An Article on Contextualization

Part 1 - Part 2

I found this article quite interesting.  Part 2 spells out a great connection between 1 Corinthians and Galatians, which are two books we've just recently read.

A concept referenced heavily in the article is contextualization.  The form of this that the author is most concerned with is called an Insider Movement.  You will be a bit lost if you don't first understand this.  Here is a short definition from my web searching:

Insider movement is a term used in the field of missiology to describe a group or network of people from a non-Christian religion who have embraced the life and teaching of Jesus Christ as described in the Bible, while remaining relationally, culturally and socially a part of the religious community of their birth. It has been observed that as members of these groups follow Jesus and the Bible, they personally reject, reinterpret, or modify the nonbiblical beliefs found in their religious communities. This process makes them different in some ways from their co-religionists, yet when groups can faithfully follow Jesus without formally disassociating themselves from their religious communities, insider movements can occur. Such movements have been observed among a number of religious groups, most notably among Jews, Muslims and Hindus.

I will be bringing an abridged version of this article to discuss tonight.  Always feel free to bring any material or topic you'd like to talk about to our meetings.

God Bless!

Two Weeks of Judgment

Unfortunately, schedules were too conflicting last week and we weren't able to meet.  However, anybody who's been following along in Isaiah knows that the last two weeks of chapters were pretty much judgment after judgment on regions all around (and including) Judah.  Conveniently, this Tuesday's reading (Isaiah 24) was somewhat of a finale to this theme, as it talked about God's final judgment on the entire planet.

One piece of scripture that gave all of us quite a bit of trouble, and even sent people in search of concordances, was verse 21.  It describes God punishing powers both in heaven and on earth.  So what are these powers in heaven?  Satan and his angels?  And what does the word heaven mean?  Will Satan still be in heaven in the end times?  Or does 'heaven' just refer to a spiritual world?  It may be kind of fun to ponder, but I'm sure the writer of Ecclesiastes would call it meaningless.  From other scripture, we do have confidence in God's victory over Satan regardless of when or where he is before his final judgment.

Something I liked about the last two weeks of chapters in Isaiah is that pretty much all the nations that are decimated or whittled down are described as revering and worshiping God afterward.  Even in the end times prophecy there is a remnant who shout the name of the Lord and glorify Him.  I hope God doesn't have to destroy our nation to make us glorify Him, but I can see how it would be easier to worship Him without all the distractions that our culture imposes on us.  I would challenge us to set time aside every day for glorifying God and ignoring everything else.

Next week is our 'fun' meeting, but we will be working on preparing a package for the Fords.  More details to come on this in the calendar.

God Bless!

The Time Smoothie

First of all, I have to praise God for all the food everyone brought last night.  In fact, Jason had food there and he wasn't even able to attend!  We had some delicious BLT's, green beans, cherries, fruit salad, and more.  In other news, our new Norwalk residents, Ben & Olivia, were able to come last night.  We are very happy to have them so much closer now (Oh, and thanks for the blender!).

After dinner, we went into a bit of discussion on what we've read in Isaiah so far and then started reading chapter 10.  One thing we could all agree on is that it's rather difficult to determine, at any point in the book, what time Isaiah is writing and/or what time he's writing about.  Some scripture seems to concern his current situation, others appear to be prophecy that will soon be fulfilled in Judah, still other verses sound like they are Messianic prophecy, and then some scripture could be interpreted as 'end times' prophecy.  And this stuff is all mixed together into what I would call a time smoothie.  I'm challenging anybody to come up with a flowchart for Isaiah that could help us visually straighten out the history and prophecy.

Nevertheless, we were still able to glean some good messages from the chapter.  First of all, we need to fear God.  It's evident in just the chapters of Isaiah we've read so far, that God desires us to rely on Him alone.  If we truly fear Him more than anything else, then we will not rely on idols or sorcery or foreign nations or addictions or ourselves (etc.) to deal with circumstances and situations that make us uncomfortable or frighten us.  Thanks to the forgiveness we have through Jesus, God will no longer destroy us for not fearing Him.  However, we know from the last verse of Ecclesiastes that "...God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil."

An encouraging part of chapter 10 is just to realize how far God is willing to go to purify His chosen people of Israel, no matter what they've done to anger and insult Him.  What a comfort it is that we can ask God to purify us, even if we have neglected or completely ignored our relationship with Him, and He will go to great lengths to increase our righteousness.  I pray that we would all continue to ask God to change us and give Him all the praise and glory when He does.

Next week we will be discussing Isaiah 17.  As always, there is an open invitation to anybody to host our group, cook some food, bring a lesson/topic, or offer a service/ministry/outreach opportunity.  Thanks for reading.

God Bless!

July's Fellowship Night

We had some well-toasted chicken alfredo sandwiches from Julie and some regular 'ol corn from Bud (I kid, but seriously.)  Aside from the food, there was much merrymaking and then we started on some games.  The kitchen group tried their hand at the deceptively complex Blokus, while the living room group made a run at the previously unplayed Master & Commander.  I can't speak to the Blokus experience, as I was too busy mastering and commanding the faces off of my opponents.  I'll just say I finished the second game we played with more ships than I had at the beginning.

Next week we discuss Isaiah chapter 10.

God Bless!

The Prodigal Blog Returns

I'm sure you noticed that the last post is almost 2 months old already. The blog pretty much ran off and squandered it's viewership only to return now, hat in hand, without a good excuse for having left in the first place. But we will welcome it back, right?! I must say I feel somewhat responsible in that I became too preoccupied with wedding preparations and such to give the blog its fair attention. My sincerest apologies for the absence of posts lately. On the bright side, Julie and I are married now!

Last night, the Skaggs were gracious enough to host and cook some amazing breakfast food with a decidedly custard-ish brownie for dessert. I still give them five stars, though.

We had missed a lot of discussion over the last few weeks, between Julie and me leaving on our honeymoon, Bud going to Texas for work, and Brandon working late for a Go Live. As a result, we didn't quite make it to talking about Ecclesiastes 8. Instead, we discussed all the material we had read since we last met.

I think everybody enjoyed the book of Nehemiah. We jokingly commented that his character didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the Bible, because he is never mentioned doing anything wrong! What Nehemiah does do is love his God so much that he is inconsolably sad upon learning of the destruction of the wall around His holy city, risking his life to be openly sad in front of the king he served. Nehemiah constantly prays to God for his strength and asks God for His favor and mercy when he does His work. His actions are powerful in their selflessness.

The book establishes a good example of how to confess through worship when the Israelites tell a brief history of God's compassion, mercy, and justice in dealing with them as they oscillate between obedience and rebellion. They are moved to the point of repenting and drafting an agreement to which their leaders and priests attached their seals. Then, not so many years later, Nehemiah finds the people of Jerusalem doing the very things they had agreed in writing not to do. What a fickle people! How encouraging it is that God still loved a people with faith as inconsistent as our own.

I'm pretty sure we all found the first half of Ecclesiastes to be kind of a downer. The author is not at all afraid to call something meaningless if it has no bearing on the Kingdom of God. But there are also some positive notes we found. For example, it is good to be joyful in your circumstances, because you are living the days God has given you. Also, it is impossible to understand everything "under the sun." (That last one helped Peter to stop thinking so hard!) There were many other phrases that people found powerful as well, but I don't have room to list them all here.

Next week we will be enjoying fellowship with one another (host tbd). The week after that we should be able to discuss the rest of Ecclesiastes and the first part of Isaiah. I will try to post some sort of a reading calendar to help people keep track of all these books.

God Bless!

Jesus is Cool

Peter was gracious enough to both host and cook this week.  And I must say, his cooking has improved.  Great job on the mashed potatoes, Pete!  After stuffing ourselves with some good food, we crashed on the couches and slowly made our way into Matthew 14.

We started with a discussion on Matthew 12:32, which states that blaspheming against Jesus is forgivable but blaspheming against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven by God.  This is something rather difficult to grasp.  In context, Jesus is warning those accusing Him of casting out demons by the power of demons that they are calling the Holy Spirit a demon.  Conceptually, it sounds like taking a position against the Holy Spirit is so much more severe than taking a position against Jesus that it won't ever be forgiven.  I thought that perhaps this is due to the fact that the Spirit is our spiritual connection to God.  Other thoughts were that having a 'settled attitude' against the Holy Spirit is something that never changes in a person.  Altogether, this is a strange topic.

So Jesus does some cool things in Matthew 14 that we all really liked.  Upon learning of the death of John the Baptist, He attempts to find a place where he can be alone and pray.  However, a crowd finds Him and follows Him, so He heals many of them and then begins teaching them.  The crowd is so enthralled by Him that he teaches them into the evening and the disciples want to send them away to eat.  But Jesus provides.  Through a miracle of food multiplication, the entire multitude is fed and continues to listen to Him.  The following evening, Jesus finally dismisses the crowd so he can go up a mountain and pray by Himself.  So when you stop and think about it, Jesus healed, taught, and fed a huge (5,000+ men) crowd for more than a day all while he really wanted to be alone.  That's rather humbling for me.

We also went on a rabbit trail talking about ghosts and demons and whatnot.  I'll list a couple of comments that I thought really stood out.  First, we have confidence in Jesus that we are protected from demonic control or possession.  Second, we feel most attacked when we are furthering God's kingdom.

Finally, we had some challenging discussion on the nature of faith.  For example, what is it?  How do we grow it?  We don't have to earn or work for salvation, so do we have to work for faith?  This is all good stuff and I would be interested to hear more ideas on faith when we meet next week.

Speaking of next week, we'll be reading Matthew 21 and discussing Matthew 16 - 21 next Tuesday.  As always, the details will be posted in the calendar as soon as I know them.

God Bless!

Matthew 7

Julie cooked some amazing chili and cornbread.  Pretty much everybody had seconds and I even heard rumors of thirds.  She is more than happy to cook for us but she does want to make sure everybody knows that they are welcome to do the cooking for any given Tuesday.  The same goes for hosting.  Just let the group know!

Before delving into Matthew chapter 7, we had a brief discussion on a passage in chapter 5 (vv. 17 - 19) where Jesus seems to say that we are to follow the Law.  He says that those breaking even the least of the commandments in the Law will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.  We decided that this is something of a sidenote to Jesus' sermon on the mount.  He wants to make sure that the crowd understands that what he is saying fulfills the Law, or reinforces the meaning of the Law, so that they don't stop following it altogether.  This issue is moot now that we know Jesus is our Lord & Savior and can look to Him (rather than the Law) for an example of how to live righteously.

Something interesting we noticed at the beginning of chapter 7 is how Jesus doesn't tell us not to judge others.  Rather, he tells us to expect to be judged in the same way that we judge others.  Therefore, we should examine ourselves for the same sin we see in others, especially before confronting them about it.  Another neat little statement is that "Do to others what you would have them do to you" sums up the entire Old Testament.  Why would Jesus say that?  It's something good to meditate on.

Peter had a good comment on verses 7 - 11.  Jesus explains "ask and it will be given to you" by saying that a father will not give his child a stone when the child asks for bread.  There is a common comment that this obviously isn't always true, because we ask God for things that aren't given to us.  Peter pointed out that this isn't so hard to explain if we flip around Jesus' explanation to this:  A father will not give his child a stone when the child asks for a stone.

We also spent some time discussing verses 21 - 23.  They seem to say that glorifying God is not enough to get into Heaven, but that doing the will of God is the only way.  This is a frightening passage for us when we are not confident in our salvation, or our personal relationship with Christ.  However, fear of God is healthy and it should motivate us to do His will.  Moreover, these verses are part of the closing of Jesus' sermon where He wants to point out that those who have been following the letter of the Law, rather than the meaning of the Law (God's will), will not enter Heaven.  Indeed, there are those today who speak scripture intellectually and don't actually have a personal relationship with Christ.

Next week we will discuss Matthew chapter 14 as well as any questions about chapters 8 - 13.  Check the calendar to see if we are planning anything else.

God Bless!

Moving Forward

Last week, we decided to spend the evening in fellowship.  We were too tired to play a game, so we browsed Netflix and learned that you should never watch "The Whitest Kids You Know" TV show.

This week, we were again blessed by Julie's cooking and 'Bauer/Powers' hosting.  In the conclusion of the T4T material, we discussed the Great Commission at the end of the book of Matthew and how we could adjust our weekend cleanup activity to have a greater focus on outreach.  Common ideas were to hand people tracts as a way to start a conversation and to use a questionnaire to get to know people before asking them about God.  Let's try doing something different this Saturday to talk to people about God.  Maybe it's just opening our mouths!

The lesson in T4T involved reading Luke 1:5-25 using the 4-question approach from 2 Timothy 3:16.
1. What does God want to teach us?
2. How does God rebuke us in this passage?
3. How does God want to correct us in this passage?
4. How does God train us in righteousness in this passage?

The reading was about a man Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, who were in a situation similar to Abraham and Sarah.  Elizabeth was barren and ostracized for it, but the couple was obedient to God and always acted righteously though their prayer for a son was left unanswered.  When an angel appears to Zechariah he doubts that God can give them a child, because of how old they are.  He is punished for his doubt, being made unable to speak for the 9 months of Elizabeth's pregnancy.

In general, our response to this story was that God rebukes us for our disbelief, wants us to have faith in Him and His promises, and shuts us up so that we can hear His Word.  We had a lot of great discussion over how God tolerates us questioning Him.  One clear conclusion was that we no longer have to fear God if we question Him, because Jesus has paid the perfect & final price for all of our sins.  However, Jesus's sacrifice should be a motivation to glorify God not an excuse to disobey Him.

We all thought that one passage of scripture per week (what T4T prescribes) would be too little for us.  So we decided that moving forward, we will all commit to reading 6 chapters a week of the same book and then read and discuss the seventh chapter on Tuesday evenings.  We didn't have much time to decide, but for now we have settled on reading through Matthew.  This means we should be ready to read and discuss chapter 7 next week (It is not a bad thing to ask what you missed if you didn't do all the reading. This will hold us accountable for actually remembering what we've read!).  Please pray about what book God wants us to read through next.

God's Will for Us

We started the night with more amazing food from Julie.  We are so blessed to have her with us (for more than just the food, ha).  After dinner, we moved into our next T4T lesson which emphasized the fact that God has a plan for us.  He is not finished with us after we are adopted into His family.  This week's lesson sparked a whole lot of discussion.

The lesson started with a few stories of how God saved people and immediately used them to save their families and/or friends.  This included Noah, Rahab, Cornelius, etc.  It occurred to us how strange several of these passages were in that once the head of a household had faith in God, there was no mention of any amount of time or prodding necessary to bring the family to faith in God as well.  This launched us into an awesome discussion about family structure and how wrong it is in the American culture that we encourage everyone to be independent.  Of course this makes it seem strange that a household could have one member to whom everybody submits!

We will soon have four young couples in our group and we are all committing to create a culture in our family that follows God's design.  We are convinced that creating a correct culture in the family is the best way to affect the culture of the nation at large.  We will submit to God - the Head of our heavenly household - for wisdom in this undertaking.

I reminded the group that, as a part of the T4T lessons, we are to challenge ourselves to share our testimony with five people every week and then use the T4T materials to help disciple any who accept God's adoption.  This might seem overwhelming, but the Spirit will lead us through it if we are obedient.  There were also some pretty clear confessions that we are not all spending daily time in God's Word.  Thus, we have added another challenge: to read the Bible every day.  We are thinking about perhaps reading the same stuff every week for a future study we could do.

Finally, God provided a mission for us this week.  We will be cleaning up Norwalk on Saturday morning!  See the calendar for details.  Next week will be some more T4T.

God Bless!

Our Mission Statement

This week's meeting was graced by the presence of my beautiful fiance Julie McKee, who has just returned from her 16-month mission in West Africa.  She was kind enough to cook some amazing stir fry for our dinner.  Also, thanks to Brandon for being willing to host.

We had great attendance this week, so we had much livelier discussion on what our new focus should be for the group.  We were once again unanimous on the following points: our overarching mission is to do all for the glory of God and make disciples of all nations AND we need to continue meeting weekly for dinner, fellowship, and the strengthening of our faith through God's Word.

After throwing around a lot of ideas and some excessive details, we all felt pulled to the following mission statement (verse highly recommended by Mr. Jason Frick):

Whatever we do = ____________________

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God."  --1 Corinthians 10:31

We plan to fill in the blank with one of the following acts of service OR something else God lays on our hearts this week.  Next week we will share what we hear God telling us.  Please be praying (and listening!)

• Working with the Victory Baptist Food Pantry
• Troubleshooting technical problems for members of the community
• Helping renovate the building purchased for House of Hope

Also next week, we will return to the Training for Trainers (T4T) series.  Please contact me if you'd like to host.

God Bless!

A New Mission

Firstly, I have to say that Peter was a great host and did an amazing job cooking dinner.  The food was excellent (and healthy!), but I will have to give him a 9/10 due to the over-steamed broccoli.  Sorry, Pete.  Maybe next time..

We spent most of our discussion talking about this article:  http://geoffsurratt.typepad.com/inner_revolution/2010/02/i-believe-in-small-groups-i-think-small-groups-are-an-essential-the-essential-element-of-living-in-christian-community-j.html

To summarize much too briefly, the article states that small groups are failing due to a lack of focus.  Rather than trying to build relationships, accomplish discipleship, or practice community service (etc.), a small group should have a focused mission around which it's built and from which the former aspects would naturally develop.  This allows all members of the group to be constantly aware of the singular purpose which drives all activities of the group.

So we spent the evening brainstorming some ideas for A New Mission, though we struggled at times with getting caught up in some of the details.  From the very start, we made sure to distinguish a small group's focused mission from the mission that we are given by Christ to make disciples of all nations.  We felt that a small group's mission should be more specific, though certainly not more important (and it definitely shouldn't detract from Christ's calling for us).

Please do some of your own brainstorming and praying this week.  Ask God for A New Mission around which He can build A New Group.  God-willing we will decide on our new focus next week.  Here are a couple of ideas that came up tonight:

• Since most of us are tech-savvy, we should hold regular workshops for the community of Norwalk so we can serve their technology needs and share with them our motivation for serving them without compensation.  This would be very difficult, so I can see God doing great things with this idea.  [Outreach/Service Focus]
•  We should discuss our most basic/core beliefs each week.  We would talk about the discord between our professed beliefs and our actions and how that points to something else that we actually believe.  Finally, we would devise plans to correct our actual beliefs.  This would also be incredibly difficult, fostering honesty and spiritual growth within the group.  [Discipleship/Relationship Focus]

Don't be limited by the format of these examples in your brainstorming this week.  I would like to see us with lots of ideas to discuss next week, so that it will be even more amazing when God draws us to the same one.