In this first sermon in a series he's calling Growing Edges, Russ points out that just about every church likes to say, "All Are Welcome," but so many people in our culture have had reason to discover that these words actually mean "Some Are Welcome."
But have you noticed that over and over, everywhere he went, Jesus refused to live within the boundaries prescribed by the purity laws and social norms of his time. Over and over he tried to erase the dividing lines, break down the dividing walls, and heal social divisions.
If we are to be the church that Jesus desires us to be, we need to be about welcoming people as they are and showing them again and again that they are children of God and loved as they are!
