theupstreamcollective...

Acts 13:1-4

As the early church continued to grow, more and more people outside of the Jewish community began to follow Jesus. This created questions regarding the relevance of the law for the Jesus community.

In Acts 11, the leaders of the church are wrestling with some of these questions when Peter shares a vision that he received from God. The vision revealed that though the law was a good thing, it was not the ultimate thing. The law was given to God's people so that they could understand and reflect God's heart. It was not just a list of...

Spiritual formation is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others. Disciplines create the space for that formation to happen in and through us as we encounter the presence and power of God.

Our All-Family Gatherings begin with a short workshop or story on missional living and/or microchurches. This week, we continue our series of workshops on spiritual formation and disciplines with a conversation around confession.

In Acts 9, we read about the radical transformation of Paul after his encounter with Jesus. He goes from being a ruthless persecutor of early Church to being persecuted for declaring that Jesus is the resurrected Son of God. 

What we learn through Paul's transformation is that we can think we are following God's will but be completely missing what he is actually doing. We need to see the world with His eyes. We can only gain this new way of seeing the world through a personal encounter with the gracious love and presence Jesus.

Spiritual formation is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others. Disciplines create the space for that formation to happen in and through us as we encounter the presence and power of God.

Our All-Family Gatherings begin with a short workshop or story on missional living and/or microchurches. This week, we continue our series of workshops on spiritual formation and disciplines with a guided meditation around the practice of silence and solitude.

In Acts 8, we see a shift in the spread of the Jesus movement. The persecution, culminating in the martyrdom of Stephen, caused the Church to scatter, and the message to spread to surrounding nations and people groups. This is all because a small group of people listened to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and did what he asked them to do. 

This is particularly on display in the life of Philip, who has the opportunity to tell people he never thought he'd meet all about Jesus. Through his interaction with a man from Ethiopia, we learn t...

One thing that is made very clear in the book of Acts: when you follow after Jesus, suffering is unavoidable. Jesus invites us to join him in his mission, but in doing so, we also join him in his suffering. 

This reality is on full display in Acts 7, as Stephen becomes the first Christian martyr. In his final moments, Stephen reflects the story and the heart of Jesus to the world and to his murderers. Instead of destroying the Church, Stephen's suffering becomes the catalyst for its rapid spread across the world.

Spiritual formation is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others. Disciplines create the space for that formation to happen in and through us as we encounter the presence and power of God.

Our All-Family Gatherings begin with a short workshop or story on missional living and/or microchurches. This week, we continue our series of workshops on spiritual formation and disciplines with a conversation around fasting.

For centuries, the church has been a community that unites people across social, economic, racial, and cultural barriers. Jesus has called his people to unite on him and him alone. Unfortunately, we tend to drift back into our old identities and affinities - prioritizing those who are like us and overlooking or neglecting those who are different. This tendency causes deep hurt and insurmountable fractures within a community. 

In Acts 6:1-7, we see the leaders of the early church respond in a radical way to the hurt and fractures that were forming within the community. Instead of d...

Spiritual formation is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others. Disciplines create the space for that formation to happen in and through us as we encounter the presence and power of God.

Our All-Family Gatherings begin with a short workshop or story on missional living and/or microchurches. This week, we continue our series of workshops on spiritual formation and disciplines with a conversation around sabbath.

In the early pages of the book of Acts, things are going well for Jesus' church. The Spirit of God has filled the community and empowered them to fulfill the mission of Jesus in the world. But things take a disturbing turn in Acts 5, when a couple people in the community introduce something that could be the undoing of this faith family. 

In this passage, we learn about the importance of trust and honesty in community, and the danger that deception poses to authentic connection and intimacy. 

At the end of Acts 2, we get a beautiful portrait of the shared life of the early church community. It is something that Christians have aspired to imitate ever since. 

But we miss the point if we treat this passage primarily as a model on how to do church. Instead, this is a picture of God's character embodied by God's people. It is a display of what God had been calling his people to do from the very beginning. In other words, this is what it looks like when the church cares about what God's cares about.

Spiritual formation is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others. Disciplines create the space for that formation to happen in and through us as we encounter the presence and power of God.

Our All-Family Gatherings begin with a short workshop or story on missional living and/or microchurches. This week, we continue our series of workshops on spiritual formation and disciplines with a conversation around prayer.

As we come to Acts 2, the small community of Jesus' disciples are in Jerusalem waiting for a promise to be fulfilled. Jesus left them saying that he would send the Holy Spirit who would fill and empower them to engage in the mission that he set before them. 

In this passage, we learn that the Church must first wait on the Spirit, be filled by the Spirit, and then be propelled into the mission by the power of the the Spirit. 

Spiritual formation is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others. Disciplines create the space for that formation to happen in and through us as we encounter the presence and power of God.

Our All-Family Gatherings begin with a short workshop or interview on missional living and/or microchurches. This week, we introduce a new series of workshops on spiritual formation and disciplines.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus didn't give his followers the Church, he gave them a mission: "Be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth." (Acts 1:8) 

In the books of Acts, we see that the Church ends up being a natural product of a group of people living out that mission together. The problem is when we lose sight of the mission, we end up losing the Church. And we cease to be good news to the world around us. 

What makes the Church the Church? Throughout history, many have boiled the Church down to three essential rhythms - worship, community, and mission. Though these rhythms can take a wide variety of forms, almost every community of Jesus-followers across generations and traditions have incorporated these into the life of their community. Therefore, we use this as a framework for thinking about the life and rhythms of our microchurches.

Our All-Family Gatherings begin with a short worskshop or interview on missional living and/or microchurches. This week, we discuss the essential rhythms of a faith community (aka ecclesial...

During the season of advent, we celebrate the fact that Jesus has come and the promise that he will one day come again. But it is also a time when we can celebrate and experience Jesus' presence with us right now! We invite you to take a moment to pause and listen to what Jesus might have to say to you in this season.

Daniel's final apocalyptic vision comes in Daniel 10-12. In this vision, he has a very personal and intimate interaction with the Son of Man. Ultimately, the Son of Man offers Daniel the greatest hope - one that can overcome even the greatest act of evil and destruction. This is the hope of resurrection.  

In Daniel 9, Daniel is faced with the reality that he may never return to his home in Jerusalem. He has spent his whole life as an exile in Babylon because of the actions and decisions of others. In this moment of revelation, Daniel does not give in to self-righteousness or self-pity. Instead, he comes before God with a display of radical humility. We get a unique look into the perspective on life that has sustained Daniel through unimaginably difficult circumstances.

In this episode, we hear from Brent Brewer, who is writing his doctoral dissertation on interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims. He is learning a lot from his studies that will be helpful for those of us who desire to build relationships across cultural and religious lines!

In Daniel 8, Daniel has a strange vision of two creatures—a ram and a goat—with the goat trampling the ram. These creatures represent human empires and illustrate one political reality giving way to another. With the shifting empires comes persecution for the people of God in the centuries leading up to the time of Jesus. The vision also implies an end to the persecution and God’s sovereignty over history. We are reminded that, although the political realities of our world rise and fall, and the social favor toward or opposition against the people of God comes and goes...

A short reflection on the 2024 presidential election.

In this episode, we get into part two of Daniel which is made up of a series of visions that Daniel receives while in exile. Daniel 7 is a particularly terrifying vision in which Daniel faces four monstrous beasts that represent human kingdoms that rule over the world. The fourth beast is particularly vicious and inhumane. The vision culminates with God defeating the beasts, and a character referred to as the son of man who comes on the clouds and is given authority over all of Creation. 

While there is a lot of debate around the meaning of t...

In Daniel 6, we are reminded of the nearness of God's Kingdom and that it can break through in the most unexpected times and places.

Daniel spent decades living in exile, and a major question throughout the accounts of his life is: What kingdom is he living in? Is he living in Babylon or the Kingdom of God? 

The answer is both. Yet, often times, the world around Daniel looks a lot more like Babylon than it does Heaven. Even in his darkest moments, Daniel holds on to hope that God is still the ultimate authority a...

In Daniel 4, we get a first-hand look at the destructiveness of pride. 

In our pride, we elevate ourselves over others. We erode our capacity for gratitude and contentment because we believe that we always deserve more. We destroy our relationships because we place our own desires over the needs of others. But as we see in the life of King Nebuchadnezzar, the destructiveness of pride reaches to the very core of who we are. Pride ultimately degrades are humanity. 

In this episode, we hear from Marjorie Thigpen-Carter, who is the Lead Organizer of Justice Knox. Justice Knox is a collective of faith communities throughout Knoxville who work together to build power and fight for justice in our city. Listen in to see how you can get involved! 

Jesus' kingdom and the kingdoms of this world operate in altogether different ways. One accomplishes its will by force, coercion, and the taking of lives. The other accomplishes its purposes through love, sacrifice, and the laying down of one's life for others. Daniel's friends risked their lives in defiance of the first. Jesus laid down his life to show us the second. This is the way of the kingdom. It is an upside-down, power-under way of being in the world that makes little sense to those who do not know Jesus. 

Our All-Family Gatherings begin with a short training, interview, or story on microchurches and missional living followed by table discussions. In this episode, we hear from Jondra Brewer who is serving the Vestal neighborhood of Knoxville with BLOC Ministries!

Where do we find hope when the weight of the world is too heavy to bear? Where do we find hope when the currents of the culture seem too strong to overcome? 

In Daniel 2, Daniel and his friends find themselves in another impossible situation. It seems as though there is very little hope for them in Babylon. However, just when things seem to be nearing an all-time low, they receive a message of hope from a very unexpected place. 

We all have a story! Our story has the ability to connect with and inspire those around us. By learning how to share our stories in natural and meaningful ways, we are able to build relationships and point people to the greater story that God is writing through all of us. 

Our All-Family Gatherings begin with a short training or interview on missional living and/or microchurches. This week, we hear from Erin Popova on the power of storytelling.