Church's Ministry, 11:00 AM class (Spring 08). Bloggers, go ahead and start posting your thoughts here. You'll need to create your own Username and Password, and from there you can post your notes, observations, key thoughts, "ah-ha" moments, big questions, points of disagreement, responses to other blog post, etc.. Remember, you should do this after each Friday Group session. We will review them in class each Wednesday. Thanks for your good effort. I look forward to reading your posts.
Blessings
Bill H.
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In our group last friday, we gave each person a specific task to take care of. Aaron Jeffery would do a word study on the book of James, I would do an outline on the book of James, Mary is going to compile our background info into one paper, and Kellyn is going to find contrasts within the book.
Since our team captain was sick, we did not get organized into the specific roles we each will be playing in the exposition of our passage (Romans 12-15), but we did cover quite a bit of ground. We discussed the historical background of the passage, personal conclusions drawn from it, flow of the book up to our passage, and the general outline of our passage. We concluded that in order to obey the commands of chapters 12-14, we need to come to a better understanding of chapter 15, which is the conclusion of the passage, along with the first 11 chapters.
Last friday, our group was a little unsure how to begin, so we started sharing insights we had gathered from reading over Ephesians a few times the past week. We made connections between our chapter (4) and the rest of the book, as well as some cross-references to Paul's other letters. Next, we began to slowly work through the chapter, stopping along the way for discussion. Our first point of interest was what it means to "walk". In the first few verses, "walk" is the only instruction, not "be humble" or "be patient" (depending on translation). The simplicity of our calling is the simplicity of walking, but it is the manner in which we walk (in humility, patience, etc) that reveals our faithfulness to the hope to which we have been called.
Last Friday, our group talked about the background of Galatians. We discussed the North and South Galatian theories, which would indicate when the book was written. We also went into detail about the first two chapters of the book, and decided that for this week, we would revisit chapter two while also covering chapters three and four. The group decided that Brian would do more research on Paul, and that Zach would look up the historical context of the Galatian church. For this week, we all were to read the next two chapters and gather some thoughts and basic information on them.
Today in our groups we talked about what we had learned from our different tasks that were given to us. Kellyn pointed out that James portrays wisdom through out most of the book through different analogies. The book was also found to be very instructional as well.
Some of the themes that were pointed out were tirals, obedience to the Word, self-control, humility, and kindness towards other believers of different economic status. We decided as a group that we would continue reading the passage but seek to apply the passage towards the function of the church. We also thought of doing an interview with different pastors in the area; asking them questions on the book of James and how their church lives out the book of James.
Today, our group headed towards the library, where we were quickly overwhelmed with the amount of resources at hand for Ephesians 4. We spent some time brainstorming about a direction for the project, and how it can be something that will affect us and the class practically. We think Ephesians 4 is a glimpse at how individuals can assess themselves as part of something bigger, and how to live in light of this. This "something bigger", which is expressed in Eph. 1-3, so we decided that we need to spend time tackling this chapters before understaning ours. We split up the first four chapters between us to help s establish context. We are suspicious that what we will find in Ephesians about the church will pale all our faulty Western expressions of it, and will motivate us to seek out the nature God's new humanity in Christ.
This week we our team was able to get into the specific roles we each would be playing, Kirsten will be studying Paul and what was going on in his life at the time Romans was written, Heather will be studying the historical background of Rome at the time, I will be examining our passage within the context of the epistle, Emily will do an outline of it, and Jake is studying words and phrases within our passage. We then stressed that this information should not just be generic information concerning Romans, but we should interpret the info while looking at our passage, giving examples as to how the info sheds light on it.
I did not attend class last Friday, but it was established that we would divide Galatians up so that each person would have a chapter to study. Brian had chapter one, Tom had chapter two, I had Galatians three, Sharon had chapter four, and Zach had both chapters five and six. We will each study these chapters and bring back what we found to the group this coming Friday. The group also had a discussion about the Jerusalem council, and focused on chapters five and six. Also, some presentation ideas were discussed.
Today in our groups, we read out loud the questions that we came up with from reading our chapter. We plan to then use these questions as interview questions that we might give to pastors of church's in the area. During spring break we are going to read the book of James more and try to find more applicable truths for the church today. (Sam A)
Today in our groups we discussed the personal application of the book of James. We discussed how each of us are not perfect, we all have things we need to work on. We need to be more open and honest with each other when it comes to confessing our sins to each other. But the key verse that we focused on was James 1:27 where we learned that we are called to compassion and mercy towards each other. We are to care for one another's needs .
Today, our group talked about the chapters that each of us had. We discussed the basic overviews of each chapter, and tried to answer some questions that we had. In looking over our passages, we tried to apply them to the church a little bit. For next week, we were to all find applications of our chapters to the church. We are also to still be thinking about presentation ideas for the near future.
On Friday our group, since we had covered application, began brainstorming ideas for the presentation. We mainly focused on what we want our project to communicate, or how we want to change the thinking of our audience with the passage. One focus will be to place our concepts of individual discipleship within the concept of God's new humanity, the church. Also, we want to show how we can't underestimate God's primary act of new creation, which is his body, the church.
Friday our group went over the work we did two weeks ago, and since we did not meet the friday b/f spring break because no one was there, we decided to meet outside class sometime soon. we then decided to break up the passage so each of us will be able to present to the group a more in depth view of our passage as a whole and how to apply it. Each of us will be showing the group some typed material about the section we were to study individually and the other things we were to study on our own.
Today we discussed some of the ideas our group had for our presentation. We are thinking of starting our presentation with a video clip of the homeless in Scranton. We will use this clip to introduce the topic of why there is no one helping the homeless. According to James, no one helps the homeless because the church doesn't help each other within the body of Christ. We decided to meet at the Underground, 8:30pm, on Monday to discuss this more.
Today we talked about ideas for our presentation. We not only discussed what we wanted to do for our presentation, we talked about how we wanted to cover our text, since we have the entire book of Galatians and only a half hour. We discussed pulling two or three main ideas and making them the focus of our presentation. We agreed to each bring back some major points from the chapters that we assigned a few weeks ago, and that that would be the basis of our discussion the next time we met. Some ideas for our presentation were...
you really didn't think I was going to tell you, did you??
On Friday, our group worked on how we were going to split up the project between us, and how we would work together to make the presentation unified. We decided to do a video to spark interest, followed by an "exegetical skit" (hard to explain), and finally a presentation at the end to bring it all home.
Our group met in the library on thursday to make up for some lost time. We really made some headway on the application of our passage and the presentation ideas of it. I won't be there monday but I'm sure we'll make some more progress on our sweet presentation. I won't give too much away...
last week our group met and I forgot to blog but we were all on the same page pretty much. We decided that we needed to make sure we contacted eachother on a regular basis. We are all excited to study Eph.ch. 4 and want to dive into more and read it through a couple times a week. Another step we could take is to listen to a couple sermons based off of this passage to get a better understanding.
We talked about the church and its role for most of the time. One of the main points we came up with is to make sure the church is more involved in the community. The way the church spends God's money was also an issue brought up. And probably our main point of the whole day was radical servanthood
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