Intellectual Friendship: Why It Matters

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“it is not enough just to describe what intellectual friendship might look like: robust conversation, charitable questioning, and civil disagreement among friends who are committed to truth-seeking. We also need to explain why it matters” - Public Discourse

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A majority of Americans have a friend of a different religion

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“(61%) report having at least some friends whose religion differs from their own….That includes 43% who say only some of their friends have the same religion they do and another 18% who say hardly any or none of their friends do.” -Pew

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On Fellowship, Part 5: Covering Both the Bases

Read the series.

Biblical fellowship is a two-sided coin, or a two-edged sword, or a two-way street, or something. (The title of this post strongly implies that I don’t know anything at all about baseball.)

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On Fellowship, Part 4: Measuring Success

Read the series.

Last time we considered a passage from Ephesians 5 that provided some basic principles to underlie our exercise of fellowship. This time I’d like to consider a different Pauline passage, one that helps us recognize when we’re succeeding.

In the opening paragraph of Philippians 2, Paul exhorts the church to live out their unity in Christ in several specific ways—

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On Fellowship, Part 3: Getting There

Read the series.

It’s time to look a little more closely at what we’re actually doing as we minister our gifts to one another in the church.

A passage I find helpful in this regard is the opening paragraph of Ephesians 5, which is just one sentence with two main verbs that point us to how we conduct our relationships in the church.

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On Fellowship, Part 2: What It’s For

Last time we noted that from the beginning we’ve been designed for fellowship, for interpersonal relationships—and that for our time in history, the church is a significant part of God’s plan for that. He even commands us to keep at it.

OK, if God says I’m supposed to fellowship, then I will.

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On Fellowship, Part 1: It’s Who We Are

As this year began I started a series on spiritual growth, which I called “On Building Spiritual Muscle.” The series focused on the key spiritual exercises that the Bible prescribes for spiritual health, exercises that Christians have generally called “the means of grace”: Scripture, prayer, and fellowship. The next series, “On Devotions,” focused on the first two of those means of grace, and particularly on our private practice of them.

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How Comfortable Are Americans with LGBTQ Friends?

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“Those with a close personal relationship to someone who is transgender are only slightly more comfortable with learning that a friend is transgender (62%) than those who know an acquaintance who is transgender (57%)… one-third of those who don’t know anybody who is transgender say they would be comfortable learning that a friend is transgender (32%).” - PRRI

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Help! I Want to Make Friends at Church

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“Introduce yourself to one person each Sunday…. I feel squeamish thinking about walking over and sticking out my hand to a stranger or, even worse, to somebody I’ve seen regularly and haven’t yet greeted. But what’s the worst that could happen?” - TGC

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