Growing Stronger in Our Connections
Teachers
Lesson Summary
In the June 1, 2025 class titled “Growing Stronger in Our Connections,” the teacher began by announcing several upcoming church initiatives, including the Future Preacher’s Training, the Mountain State Children’s Home outreach, and Dean Miller’s Storm Survival series aimed at helping members endure personal hardships. After a light‑hearted anecdote about a senior prank, the focus shifted to the year’s central theme: deepening personal intimacy with Jesus and building authentic connections within the congregation. The lesson emphasized the biblical model of unity found in Romans 12:4‑5, illustrating how each person’s unique gifts and backgrounds contribute to the body of Christ. The teacher also referenced Philippians 3, urging believers to “press on” toward a more intimate knowledge of Christ rather than a superficial acquaintance. By recounting a recent exercise that grouped participants by age, the teacher highlighted the church’s demographic balance and the need to avoid age‑based silos, encouraging members to love one another across generations as a single, cohesive body. The central message was that true spiritual growth flows from intentional, Christ‑centered relationships that reflect the diversity and unity of the church.
Key Scriptures
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say, through the grace given to me to every man among you, that you not think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has distributed to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. So, in the same way you must consider us ministers of Christ, stewards of the mysteries of God. Therefore, I urge you, brethren, according to the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, your reasonable service.
Not that I have already attained, either a perfection or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not consider myself to have attained. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.