Spectacular Power

The Spirit of God is at work among the marginalised in our local neighbourhoods. What keeps us from seeing how the marginalised are both recipients of and participants in God’s mission? How can Baptist faith communities join in God’s mission on the margins?

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.

Isaiah 61: 1-4

Presented by Michael Rhodes

Michael started at Carey in 2021. He teaches Carey’s undergraduate Old Testament courses and also co-teaches courses in the postgraduate program and supervises MA theses. Michael holds a PhD in Divinity from the University of Aberdeen/Trinity College Bristol. His dissertation explored how the Deuteronomic tithe meal and Corinthian Lord’s Supper served as morally transformative feasts that shaped the community for holiness, justice, mercy, and solidarity. Prior to coming to Carey, Michael spent 7 years working for Christian community development programs, first in Kenya, and then in the economically impoverished South Memphis community where his family lives. In addition to this extensive community development experience, he has also been involved in racially and economically diverse church plants since 2009, and is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Michael’s passion is to help the church hear and respond to God’s call in Scripture to become a community that embodies Jesus’s good news for the poor. As a result he has studied and published works on economic discipleship, racial justice, and poverty in Scripture, at both the academic and popular level. “I think the Old Testament is absolutely mesmerising, and I love wrestling with it together with others. So the opportunity to join students in reading the Bible as God’s address summoning us to an intimate relationship with him and a life of kingdom engagement in the world is just incredible.”