Good Shepherd Lutheran Church - Madison & Verona

  No Longer Strangers: The Family Part one of a six-part series from Ephesians   “[God] destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to his will, the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” Ephesians 1:5 Howard Hendricks, the great Baptist church leader, and Promise Keepers speaker, once compared the church to a football game. A stadium full of people who need exercise watching 22 grown tired men beating each other up and then retiring to their cars, water coolers, and armchairs to argue about how they would have done things differently. The point is this: the church is not meant to be an institution made up solely of paid staff, and key volunteers, doing hard and good work while the rest of the church watches and criticizes. By virtue of our baptisms into Jesus Christ, we are all called to get in the game! In baptism, each of us is adopted into God’s family. This makes all of us siblings. In Christ we are family. And, just like families, we have