From the very beginning, the community that God was forming was going to be much more inclusive than anyone could have imagined.
There are important historical reasons for making a distinction between ministry and vocation.
It appeared everything would work out perfectly when Ivan the Great married Sophia Palaiologos. But when inheritance was discussed the problems arrived.

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Dear church, do not get sidetracked. This is about far more than terrorism, racism, gun ownership, and the like. This is about the evil of the human heart.
Have you ever played hide and seek with a 2-year-old? News flash: They’re terrible at it.
Stephen Fry, the English actor, author and game show host once disparaged the “grammar Nazis” who felt it necessary to enforce all the rules of language but who had forgotten, or just didn’t care, about the joy of language.
Either one of those verses alone is scary; but both of them together are terrifying!
“We humans are an evil, untrustworthy bunch.” I said to a friend recently, by way of explanation/cold comfort, after he had been cut to the core by fellow Christians who were uncomfortable with his vulnerability.
Burdened within and without, we cross the threshold into church. We don't leave behind our earthiness, our tragedies, our white-knuckled grip on the last vestige of dignity in our sad lives.
Years ago a young woman approached her pastor with a request. It wasn’t a strange request. She simply asked if he would perform her wedding ceremony.
Before you ever know what happened, Satan has taught us to doubt the promise of the crucified and risen Christ.
You are changing as your eyes move over these sentences. You are aging. You are on your way to death. And nothing, absolutely nothing, can alter that fact.
If you’ve been in church long enough, you might have seen the worst of someone’s unrepentant sin get them kicked out, cast out, excommunicated or “handed over to Satan so their flesh might die and their soul might live.”
The first person who attempted to stop people from talking about Jesus was not a tyrant, a secular government, or a bully religious mob.
The Lord has a special place in his heart for those whom the world forgets. For the anonymous. For the rejected.