What is an apostle, and what does it mean to be called? We open a new season in 1 and 2 Corinthians by sitting with Paul's own answer — which turns out to be surprisingly counterintuitive. His calling isn't grounded in competence or confidence; in 1 Corinthians 2:3 he identifies it with weakness. We explore what it means for Jesus to be not just something Paul thought about often, but the presence inhabiting all of his thinking. And we find an unexpected freedom in the idea of duty: when optimism and pessimism both let you down, doing something because it is good and right to try — regardless of outcome — turns out to be the more honest foundation. Paul's voice still echoes. His ministry, in a sense, never stopped.

A season about growing in relationship with God ends not with a method or a programme, but with a recurring cry. Psalm 80 turns out to thread through almost everything we've discussed this season — community vs individual, unanswered prayer, setbacks that arrive despite clear promises, and what honest faith actually sounds like from the inside. The lesson guide even suggests replacing the Psalm's "us" with "me", which is a telling instinct: there's something real in that, but it's also exactly how our culture quietly nudges us toward a faith that is personal to the point of isolation. And then there's the provocative claim that God is angry at his people's prayers — not ignoring them, not delayed, but angry. That's worth sitting with.

"Friendship evangelism" can sound like ulterior-motive friendship, and that discomfort is worth taking seriously. We explore what separates genuine friendly witness from something more cynical, and find an unexpected parallel in international aid: the same sensitivity to context, the same need to avoid condescension, the same openness to learning from the people you're supposedly serving. The difference, in both cases, probably comes down to how genuinely you care. Revelation 12:11 puts it sharply: the testimony of the saints that defeats the accuser is inseparable from the fact that they didn't love their own lives more than God — which might be the most honest definition of non-cynical evangelism there is.