10:52 AM In my forthcoming book Seven Marks of a New Testament Church I often refer to the early church as a church that really cared. They taught and encouraged each other, they prayed and read Scripture together, they sat down and ate together. The quality of their fellowship should amaze us today. Even the leaders, who were so diverse, pushed and nudged each other to be all that God was calling them to be. The church at Antioch had a Barnabas from Cyprus and a Simeon who was clearly black and a Manaen who was from the upper crust of society and even a fiery intellectual named Saul. How different can you get? Yet they enjoyed a marvelous fellowship. Their love for each other transcended the barriers of class and education.

Enter my good friend Kevin Brown. Now here is one great pastor and Bible teacher. Without formal biblical education no less. And he’s pastoring his home church, no less. Other than the fact we are both follicly challenged, we have little in common. He’s a country redneck (I mean that as a compliment, Kevin!), I’m a surfer from Hawaii. Yet he is constantly challenging me to grow in my faith (Becky and I receive his email devotionals). Not only has God gifted him with a remarkable ability for public speaking, he has a pen every bit as powerful as Luther’s. Little wonder, then, that the Lord urged me to challenge him to pray about writing a second book as a follow-up to his excellent work on rites of passage. We writers constantly need to be looking beyond ourselves. And nothing preserves our words quite like putting them down in writing. If you’re interested, click here to read Kevin’s own description of how the Lord got a hold of him and led him to write his next book. I loved reading it.

Can’t wait to see you back in print, my friend.

(From Dave Black Online. David Alan Black is the author of Energion titles Christian Archy, The Jesus Paradigm,  Why Four Gospels?,  Will You Join the Cause of Global Missions?., and The Authorship of Hebrews: The Case for Paul. Used by permission.)