Join It Is Written Sabbath School host Eric Flickinger and this quarter’s author, Dr Adenilton Tavares de Aguiar, as they provide additional insights into this week’s Sabbath School lesson.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/108876/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=108876

Inside Story for Friday 3rd of July 2026

By Rick Kajiura

There is nothing like the thrill of visiting a Global Mission pioneer. Even more exciting is seeing them meeting with their small group of fledgling believers. I remember doing this in a house church up a dusty road in a mountain village in Indonesia and sneaking into a small apartment in a concrete-block building in an eastern European country. I remember the rustling sound of a blue tarp underfoot and over our heads in southeast Asia and seeing a pioneer teaching the Sabbath School lesson under trees in rural Africa.

Yet, the church I visited recently was totally different. The pioneers had left years ago. This time I saw a church building, with a school next door. The church has 125 members, and the school is considered one of the best in the city.

There were no Adventists in this city when the pioneers arrived. They started trying to sell books, canvassing door to door. They tried to rent a place to hold meetings, but people refused to rent to them. They got the message; they weren’t welcome in this city.

Instead, they received an invitation to go to a nearby town. There they were able to rent a hall and start work. Before long they had a small group started with five baptized members. Then they were invited to another town, and before long they had a group with 37 members.

It took years before they finally were accepted in the main city and were able to find a meeting place. They started a small group and soon they had 30 members. Since then, this church has given birth to four “baby churches.” The small groups in those nearby towns also have grown into full churches, and each of them has started baby churches. One of the original pioneers who helped start these churches returned to visit the area with me. He is now the Adventist Mission director for the region and showed me how God had blessed his efforts through the years.

Pioneers still are going to unreached areas today. Pioneers such as Taguhi and Aghvan are working in an area with very few Adventists. Please pray for missionaries and Global Mission pioneers as they start new work in the 10/40 Window, the large cities of the world, and among post-Christian people. May God bless their work as they share the gospel and start new worshiping groups.

Global Mission pioneers are laypeople sent to start new groups of believers in unreached areas or among unreached people groups. They are paid a small stipend and often work within their own culture. Learn more about Global Mission pioneers: bit.ly/GMPioneers.

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/26c-01-inside-story-return-of-the-pioneer/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=26c-01-inside-story-return-of-the-pioneer

Daily Lesson for Friday 3rd of July 2026
Further Thought:

Read Ellen G. White, “Corinth,” Pages 243–254, in The Acts of the Apostles.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

“In preaching the gospel in Corinth, the apostle followed a course different from that which had marked his labors at Athens. . . . He determined to avoid elaborate arguments and discussions, and ‘not to know anything’ among the Corinthians ‘save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.’ ”—Ellen G. White, The Acts of the Apostles, p. 244.

“Paul had a measure of success,” but he “doubted the wisdom of building up a church from the material he found there. He considered Corinth a very questionable field of labor, and determined to leave it. . . .

“As he was contemplating leaving the city for a more promising field, . . . the Lord appeared to him in a vision of the night, and said, ‘Be not afraid, but speak, . . . for I have much people in this city.’ Paul understood this to be a command to remain in Corinth, and a guarantee that the Lord would give increase to the seed sown. . . . A large church was enrolled under the banner of Jesus Christ.”—Ellen G. White, Sketches From the Life of Paul, Pages 106, 107.

“It is recorded that Paul labored a year and six months in Corinth. His efforts, however, were not exclusively confined to that city. . . . He made Corinth his headquarters. . . . Several churches were thus raised up. . . . The absence of Paul from the churches of his care was partially supplied by communications weighty and powerful, which were received generally as the word of God. . . . These epistles were read in the churches.”—Ellen G. White, Sketches From the Life of Paul, p. 109.

Discussion Questions

<–Thursday

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/26c-01-further-thought-pauls-ministry-in-corinth/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=26c-01-further-thought-pauls-ministry-in-corinth

View an in-depth discussion of Paul’s Mininstry in Corinth in the Hope Sabbath School class led by Pastor Derek Morris.
Click on the image below to view the video:

With thanks to Hope Channel – Television that will change your life.

Daily Lesson for Thursday 2nd of July 2026

Paul was in Ephesus when he wrote 1 Corinthians (1 Corinthians 16:5-9). The family of Chloe went to him with the report that things were not going too well back in Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:11). In 1 Corinthians 1:1-31; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; 1 Corinthians 3:1-23; 1 Corinthians 4:1-21; 1 Corinthians 5:1-13; 1 Corinthians 6:1-20, Paul addresses the issues brought by Chloe’s household. The problems include factionalism, sexual immorality, lawsuits, and prostitution. Paul also received a letter with specific questions (1 Corinthians 7:1). His response fills the space from chapter 7 onward. The questions were related to marriage, divorce, celibacy, food sacrificed to idols, conduct in worship, the use of spiritual gifts, and incorrect understanding of the resurrection. The church of Corinth was very problematic and immature. Perhaps your local church has many problems. Yet the church at Corinth was probably worse.

Image © Providence Collection from GoodSalt.com

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is very relevant to our time, as well. After all, don’t we, to some degree, face some of the same issues in many of our churches today? This letter has much to say to us. It is “one of the richest, most instructive, most powerful of all his letters.”—Ellen G. White, The Acts of the Apostles, p. 301.

Paul may have written three or four letters to the Corinthians (compare with 2 Corinthians 10:9). He wrote an initial letter before 1 Corinthians (1 Corinthians 5:9), but it is lost. Before 2 Corinthians, he wrote a letter referred to by scholars as the “severe letter” (2 Corinthians 2:3-4,9; 2 Corinthians 7:8), but it is lost, too. Some think he is referring to 1 Corinthians, or that this letter is partly preserved in 2 Corinthians.

From 2 Corinthians, we realize that the members of Corinth were influenced by the surrounding culture. They valued such things as competition, power, and wealth, all things that can challenge our church today, as well. Conversely, Paul sought to create a Christ-focused culture, a way of seeing the world through the lens of the gospel. How crucial that we, too, see our present world through the lens of the gospel.

<–Wednesday Friday–>

Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/26c-01-pauls-letters-to-the-corinthians/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=26c-01-pauls-letters-to-the-corinthians