Today was the third CM group/team meetings. By now, you should have a pretty well defined strategy of how you're going after your passage.
Project? It is also at this point that many groups (or members) start to get frustrated that they don't know what that final project is suppose to be. Well, let me just give you a little direction on that: it will be about your passage, it will concern how your passage informs us about the church, and it will be a presentation to the rest of the class. But as said, your goal for right now is to know your passage, and to know it well. Until you do that, there really is no basis for applications or presentations, so keep after it!
Report & Team Dynamics? Hopefully everyone came prepared and ready to go. Bloggers, your responsibility is to post a comment linked from this post about your time today (at the bottom of this hit, COMMENT). I want you to respond to two things: 1) What did you do and what were the highlights from your discussion of the passage today? And, 2) give a short report on your team dynamics; or answer, "how is your group doing?" You may want to get some help form your Evaluator on that second one. Anyhow, try to give a healthy paragraph for each question. If you have any questions, you can contact me by email: bhigley@bbc.edu.
Blessings
Bill H
17 comments:
By the way Bloggers, after getting all of last week's in and reading throught them, I was very ecouraged. You guys have the idea and what you're putting up is exactly what I want, keep after it. Thanks for the good work!
Blessings
1 Thessalonians 2:1-16
It's been yet another wonderful time as our group met this week. We started off by discussing how each of our weeks went, and shared what God had been doing in each of our lives recently. We also took turns talking about our goals that we had accomplished since the last time we met. Last week before we left, we decided that we were each going to set a goal for the next time we met. Each of us were assigned a few verses from our passage and we were to give some background information on those verses.
As we continued, Steven, our team captain told us about the 3 objectives that he God from his group planning and evaluation worksheet.
Objective 1: Just being an example (Spending more time in God;s word to develp the assets to be an exple to others.)
Objective 2: Being witnesses of God (Just sharing GOd's mercy and love which He's shown us.)
Objective 3: We should treat other believers as friends not as strangers.
All of the members of our group were present today. hooray.
Today all the members of our group were present as we looked farther into our passage,the book James. we started off by each of us discussing the different chapters that each of us read over the week.
we talked about how we should treat all people equally without giving precedence to those with wealth or stature.
we also discussed how we as christians should have faith and love one another in Christ. We should make our faith known to others through works so they might see the love of Christ through us.
Chapter 3 taught us that as christians we should control what we say, refraining from cursing and reviling, lifting one another up in Christ.
These are just a few of the things we've learned so far through studying and discussing the book.
1 Timothy 3
My group began with discusses the resources we wanted to begin using to understand our passage. We want to understand the area that Paul was writing to so we talked about using an atlas and bible introduction to better understand the area. To understand the text better we are going to commentaries, different translations of the text, and bible dictionaries.
We also discussed outling what the role of an Elder is and comparing to what ann elder is now and the same with a deacon. We started to look at the Greek text for connection between the two.
Next meeting we are going to all have read through the text and be ready to use reasoures to being interpretation and we are going to being word searches.
Galatians
Unfortunately, we could only meet for a couple minutes today because 3 out of our 4 members were in choir/chambers and had to be at a concert.
We filled our facilitator in on what we discussed at our last meeting since he couldn't make it, then decided what we would talk about at our next meeting: specifically the author, Paul.
We're looking forward to when we can all be together and make some real progress.
Romans 12-15
Yesterday our group met and went through chapter 15. We decided that verses 1-7 was a conclusion of thoughts from the previous chapter, verses 8-13 was an encouragement to the gentiles, and the last part was part of the conclusion of the book and would be grouped more with chapter 16. After we finished chapter 15 we went through what the meaning of the whole passage in general was. We determined that Paul was telling believers that they needed to love one another and willingly be submissive and sacrificial to one another putting others needs before your likes and dislikes. This part of the book is about living in harmony with the community and glorifying God. We can use the same personal applications in our modern lives that they did at the time Paul wrote to them. We all shared one way we can apply what the passage said to a situation in our lives today.
Our group is pretty well balanced. We are getting the things we need to accomplished at a good and steady pace. We stay on task pretty well. Everybody is doing the jobs that they are supposed to be doing. Our team gets along well and we are pretty open with each other. Some people in the group are getting slightly frustrated that they do not know what the exact project is going to be, but they do not make a big deal about it.
1 Corinthians 12-14
This week were were only missing one member, and we started by discussing what we had researched about the controversial issue of tongues. This week we decided to research the issue of females in the church, whether just in the church itself, or positions of leadership. The final project still being a mystery, we decided that we must be good stewards of our time and learn as much as possible about our passage to be well prepared for whatever our assignment may be.
Our group gets along wonderfully; there is not the slightest hint of tension or dissatisfaction with our present members... although the ones who skip group discussions are made well aware of their lack of commitment to the team... (Mike)
John 1 and 17...
Today was a more difficult day for our group due to the absence of our facilitator. However, we made good use of our time and were able to actually contruct a very productive meeting. Though we did not discuss our passage as in depth as we have in the past, we were able to brainstorm ideas of how we wanted to eventually present our passage to the class. The article that the class was required to read and respond to came in handy to our evaluation of our passage because it refered to it. Though we have not completely concluded as to how we want to present the passage due to some questions we have for the teacher and facilitator, but we did make a lot of headway.
We did come up with a central message of our two passages that can be applied to all areas. That theme is glorification. We based this on a verse from both chapters. 1:14 and 17:24.
Because we were not able to discuss any further without answers to questions we spent the last half of our meeting in prayer. We took prayer requests and fellowshiped in prayer.
Friday's meeting was a little more difficult to discuss since two out of four of our team members were absent due to choir commitments. Although Aly and I did have a short discussion about Ephesians 4:9-13. When we meet together on Monday we will discuss our findings to rest of our group. Verse 11 is a resumed thought of verse 7 proving that only Christ can give gifts to the believers. By verse 12, believers know that it is their responsibility to build up the body because Christ has given these gifts to equip believers for the building up of the body.
So far our group has meshed reasonably well. We seem to be making significant progress in our findings of Ephesians 4. Tomorrow's meeting will consist of discussing our findings to the two members who were missing at Friday's meeting and discussing thoughts on Ephesians 4:14-16.
Philippians 1:12-30
On friday our group met thinking we wouldn't take as long, due to the fact that our facilitator was missing, but we took the whole 50 minutes :). We spent the majority of our discussion over verses 12-18 If you have an ESV this section is titled "The advance of the gospel". Paul is in prison, and he writes saying that it his imprisonment serves the advancement of the gospel. He has confidence where he's at knowing it's for Christ. Our groups perspective on this was: Whatever it takes to give out the gospel, however Christ sees best, that is what he'll do.
In vs. 15 it says that are some that preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. Our Captain Tim asked the question- "If the preaching of Christ is done wrong, can it still be used?" Amy gave an example of how there's times where we messed up giving out he gospel either we're nervous, or you don't give it out clearly, because you go through it quickly. God has used those times. God uses the gospel in times of our weaknesses. We came to the conclusion that when it comes to giving out the gospel, it is our testimony of who we are that counts. There are Christian who present the gospel in ways that we might not exactly agree with such as:Youth groups using cool music to draw crowds not really focusing on teaching, Those who aren't dispensationalist, and even pastors who give out the gospel but are living in sin. Even though the gospel is presented in a way we don't like or agree, God can use it. The gospel is not our words that we speak, but His Word. vs 18 ends with Paul saying however Christ is preached, he rejoices. Think about it, God's truth is being put out. Tim stated "We can't waste time beating up the people on our side." We are sister and brothers in Christ, and we're not always going to agree with other. The one thing that keeps us strong is our foundation in the gospel.
The remainder of the chapter speaks of our lives for Christ. Vs. 21 says(and I've stated before) "For me to live is Christ,an to die is gain". Looking into verse our group came to realize that we have a sad view of death. We love life way to much, and we hardly ever think of our death as for gain. Like Paul, if we are truly put ourselves in Christ, death would be something we look forward to. Paul, even though he wanted to die, also knew he needed to stay alive help the believers progress in their faith, so that they would be confident in Christ. Paul was an example to these people. We as christian should take time to be examples in our life for Christ. There are high expectations for us as Christians. We should live our lives in a manner worthy of Christ that we may die without regrets and disappointments. Our life should show the power of Christ.
1 Thessalonians 2
So, I was not available to participate entirely with my group because I was singing with the choir at Heritage. However, the rest of my group went about business as usual.
They started by going over their papers and discussing how the article we read is similar to our passage.
1. Paul was able to spread the Gospel to the church in Thessalonica(1 Thess 2:3, Missional)
2. In verse 13, we learn that the Word of God was at work in those who believe(communal)
3. Paul's joy came from the believers in Thessalonica(Vs.19-20, Communal)
4. Paul and his companions were speaking to please God, not men(Vs.4, Glorifying)
ROMANS 12-15
Sex, Lies, and Bible Smuggling. Some would say our conversation rabbit trailed on Friday, we prefer to just suggest we cross-referenced a lot. Really though we are continuing to realize how controversial this passage can be. How else would we cover breaking the law, the black and white of truth and lies, and adultry all in less than an hour? In turn we learned how crucial it is for us to have a well thought out interpretation.
We began by trying to develop a detailed outline for our passage to break it down. However, that came to a halt when we got to Romans 13 and began discussing obedience to government (and I would suggest this was the highlight of our discussion.) This took a turn into (friendly) disagreements about how black and white Paul's message may or may not be. We discussed whether Bible smuggling is wrong due to this passage, which in turn stretched the conversation to the question, "When (if ever) is it ok to lie?" Somehow this spiraled into more issues of gray areas such as divorce, remarriage, and adultry. That may or may not specifically pertain to the passage but it did enlighten us all to the various ways of thinking in our group.
Overall our group is doing very well. As I said, we have a variety of view points on things and perspectives with which we approach this passage. This will likely turn to be very beneficial as we encounter and discover more throughout this passage.
We went over our passage for the most part today. We decided as a group to try and read through it twice a week individually to get a better understanding. We talked about our upcoming weekends and how busy we all are going to be.
We want to make sure that we are more than just a group that meets once a week so we want to develop friendships and make sure we get to know eachother really well.
We are becoming more and more comfortable each week and we have no problem with people not talking. overall it was a very encouraging week.
We couldnt meet on last friday because three of our four members where in chambers/choir.
On mon we discussed chapters 2 and 3, we found that most of Phil is based on three main things; Missional, Glorification, and Community/Unity. In Ch2 we found that for vs1-5 connected with C/U, "of the same mind"...
6-11 was centered around Glorification, 12-19 was based on the Missional aspect of Phil "go out into the world", "lights of the world", "sending" and so forth..
19 also can be seen in a community light when it was talking about the people that Timothy was going to.
25-30 was based on Missional when Epaphroditus is sent
Then we moved to Ch 3 because we werent able to meet on Fri.
Ch 3 was centered more around "in relation to God", where as ch2 was based on the relationship of the church.
Paul starts out with a kind of quaification for himself so that "we" know that its ok for him to say and teach these things
vs 11-13 talk of striving for perfection.. Thats about where we stopped, we will go more indepth and finish ch3 this next fri
Phil.
Our group (with the absence of me on the 7th) went through our three main points community, glorify, and missional, for the last chapter of Phil.
verse 1 through 3 were directed towards community and service to them. 4 through 9 we were going to come back on.
10 through 18 were centered around community as well. And, 19 through 20 were verses directed towards glorification to God.
Also on fri the 14th, our group (excluding Gabe) went over for the whole class time about how we are going to present our information and findings of Phil. to the class.
We went over a lot of dif ideas. We collaborated bck and forth and finally agreed on some stuff.
We are going to do a moc-church service. We wil state our three main points within in the church service. We are going to explain with words and acting/action how these three thing are to be done within the church body. There is a lot more to it but i dont want to give it all away. The last two chapters we are going to sit on stools and talk through them. itle be cool
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