We’re going to be taking a one week break from our Sacred Trust series this weekend to welcome a special guest, Maggie Konstanski, to Restoration City.  Maggie works as World Relief‘s Disaster Response Manager and is an expert on the church’s response to the refugee crisis in Syria and Iraq. I’m excited for her to share her experiences in the region and help us think biblically about this issue.  After I take a couple of minutes to set up our conversation out of Scripture, I’ll do an extended interview with Maggie.

Our ability to have Maggie with us goes all the way back to this fall when we celebrated Restoration City’s one year anniversary.  At that time, our church gave to three causes: Casa Chirilagua here in DC, flood relief in South Carolina and the refugee crisis in Syria.  Some of the folks at World Relief heard about the generosity of a little one year old church plant and offered to have Maggie come spend a morning with us – and we jumped at the chance!  She’s a phenomenal communicator who loves Jesus, the local church and seeing that church mobilized to make a difference in the world.

That’s our heart for this Sunday – to tackle a topic that is very much in the national conversation from a biblical perspective.  Sunday isn’t about making a political statement.  It’s about helping us all see that the Scriptures speak to the most pressing issues of our day and giving us a model for how we can engage those questions in the public square.  We want to learn to think biblically on topics like this.

It’s also going to be a great Sunday to invite your friends.  There is deep interest in this crisis and many will be surprised to hear a church is even touching on the topic.  Invite some people to join you – it might be an amazing catalyst to a conversation about God’s heart for justice as expressed through the gospel.

Sunday’s going to be a great day for our church – I can’t wait to experience it with all of you!