For those who use my Sunday school resources, I’ve now got two versions of a lesson sequence on Ephesians done, one that boogie woogies through the book in three weeks and one that goes half a chapter at a time. Check out the Sunday School tab at the top of this page for these and [...]
While I’m moving my more speculative posts over to the Christian Humanist Blog, I will continue to update my own Sunday School Resources and Teen Ministry pages here. I invite anyone who would like to look at them to use the resources, free of charge, so long as you let me know how they’ve served [...]
Revised Common Lectionary Page for 24 January 2010 Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 Psalm 19 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a Luke 4:14-21 This week’s readings are a lovely array of meta-Scriptures: a Gospel reading about Jesus reading the Scriptures, a Pauline passage about living together as God’s people, a Psalm about reading the Scriptures, and an Old Testament [...]
Vanderbilt’s Lectionary Page for 17 January 2010 Isaiah 62:1-5 Psalm 36:5-10 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 John 2:1-11 I’ve read some twentieth-century feminist Biblical scholarship, and some of it is quite helpful to keep me mindful of my own assumptions and sometimes my own ideology when I read the Bible. I don’t always come away from such [...]
I don’t know that I’ll do this every week, but one thing that I’m going to try to do more this year is write about the Bible, and I figure one way to do that is to write about the lectionary readings for the week. My reflections will not be polished sermons in their own [...]
Tripp Fuller tagged me with this meme, so here’s my attempt at it (in just a few minutes so that I can get back to a conference paper): Written Proclaim faithfully Call to worship Grace given, encompassing all God creates, delivers, loves, redeems I suppose I should have laid out the terms of the meme: [...]
It’s been a week and a few days now since I taught this story (from early chapters of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) to our Sunday school class at Athens Christian Church, but I’m still thinking about the enormous interpretive challenge it represents. ?I’ve tried to draft this post a few times, and having completely rewritten [...]
I’ve written here before that I enjoy the Theos-Seekers, our younger-adult Sunday school class at Athens Christian Church, and that hasn’t changed. ?Two weeks ago, while reading Phillip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew as a class, we read one of my favorite bits of my favorite gospel, namely Mark 6, and it took us [...]
Before I begin, I should be clear about what I’m writing about.? I do enjoy reading the left-leaning The Jesus Manifesto website, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.? (Incidentally, that site has done its own interrogation of Sweet and Viola.)? Instead I’m talking about the recent Jesus Manifesto by Sweet and Viola, which [...]
Ruth is about three-quarters barking mad. Let me back up. ?Ruth, the eighth book of the Old Testament, is our text for the next several weeks of Sunday school. ?I’ve taught Ruth in churches and at UGA, and one of the things that I make a point of when I teach it is to note [...]
When Mary and I returned from Indiana and West Virginia at the beginning of January, we started a new series on Exodus for the teens at church, and we decided fairly early on in the planning process that we’d do several weeks of lessons on the text (we ended up doing four), hitting the high [...]
Today we did Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, a lovely poem that I’d never read before planning the lesson for this class.? It’s a poem that at the same time gets 2 Samuel and ventures outside of its bounds freely to make whatever political point the poet was after.? The real glory of the poem for [...]
I was thinking about negation as a philosophical move this morning, and I started to think about negation-of-negation as it might relate to reading Hebrew prophetic texts.? Algebraically, of course, a negation of a negation is the same as a positive statement, but as Hegel points out in Phenomenology of Spirit, if the negation itself [...]
Although the inspiration to write this post came while reading The Shaping of Things to Come by Hirsch and Frost, the outlines of the ideas have been brewing in my head for some time.? Hirsch and Frost are not the first and certainly not the most egregious among those who ignore the state of war [...]
I’m filling the pulpit for two Sundays this month, and I’ve got the outline down for 8/17.? Actually, to be honest, the lectionary text from the Old Testament (I always preach the lectionary–it keeps me from returning to my own “pet texts” every time I preach) pretty much writes its own outline.? It’s the first [...]
It was set to be a hit from the time letters hit paper. (No movable type yet, so it wouldn’t hit the presses for a couple centuries.) It had glimpses into Hell and Heaven, the doom of the Pope, and a cast of modern-day (every era thinks itself modern) characters present and active as God’s [...]
I just got done with some handouts for the next two Sundays at Athens Christian.? The Westfalls are moving into their new house, and Jan asked me to take a couple weeks while they do so, and the results are on the Sunday School page, available by clicking the appropriate tab above.? Enjoy!
I’ve been reading Thomas Aquinas for the last few days, and I continue to be impressed.? I read his Compendium for comps, and now, the first leg of the Summa completed, I still think that his philosophy is without match in the history of the practice. That said, I have been musing on the intersections [...]
I’ve now preached as many sermons in a month and a half as I did at Bogart Christian in two years.? That’s neither to say that Bogart was stingy nor that Athens Christian is needy; Marv’s car wreck and the ensuing complications have everything to do with what’s going on. At any rate, the sermon [...]
I just posted the third and final part of my Sunday school series on Ephesians.? It’s under the “Sunday School” tab above.? As with all my Sunday school materials, feel free to look at, use, and modify the lessons, but please acknowledge my contribution, and please go to that page to comment on how it [...]
