{"id":7135,"date":"2013-08-15T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/2013\/08\/15\/aj-swoboda-on-paradoxes-of-cross\/"},"modified":"2013-08-15T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T07:00:00","slug":"aj-swoboda-on-paradoxes-of-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/aj-swoboda-on-paradoxes-of-cross\/","title":{"rendered":"A.J. Swoboda on the Paradox(es) of the Cross"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<a href=\"http:\/\/ajswoboda.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">A.J. Swoboda<\/a> on cross-gathered community:<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<em>&quot;The cross creates a paradox of people who don&#39;t agree with each other &#8230; [in my community] after I leave, will people still be hanging out? Are people gathering around the cross of Jesus or are they gathering around my agenda? Is there room for people in my community who don&#39;t like me? &#8230; All of us at some level attempt to create a community that makes sense, but I have to think that when it doesn&#39;t make sense and you have all of these weird people, then maybe the one thing that gathers us is not politics, is not whether we like this preacher or that church or whether we listen to this podcast or another, but that the thing that brings us together is the celebration of the death of Christ.&quot;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\n\tVia <a href=\"http:\/\/www.missioalliance.org\/the-cross-creates-a-paradox-thoughts-by-a-j-swoboda\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">MissioAlliance<\/a><\/p>\n\n\t<figure class=\"wp-block-embed alignleft is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n                                https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ytod5k_8k38<\/div><\/figure>\n<p>\n\t <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A.J. Swoboda on cross-gathered community: &quot;The cross creates a paradox of people who don&#39;t agree with each other &#8230; [in my community] after I leave, will people still be hanging out? Are people gathering around the cross of Jesus or are they gathering around my agenda? Is there room for people in my community who <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/aj-swoboda-on-paradoxes-of-cross\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"tax_ctp_authors":[2655],"tax_ctp_books":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[154],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[131],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[156],"tax_ctp_tags":[],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-7135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-paul-j-pastor","tax_publications-leadership-journal"],"acf":{"scripture_references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A.J. 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