Audio for this week's class can be found by following this link.
Class handout

The Gospel breaks down race, cultural, gender and social barriers

Discussion Questions

1.  What are you doing personally or we as a church doing to break down the barriers to the Good News?
2.  What are you doing personally or we as a church doing to create barriers to the Good News?
3.  How does the gospel in the book of Acts teach that the gospel is not just personal, but is also about a new way to see community and society?

" 'The task of putting to death the hostility between minority Greek Jews, and majority Hebrew Jews, Samaritan outcasts and heathen Gentiles was a central concern for the early church. It was not a sideshow to the drama of God’s work. The story of how the Gospel reconciled diverse people together into one faith and one church takes center stage in Acts.' 1 So God’s vision is to tear down all human barriers that divide us. The boundary markers that we set up as human beings, the things that divide us, the differences that divide, to break those down by the preaching and the living of the Gospel. That through the Gospel, Jesus is building a new humanity across race, across culture, across socio-economic divides; where unity in him trumps all human divisions. That is what this story is showing us." 2

1. More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel” By Spencer Perkins, Chris Rice p 152
2. Complete quote in Sermon “No Outsiders” by Eric Kapur from the Harbor Presbyterian – North, Encinitas, CA