Hi everyone, and thanks for reading the first entry of this blog I’ll be keeping throughout my
internship! I’ll be posting some reflections on my time with Whosoever here every other week.
This Sunday will be the first of a couple times that I’ll be preaching for Whosoever throughout
my time with you, and I’m looking forward to bringing the Word to you all. As I was choosing
my scripture and narrowing down my sermon topic over the past couple weeks, I found myself
fixating on the idea of Jesus and his disciples as a sort of chosen family, not bound together by
blood but by a shared mission and their love for one another.
I know the idea of family related in ways other than just biological is not an unfamiliar idea at all
for many of you. When I first started my internship with Whosoever earlier this summer,
something I would hear all the time was “welcome to the family” or “you’re part of the family
now.” That warm, radical welcome really helped me feel at home right away in a new church, a
new setting. Loving like this is really loving like Jesus does, welcoming “whosoever” might
come to you as a family member.
I hope to see some of you (whether online or in person) this Sunday as we continue to talk about
the disciples who were first called by Jesus to be a part of his family, and the boldness it took for
them to follow that call.
-Ellis Billington Seminary Intern