Posts with the category “elemental-season-1”

INTROThe following is a guide to help facilitate discussion. Feel free to add or subtract or change questions to fit the conversation, and pray for the Spirit to lead in all things.OPENHave you ever helped to build something (a house, a car, a mission project, an art piece, etc…)?  What did the process feel like and how did you feel when it was done?HEADRead Luke 6: 46-49 together and share any wi...  Read More

Before we end this part of the series, and remember, there will be a second season of this series, I wanted to say something that I think is important. It is okay to doubt, to question, and to want to understand more about your faith, your God, and your community. Some people would want you to think that it is somehow being unfaithfu to ask questions, to wonder, and to look for new and dynamic ans...  Read More

If you are going to build back, you need to lay a foundation that will be strong, flexible, and will be true. That means you are going to need to get your priorities straight. You are going to need to think about your Christology first, and you are going to need to go back to that discussion again and again in order to make sure the ground on which you build this house is not on sinking sand. I kn...  Read More

Now, it can’t all be bad can it? Everything that we learned, everything that we lived. When we deconstruct our faith, are we just standing in the rubble asking to have it all thrown out the window? Or are there things that might be good for us to use in order to build out faith and faith communities back in a way that not only honors God, but also allows others to be invited into the kingdom of Go...  Read More

When the disciples began to follow Jesus, they seemed to experience a life that was not exactly what they were looking for. In fact, in Matthew 8 Jesus talks about how difficult following will be. They should not expect even shelter or food. This is the cost of discipleship, and it is pretty steep. Perhaps part of the problem with our confusion about what a life of faith will entail is that we hav...  Read More

Some fear deconstruction because they are afraid they might lose their faith. However, we are confronted with a much greater issue; the fact that the faith of many people is simply slipping away. Without delving into the deeper questions that we might have, faith becomes more and more irrelevant to our lives and then we simply move on from a very frustrating relationship with faith, church, and so...  Read More

When we deconstruct our faith, it is certainly not always a loss of faith. Rather, it is a reconfiguring and reworking of some of those universal understandings. It is also an opportunity to look at the bigger picture, where God resides, and see if our worldview matches with that of God’s as far as we can know it. It is also an opportunity to take a look at your faith and the assumptions that have...  Read More

INTRODUCTIONThe following is a guide to help facilitate discussion. Feel free to add or subtract or change questions to fit the conversation, and pray for the Spirit to lead in all things.OPENThink about and share a time when you were incredibly blessed by the reading of God’s Word and then share a time when you found it to be challenging.HEADThis week we invite you to Read, Re-Read, or Review the...  Read More

I was recently watching the movie Silence, about 17th-century priests and their journeys to Japan. It is a difficult movie and quite brutal. It is not a simple watch and the book by Shūsaku Endō i is just as fascinating and compelling. But there was one scene where a former priest who had apostatized and a current priest were speaking. The former priest was making the case that the Japanese Christ...  Read More

I have a few thoughts on this. Firstly, for those of us who have been in the church for most of our lives and who have also gone to Christian schools for a portion of that time, simply going to Genesis and starting there is going to be difficult. Remember, we have studied scripture repeatedly for what seems like forever. We have been exposed to the greater narrative that scripture offers. The stor...  Read More

I don’t know how you have interacted with the Bible throughout your life, but if you are like me, it is a on-again-off-again relationship. While I love scripture, there are times in my life where I am closer to it, and other times where I am further away. Some people read through the scriptures every single year, and some have never read it all the way through. Whatever your relationship with Scri...  Read More

Growing up, I used to be terrible at Bible quiz time at school. I just couldn't remember chapter and verse as they wanted us to. I wasn’t great at memorization and that seemed to be a prerequisite for being a good Chrstian. I was so bad that no one wanted me on their team when it came to bible bowls that we often seemed to have in elementary school. We used to have classes in chain referencing scr...  Read More

Does the bible give us a particular type of certainty? And is that what it is supposed to be used for?The great Protestant tradition, beginning with Martin Luther, has always been a great search for the certainty of correct understanding of scripture to answer the questions that we have about God, ourselves, our lives, and our trajectory. But is the Bible set up that way? Is the Bible the “Basic I...  Read More

Deconstruction - how you take your faith apart matters (deconstruction, tools of deconstruction, inspiration, interpretation, what can we really know, epistemology)INTROThe following is a guide to help facilitate discussion. Feel free to add or subtract or change questions to fit the conversation, and pray for the Spirit to lead in all things.OPENHave you ever taken apart something that you couldn...  Read More

So is this really a question of truth, or is it a question of what you can know and what you can’t know? Or is it a question of what is possible to know, or is it something else? The philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and belief is called Epistemology, and it is a philosophical discussion that is important. Over the years the idea of studying this area has been rife with arguments, ...  Read More

This is a fair question. If the biblical narrative is not as simple as we have perhaps been led to believe, how can we really know what is happening in the Bible at all? This is one of the reasons we have put together Crosswalk Classroom for deeper study and understanding. The truth is that there is a great deal of information that we can incorporate into our understanding of scripture, but it mea...  Read More

So why can’t we just say that we believe what the Bible says and that we live our lives according to it? Wouldn’t that simply make things a bit easier? Yes, of course, it would.But unfortunately, that is not exactly how it all works. We are all involved in the process of interpreting what Scripture says to each of us. Wouldn’t it be easier if we all just read it and thought of it in the same way? ...  Read More

I was in a songwriting seminar with Rich Mullins, and he made an interesting comment. He asked if any of us had been in a talent show or had seen one where someone said: “God woke me up and gave me this song. . .”We all raised our hands, as this was a pretty common thing that is said in Christian music circles. He told us that we had to be careful with this kind of language because if a song had b...  Read More

When I was in high school, I got the best job opportunity. It was the opportunity to work maintenance at the school. Doesn’t that sound good to you? Then you are not a 15-year-old boy with a driver’s permit and the hopes of driving the school’s truck and tractor all summer before he turned 15 years old. I figured I would be driving the tractor out on the fields to pick up the watering apparatus, a...  Read More

INTRODUCTIONThe following is a guide to help facilitate discussion. Feel free to add or subtract or change questions to fit the conversation, and pray for the Spirit to lead in all things.OPENHow would you describe your relationship with God right now? What are some verbs that describe your current level of faith? How does this season compare to other seasons of your life? Why?HEADWe covered sever...  Read More

Happy are those who make the LORD their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods. —Psalm 40:4Have you ever felt like going to church was a little like going to school? That was my experience growing up. I had the privilege of going to a church that was connected to a University, and was taught by pastors who were erudite, deeply read, and pretty significant theo...  Read More

Trust is hard. It is difficult for us to trust one another, to trust institutions, to trust our spouses even. When I do premarital counseling with a couple we talk about intention and how they need to always trust the intention of their partner. While their partner may do something terribly painful to them, if they trust the intent of the other person who made the mistake, they will get through it...  Read More

Let me be CLEAR, we should think about God, and we should even seek to think correctly about God. But we are super complex beings. We have big brains, and we have deep spiritual thoughts and experiences. We ponder things like the meaning of life and what Cheetos are actually made of. We seek the divine and the profane all at the same time. We struggle with sin and we triumph over it. Some of you r...  Read More

Here is a question or two to ponder; does our understanding of God limit God? Is God beholden to the words that we say about God? I guess another way to ask the question is to ask if we create God in the image of our words, or even our own image. What?I know that is confusing. We clearly don’t make images or idols of God for ourselves, but sometimes, our words try to capture God just as much as wo...  Read More

Great question. I have felt like in this series and in this discussion we sort of have to figure out why and how we ask the questions first before we jump into the scriptures. You see, it is too easy for a pastor/teacher to set up a scenario where we simply set up a question and then show you the solution. It is clean, it is nice, and we all go home feeling like there are no loose ends. But is tha...  Read More

Do you follow the Bible? I think we all want to. There was a journalist by the name of A.J. Jacobs, who wrote a book called; “The Year of Living Biblically.” and I got a chance to hear him speak after I read the book. It was fascinating. He was an interesting guy and had written articles about outsourcing his life for a month and other interesting experiences. But on this one, he decided that he w...  Read More

INTROThe following is a guide to help facilitate discussion. Feel free to add or subtract or change questions to fit the conversation, and pray for the Spirit to lead in all things.OPENWhen you were a child, was there something you believed in with all your heart that you later learned wasn’t real?  If so, share what it was and how you felt when you found out the truth?HEADRead John 20: 24-29 and ...  Read More

As we finish this first week of dipping our toes into the deconstruction pool, I want you to understand a bottom line that I think is important: “I can choose to trust God with a childlike trust regardless of how certain I feel.” (Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty).Quite a while ago, Rob Bell wrote a book called The Velvet Elvis. It was pretty widely acclaimed and seemed to bring in a new era of Ch...  Read More

Orthodoxy, in its simplest definition, is right thinking. And we were taught to think rightly, or correctly, or whatever. From my first memory of church, we were taught to think about God correctly. Who he was, what he wanted, how he wanted it, and how I fit into his plan, that was definitely for me in particular. All of these things were what we were taught. And that is okay, I mean, maybe that i...  Read More

Thus far, we haven’t encountered much scripture. I hope that is okay. Through the Elemental series, we have to set the background for what we are attempting to take on. The growth that is needed is not simply coming from Scripture, but it is also coming from the community of Christ, it is coming from those who have wrestled with many of these ideas before you, and it is coming from our shared expe...  Read More

Church should be the safest place to take risks. Let me say that again. Church should be the safest place to take risks. The Church should hold a place of value in our lives because we can ask questions, we can wonder, ponder, and dream about things, and we can meet God in our certainty and in our doubt. It should be a place where we are comfortable enough, to tell the truth about our journeys, ev...  Read More

If you have ever had a moment when you question your faith, or feel some doubt, then you know that the people around you get pretty nervous and anxious about what you are going through. People don't like it when we begin to vocalize questions, wonder about the answers that have always been given, and seek to find new expressions or a new language in which to engage God. Your willingness to questio...  Read More

Have you ever had something that triggered a response you were not expecting? Something that brings you back to either you didn’t want to go or somewhere you have never been before and are not sure you are comfortable being there? A place where certainty slides into uncertainty is a place that is uncomfortable for everyone.Our belief structures cause us to find a sense of security around them. We ...  Read More

Deconstruction is a big word with a significant meaning when having to do with faith. You have probably encountered it in the last couple of years, as it has been a big topic in the world of belief. It is about discovering the fundamental and elemental things in your faith that truly matter. Through this process, we often have to tear down some things we have always assumed our faith is dependent ...  Read More