Infusion Bible eStudies are downloadable small group studies that can be read online, printed, or emailed. Each study includes a leader guide and a study guide and is suitable for a one-hour group Bible study.
Listen...to the words of the Scripture, and in them discover God's message for you today.
Look...at a brief verbal snapshot from the scrapbook of contemporary life and discover its connection both to you and to the Scripture passage.
Live...inside the Scripture to discover its context and message; then allow the Scripture to come alive in you and cause you to live out your faith in new and more-effective ways.
Read an excerpt from this study below.
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Being an outsider is no fun. Several times in my grade school days, our family moved in the middle of a term. By that time, friendships had already been established in the new school. Being on the playground, sitting in the classroom, or walking home after school was a lonely experience. In one school, I found some students who were outsiders even though they had been there from the beginning. Their parents were immigrants who spoke virtually no English, making these students stand out among their classmates.
The church ought to be a place where all people feel they belong; but that does not happen naturally. The early church inherited some barriers from the world around it—those based on the issues of slavery and the roles of women and men—but then added a crucial issue of its own. The first Christians all came from a Jewish background, either by ethnic heritage or by conversion from the Gentile world. Very soon, however, Gentiles (or “Greeks,” as the New Testament sometimes calls them) began to be drawn into the faith.
We want to pay full attention to the way Paul dealt with this issue because it is still with us today. We are still wrestling with racial and ethnic differences—and with differences in general. How can the church become, in truth, one family?
