A Church World Tour

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"A Church World Tour"

How many of you plan to do a little traveling this summer? Perhaps you'll visit Yosemite or Tahoe or Carlsbad Caverns or one of the other beautiful spots in the Great Southwest. Perhaps you'll visit relatives scattered throughout the United States. If you've been saving up your pennies, then this may be the year for you to travel overseas. If you owe a lot of pennies, then Cabrillo beach may have to do. Of course, some people in other states would pay a lot of money just to see that!

Fortunately, one does not need a lot of money to take a fascinating "world tour" of the Christian Church. All you have to do is open your Bible to Revelations chapters 2-3. These chapters contain brief letters to 7 ancient churches in Asia Minor (today known as Turkey), but the content of these letters is amazingly descriptive of the world-wide Christian Church today. Some congregations were doctrinally correct, but cold. Some were prosperous, but weak. Some were loving, but terribly confused. Still others were persecuted by their neighbors, yet incredibly resilient and strong. Each church had great promise accompanied by great problems, and that's exactly how it is today.

During the month of May, I'll be preaching on John's letters to these 7 churches. None of them is identical to our church, but each of them has both strengths that we could imitate and weaknesses that we should avoid. Most of all, each one is a facet of this gorgeous gem known as the Christian church. My prayer is that our study of these congregations will clarify our sense of purpose and renew our sense of call to the work God has for us to accomplish through the First Presbyterian Church of San Pedro.

Here's the itinerary:

May 4: Ephesus
May 14: Smyrna and Philadelphia
May 21: Pergamum and Thyatira
May 28: Sardis and Laodicea

In order to be prepared for this journey, you may want to read ahead in your Bible, your atlas, your encyclopedia, your internet search engine, a Bible dictionary, or a good commentary. If you don't have time to prepare, that's O.K., because you still will have a really good guide :)

All aboard! This ship is about to sail.