THIS SUNDAY
"I am pausing the series we were going to launch Sunday to preach a special message: “Building Bridges When It's All Being Torn Down."
As a country, we've suffered multiple recent acts of senseless violence and evil--culminating in the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday. They have pushed in front of us important conversations about evil, violence, the condition of our society, and what a Christian response should be.
Regardless your opinion of the person assassinated Wednesday, it feels to me like something has shifted--it feels like a collective grief and sadness has overtaken us. If a public figure can be gunned down, what does that say about our future?
Sunday will not be about any person (I will mention the names of those we lost) or about trying to heal the right/left divide, but about the gospel, what it says about the depths of the human heart and our remedy, and how it provides a bridge to walk across in moments when hope is waning and it seems everything in the world fights violently against all that God says is good.
None of us as your pastors are interested in posturing or punditry, but in pastoring you to have a warm heart, a clear mind, and a soul filled with courage in a world filled with evil.
Parents: though the context is recent violence, this will be an all-ages appropriate teaching. I hope you won't miss this opportunity to be equipped to guide your children through dark days." - Pastor Scott Marshall, Wichita First Church of the Nazarene
P.S. Two resources I’ve engaged with this week are British evangelist and apologist Glen Scrivener’s brief podcast episode, “Why Charlie Kirk’s Death Cuts SO Deep and What Now?” and Pastor Tara Beth Leach's article: The violence of binary thinking