New Study

On October 18th we'll be beginning a new study on 1 John. This is exciting to me because I love 1 John! It covers the "Christianity 101" stuff while also delving deeply into what it means to be a follower of Christ. I hope you can be a part of our study!

Come check us out at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, California. We are on Lake's campus in the building called Ortland Hall and we are in room 205. For a map of the church's campus, click here.

God bless!

More Studying the Bible

Before I post a rundown from last Sunday I would just like to say a few things about the purpose of this series. You may have been in attendance last week and thought, "There's no way in the world that I have time, energy, or interest to do what Matt is talking about!" You're right! I don't either! This method of studying the Bible that we have been talking about isn't something that you have to do everyday or even every week (unless you teach a class of interested people like you all!). Also, this method isn't intended to demean or replace reading your Bible devotionally. Instead, studying the Bible in this way is useful for us to know whenever we are curious about something that we read in our quiet times or heard in a sermon. If you are leading a Bible study sometime, following these steps could be helpful for you. And while it may seem time consuming, in practice this won't take you very long if you have the resources at hand (which I assume you do since you are reading this on the internet right now and some of the sources we talked about are online!). So while some of you might have found the last two Sundays a bit daunting, don't worry. No one is asking you to do this all the time! Nope, instead it's just another tool to have in your Batman utility belt so that you can know Scripture better!

Okay, so here's the quick rundown:

After completing the quick and slow readings, you would start by thinking about concentric circles. First, how does your passage fit with those around it? How does it fit in the book that its in? How does it fit with the rest of the NT or OT? How does it fit with the Bible as a whole? These are questions that you can answer on your own. You don't have to read all of John if you are interested in the Miracle at Cana, but you can skim it! The same goes for the NT/OT and the Bible circles. The idea here is to get a hold on how your passage fits with the rest of Scripture.

Next you will whip out your helps (study Bible notes, one-volume commentary, online commentaries, etc). But before starting to read, re-read your notes that you have made so far. This will help you remember what to be on the lookout for when you peruse your helps. Here are some common things that your helps will show you: historical context (who wrote your text, when, why, to whom, what the cultural situation was like, etc), the definitions of important words in your passage, connections with the immediate and wider contexts, how non-biblical stuff might shed some light on your passage, other points of view, and, if your interest has been piqued, other places to find more information.

Here are a few sources that might help you out in this process: How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (introduction into studying the Bible by two excellent believing scholars), HarperCollins Bible Commentary (a little left of center), Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible (centrist), Baker Commentary on the Bible (right of center), Oxford Annotated Bible (left of center), NIV Study Bible (right of center, NASB Study Bible has the same notes), SonicLight.org study notes (really conservative), NTGateway.com (collection of links), OTGateway.com (collection of links), iTanakh.org (collection of links for OT), BibleMap.org (helps with geography), BibleGateway.com (concordance and loads of other stuff too), Google Books, Fuller's bookstore, and Archives Bookshop.

I hope this is helpful!

Studying the Bible

As requested, here is an overview of what we talked about on Sunday regarding studying Scripture:

Materials needed: 1) A Bible translated into your "heart" language; regarding English translations, I prefer the NIV or the NRSV but the NKJV, NLT, NASB, and ESV are all good too (as are many others); the question to ask yourself is this: Do I prefer translation that are word-for-word, thought-for-thought, or some combination of the two?; Don't just buy the one that looks cool, do a bit of research first!; 2) pen and paper (or your computer); 3) a concordance (or and internet connection hooked up to biblegateway.com); and 4) a one-volume commentary of the Bible (or an internet connection that will give you access to solid information [more on this in the coming weeks]) and/or a Bible with study notes

First Step - Pray: Ask the Holy Spirit to be with you as you study God's Word.

Second Step - Choose a Passage: We talked about how this can happen organically, that is, during your devotional Bible reading you may find a passage that you find interesting or confusing; make a note of it so that you can study it later; and by "passage" I mean a paragraph or a story, not (necessarily) one verse or one word

Third Step - Read the Passage Quickly: Read your text quickly out loud and ask yourself this: What is this passage about? Write down your answer(s). Don't use any helps yet.

Fourth Step - Read the Passage Slowly: Now look at your text in more detail (which may meant that you need to read many times) and ask yourself these questions: Is there anything that I find confusing?, What transition words (therefore, thus, moreover, etc) are being used in this passage?, What are the keywords (words that are used a lot or that are especially meaningful to your passage)?, Does this text bring up any questions for me?, and What genre (poetry, narrative, letter, etc) is this text? Write down your questions and any possible answers that you can think of during this step. Don't use any helps yet.

Next week we'll talk about the next steps, some of which will may require the use of outside helps. I'll also be providing some book suggestions and internet links to things that might prove to be helpful.

God bless!

Oh, I almost forgot. Next week (9/13) is not the last week that we'll be talking about this. We'll also discuss it the following week (9/20) and we'll practice on a few passages. The last Sunday in September, the 27th, we'll have the "State of Crossroads" meeting where we'll hopefully introduce our new leadership team, talk about the past year, and discuss plans going forward. Thanks!

One of the Most Famous Speeches in US History

Here it is! Enjoy!

Friends

This week we will talk about honoring God in our relationships with our friends.

Here are a few things that may get your mental wheels turning this week:

1. Who is your best friend(s)? What makes them so great?

2. Think of someone that became your friend very quickly. What about them allowed that to happen? What about you helped that process?

3. What do you think it means to be a good friend?

4. What sort of things hurt friendships? I'm sure we've all had friendships that have soured - why? What happened?

5. How can God use our friendships? How can he use our friends in our lives and how can he use us in our friends' lives?

Hopefully that is enough to get you thinking. I guess we'll see on Sunday!

Family

This past week we talked about how we relate to our families. We covered a whole bunch of ground and did so way too quickly. So first of all, apologies to those who wanted to share but were unable to due to us having to move along. But that is the purpose of this blog - for us to share the things that we didn't or were unable to on Sunday.

Second, I realized after the fact (thanks in part to a discussion with Alida) that our relationships with our parents (or guardian figures) and our siblings are very different from one another and that we did a disservice to both by squishing them together. So since we couldn't cover all the ground we wanted to and since we dealt primarily with two kinds of very different relationships, a few questions/comments remain.

1. How does power play into our relationship with our parents? What happens when that power that our parents have over us lessens as we get older?

2. We didn't get to talk about the middle/oldest/youngest dynamic with regard to siblings and parents. How does birth order affect our relationship with our siblings and our parents? How did you view your siblings in reference to birth order?

3. What about the few that may be only children - what is that dynamic like? Is leaving the nest harder for only children than for others?

4. This is the most important question that we left undone: How much sway should your family hold over you as an adult? How much is too much and how much is too little? How can you tell?

5. A few people noted that we didn't talk about relating to family members who don't believe in the Lord. I purposefully left that issue to one side since I plan on speaking about it in a future lesson.

So what do you think about these questions/comments? Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Co-Workers and Family

Hey guys and gals,

Last week we talked about honoring God in our relationships at work. In class it was mentioned that not everyone is equally valuable, specifically that some people do and say things that are not of value. What should we do then? Well I think a starting place might be that everyone is valuable in a certain respect, namely that they are a person. God created them and made them in his image, even if they are distorting that image with their actions and words. However, we don't have to value the things that people do. I want to get at this problem from a different angle though and to do so I have to ask a question: How do we value people as human beings when we don't value their words and actions?

So far we have talked about strangers and then about co-workers. My intention was to continue each week by discussing a more intimate relationship than the last. This week I was stuck with a bit of a conundrum - should we talk about our relationship with our friends or our families? One person may be closer to their friends than their family and the next person vice versa. So I flipped a coin and family won. Therefore this week we will discuss honoring God in our families. I want to explore honoring our parents as adults (what about dishonorable parents?), our relationships with our siblings (if we have them), the patterns in which we are often stuck in our families, etc. So be thinking about your relationships to your family members. How can you honor God in those relationships?

Hospitality

Last week in Crossroads we talked about our relationships with strangers or people whom we don't know very well. A major part of our discussion focused on the notion of hospitality, so I wanted to clarify what exactly I meant during class.

Often in today's Church when we think of hospitality we think of people, usually women, who like and are good at hosting events, providing food for Church activities, etc. These things are part of being hospitable, but they do not exhaust all of what it means to exhibit hospitality.

Two quick things: 1) Every Christian is called to be hospitable. "Hospitality" does not appear in any of the lists of spiritual gifts (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4) and all Christians are commanded to practice hospitality (Romans 12.13). I only say this because I fear that some of us, myself included, try to get out of things by saying "I'm not gifted that way." Well, we certainly can't say that about hospitality - it is not considered a spiritual gift in the New Testament and we are all commanded to be hospitable. We are not off the hook! 2) The word for hospitality in the New Testament is philoxenia, which is a combination of of two Greek root words - philos and xenos. Philos means love (as in Philadelphia - city of brotherly love) and xenos means strangers or others (as in xenophobia - fear of others). In other words, we are to have love for others around us. Let me be clear that Scripture teaches that this does not just apply to those whom we host at our homes or at a party or for whom we provide food at Church. No, we are instructed to love others, all of them, no matter where or when. That is a challenging message if I ever heard one!

This next week we'll be talking about our relationships at work and/or school. So it is my hope that you'll spend some time thinking about how these sorts of relationships faired for you this week. Were there any tensions? Were there some opportunities in which you honored God? Please be prepared to share as you feel comfortable.

I look forward to seeing all of you Sunday morning at 9:15!

Follow-Up from Sunday

By popular demand I am writing a short blog to ask a few simple questions.

Can you think of more TV shows, movies, books, etc that focus on human relationships? How are these relationships portrayed? Are parts of their portrayals redeemable?

The Real Jesus

Hello all. It's been awhile since we've had a new post here so I thought I would put something forward and see if I got any bites. Something I've been thinking about lately is "The Real Jesus". I have been reading in John and looking at exactly who Jesus said he is, what his disciples experience of Jesus was and what the people's experience was who came into contact with him. It has made me think of my personal experience of who Jesus is and think of the Jesus that has been presented to me throughout my upbringing and the Jesus that my past churches and our current church talks about. My thought and main question has become whether or not the Jesus I know is the Jesus that his disciples experienced, that those in the house churches in China experience, that the poor experienced, that the blind man in Jerusalem experienced. The things I'm discovering some exciting truths, and some difficult truths. It's a real challenge though. I'd like to hear the thoughts of anyone who reads this. Let it out!

--ADam--