Adventist Peace Radio, Episode 14: Mission in an Era of Refugees

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Welcome to Adventist Peace Radio, the podcast of the Adventist Peace Fellowship. We invite you to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher.

In this sermon, Pastor Dean Coridan draws on the story of the Good Samaritan and Jesus’ description of the sheep and goats in order to explore the question, “Who is my neighbor?”

Pastor Coridan presented the sermon at the end of a 4-day mission conference at Andrews University, titled “Mission in an Era of Migrants and Refugees” (September 13-16, 2017). The conference was organized by the Department of World Mission at the Adventist Theological Seminary, the North American Division Evangelism Institute, the Multicultural Ministries of the Lake Union Conference, and NAD Adventist Refugee and Immigrant Ministries.

Over the course of the conference, participants attended presentations and workshops that offered insights from both social work and theology, generally speaking. To learn more about the conference, see the links below.

For now it is sufficient to say that the attendees had spent the previous few days learning about the theological, legal, and sociological features of the refugee’s experience. Now during the Sabbath sermon, Pastor Coridan asked participants to turn their ideas into action.

It might seem unusual that a podcast on peacemaking would share a sermon about missions. But this is an Adventist podcast, and I believe it’s worthwhile to think intentionally about some of the spiritual dimensions of our social engagement, whether you agree or disagree with this approach.

As the recording begins, Dr. Jiri Moskala welcomes worshipers to the service and then introduces the speaker. Dr. Moskala is the dean of the Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University. I thought about deleting portions of Sabbath introduction, but in the end I left most of it, just removing the musical performances and a few other segments. Videos of the conference presentations, including this sermon are online here.

Dean Coridan Photo.jpg

Before becoming president of the Iowa-Missouri Conference, Pastor Dean Coridan pastored for 20 years in the conference and along the way served as the development director, ministerial director, church planting coordinator and lay evangelism coordinator. Family is a high priority for Elder Coridan. He has been married to his wife, Gail, for 36 years and together they have five children and six grandchildren. Here is the sermon, delivered on September 16, 2017.

SHOW NOTES

2:50 – Jiri Moskala introduction.

14:50 – Dean Coridan begins preaching.

Links:

CONCLUSION

Thank you for joining us for this sermon. If you hear other Adventist sermons or presentations that focus on some dimension of peacemaking and social justice, let us know. We’re always looking for quality presentations to share along with our regular interviews. 

SUPPORT: Your support means a lot to us, so if you appreciated these conversations, we hope you’ll share the podcast with others. And we welcome your donations to support future episodes of Adventist Peace Radio. You can donate online at adventistpeace.org/donate.

MUSIC: Our theme music is “Green Fields” by Scott Holmes, via Free Music Archive.

DISCLAIMER: And as always, our disclaimer: Adventist Peace Fellowship is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that supports work for peacemaking and social justice building upon the values of the Seventh-day Adventist tradition. We are not part of, affiliated with, or supported by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists or any affiliates known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Any content, opinions, statements, products or services offered by Adventist Peace Fellowship, are solely those of our organization, and not those of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.