The Blue Parakeet: Relational Reading

Posted on April 22, 2009 by Jay F Guin

parakeetMcKnight reminds us, “God speaks to us in words but God is more than the Bible. … God ? Bible.”

Missing the difference between God and the Bible is a bit like the person who reads Jonah and spends hours and hours figuring out if a human can live inside a whale — and what kind of whale it was — but never encounters God.

(page 88).

God communicates ? Bible ? with God’s listening people

You see,

If you read Deuteronomy and then read Job — I know, that is not a typical evening’s reading — you observe that Job is engaging Deuteronomy in a serious conversation. Yes, Job says to Moses, there is a correlation between obedience and blessing, but there is more to it than that, Job learned, and God reveals to us that sometimes God is at work outside the correlation of obedience and blessing.

Just as the authors converse with one another, Christians throughout the ages have conversed with one another about the same things. Continue reading →

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The Blue Parakeet: Salvation

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Jay F Guin

parakeetAs I’ve been thinking through this approach to hermeneutics, it’s occurred to me that there’s an obvious objection: where in this Story is salvation? Where is forgiveness of sin? Where is heaven?

You see, in the religion I was brought up in, the entire focus of the Bible was salvation. It was all about convicting people of sin, urging them to repent, and getting them saved. Once they were saved, they were assured of heaven if they could live up to God’s will, being mainly concerned with personal morality and patterns of worship and church organization.

Later on, I learn that God’s will for us was that we should receive grace, so that salvation comes to us as a free gift, and we respond to this free gift through obedience.

But the Story tells us that God wants us to enjoy covenant community today and to invite others into this community. Where’s salvation? Continue reading →

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The Blue Parakeet: The Sermon on the Mount

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Jay F Guin

parakeetWhile teaching a class on the Ray Vander Laan series, it occurred to me that the key to the Sermon on the Mount is the Story. It should have been obvious, but it takes a while for these things to sink in, you know.

There are, of course, as many theories of interpretation as there are interpreters. Here are few theories I’ve adopted (wrongly) over the years –

* The law theory. Jesus was legislating. Indeed, Matthew makes a point of Jesus being on a mount to show the parallel with Moses’ receiving the Torah on a mount. This is the new Christian torah. Obedience to this is how we’re saved.

* The “we need grace” theory. Jesus’ teachings are, of course far too difficult to actually obey. His point is not that we’ll go to hell if we fail to obey. Rather, it’s to open our eyes to the very strict level of obedience God requires, showing us why we desperately need grace.

* The “warm and fuzzy” theory. It’s not about obedience and commands and rules, dude. It’s just Jesus, you know? Just Jesus, man. (Well, actually, I’ve never been in this school of thought, as I never saw much thought in it.) Continue reading →

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Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: Preview, Part 1

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Jay F Guin

rabbijesusThe following are excerpts from Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith, by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg. (Buy the book!)

Was either Jesus or Paul married?

Many commentators have noted that Paul likely had been married because he claimed to have been “faultless” in terms of legalistic righteousness (Phil 3:6). In the Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown makes the argument that Jesus must have been married because all observant Jews had married by age 30.

However, the authors note,

Most Jewish men married at a fairly young age, often between the ages of eighteen and twenty. But [Brown] seems ignorant of the fact that rabbinic scholars spent many years in study and travel, causing some to postpone marriage until much later in life.  … It was not uncommon for such men to marry in their late thirties or forties. Continue reading →

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Alabama: The Only University Disappointed When Just 84,050 Fans Show for a Spring Practice Game

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Jay F Guin

And what other schools have their spring games broadcast live on ESPN?

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Mark Twain on Blogging

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Jay F Guin

People send me their writing to read, and some of it is quite good. Some is not so good. The same true in the blogosphere. Lots of great writing lost in a sea of insipidity.

In my own work, I try to keep lessons learned from Mark Twain in mind (albeit with only partial success).

On re-writing

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.

– Letter to Orion Clemens, 3/23/1878 Continue reading →

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Sitting at the Feet of the Rabbi Jesus

Posted on April 18, 2009 by Jay F Guin

rabbijesusI’ve been reading Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith, by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg, in bits and pieces over the last several days. And I believe it’s become one of my all time favorite books. I mean, I just love this book!

I’ve got a stack of books I’ve been meaning to comment on, including several others on the Jewish roots of the New Testament, and this is the best I’ve come across so far. I think the reason I like this one so much is because it seems to be written by teachers rather than preachers or scholars.

You see, preachers like to take one really good point and write a chapter on it. It doesn’t take long to read their books, because I can skip the illustrations, you know. Continue reading →

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How God Sees Us

Posted on April 18, 2009 by Jay F Guin

A great post from James Martin based on the astounding performance of Susan Boyle on the “Britain’s Got Talent” show. Be sure to watch the video, if you haven’t seen it already.

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XP3: Wanted (1): I Need It

Posted on April 17, 2009 by Jay F Guin

YouthXP3 is a series of small group lessons published for teenagers by The reThink Group, Inc. My wife and I have a senior in high school, and we are helping lead a small group of juniors and seniors that meets on Sunday nights for a lesson, meal, and fellowship. I’ve been tasked with the lesson the last couple of weeks.

We started back in the fall teaching the Ray Vander Laan material, which went well with most of the kids. But that was last semester. This semester we’re doing the XP3 material.

Now, the approach I’ve taken, which seems to be working (with teens, who really knows?), is to begin with a silly activity and then teach a lesson built on the activity. I’m going to post the entire lesson plan, but most readers will want to skip the silliness to get to the lesson material, which I promise is suitable for adults. Continue reading →

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Church Growth: Singles — the Missing Ministry

Posted on April 16, 2009 by Jay F Guin

churchgrowthl.jpg

How do we account for the dramatic doubling of the number of secular Americans over the last 18 years? And what are we to do about the exodus of young people from the church?

Skye Jethani asks these questions in an insightful article posted at Out of Ur. Skye notes that the largest growing demographic group in the country is young singles. And our churches, on the whole, do a lousy job of reaching out to this group.

At last year’s lectureship at Pepperdine University, I was fortunate enough to hear a series of lessons by a couple of singles ministers at large congregations in Little Rock and Atlanta. Let me suggest some ideas from there and my own admittedly limited experience. Continue reading →

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