Conversation Starters

1. Read Romans 16:1-16.

2.What is something new you learned about the people listed here by Paul?

3. Why do you think it is important that Paul specifically named so many people in this passage? What do you think is the significance in knowing people by name?

4. Think about how it feels when someone either does or doesn’t know your name. How might knowing (and actually using) the names of people within a church community help to strengthen that community? How might not knowing them have an adverse effect?

Title: A Family Where We Are Known
Reference: Romans 16:1-16
Speaker: Bill Gorman, BillG@cckc.church

After an ordinary delivery, after the first few startled cries, newborn infants typically spend an hour or so in the stage doctors call “quiet alert.” Though they can only focus their vision roughly eight to twelve inches away, their eyes are wide open. They are searching, with an instinct far deeper than intention. They are looking for a face, and when they find one — especially a face that gazes back at them — they fix their eyes on it, having found what they were most urgently looking for. ~ Andy Crouch, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World

We arrive in the world looking for the one looking for us. ~ Curt Thompson

– The local church is a deeply relational community

– The local church is a beautifully diverse community

The Greco-Roman world was as much as two-thirds male (due to maternal deaths in childbirth and infanticide of unwanted baby girls). But historical records suggest that the early Christian movement was as much as two-thirds female. There were doubtless many reasons for this, but one was that Christianity placed a value on women that the belief systems of the first and second century did not. Women were made in the image of God, jointly called to his service, and deserving of the love and sacrifice of their husbands. Christian women were allowed to marry later than was typical in Greco-Roman culture, and Christian men were called to be monogamous and faithful, and to prioritize their wives needs above their own. This was radical. ~ Rebekah Mcglauflin, Is Christianity Good for Women?

Diversity shaped every moment of the Roman house churches, but Paul sought for a unity in the diversity, a sibling relationship in Christ that both transcended and affirmed one’s ethnicity, gender, and status. ~ Scott McKnight, Reading Romans Backwards

– The local church is a highly missional community

Christians followed their business opportunities.” Kreider notes that non-Christians observed the Christian difference in the marketplace, such as the “patient way the Christians operate their businesses. What happened was this. Non-Christians and Christians worked together and lived near each other. They became friends. ~ Alan Krieder, The Patient Ferment of The Early Church