Michael Hyatt shares five reasons you should take a daily nap. (From MichaelHyatt.com)

Apocalyptic Events At Tomb: Matt. 28.1-8
This section is Matthew’s conclusion to his five-part book. He has faithfully told the story of Jesus as the New Moses and concludes with the account that shook the roots of the old creation and ushered in the new creation. In the final paragraph, he commissions the workers of the kingdom for this new age which has successfully invaded the present evil age.

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

Jesus resurrection was the central focus of early Christian preaching. When the earth shook, the guards at his tomb also shook. They were not up for such an encounter. They had no grid to put the events of the morning through. The shaking of the old creation and the emergence of the new creation in Jesus had begun. It was the first day of the new creation.

Jesus Meets Woman: Matt. 28.9-11

Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened.

This small scene is unique to the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus appears unexpectedly and the woman shows great love and reverence by touching the risen body. Jesus brings this touching to a halt by sending the woman to his disciples which he now calls brothers. It shouldn’t be lost that the first teachers about the resurrection were women sent by Jesus to teach men. His encounter with the woman replaces sadness with joy. Matthew makes three points:

Point #1: The body of Jesus was a real body which could be touched.
Point #2: By using the term brothers for his disciples he had restored what had been lost by their rejection. Therein is the mercy of God.
Point #3: The risen Jesus appears to people not to satisfy their personal needs but to send them on a mission. The disciples could no longer cling to their old relationship with Jesus, they now encountered the same Jesus, but received a new mission. Encounters with Jesus lead to mission, nothing has changed.

False Teaching About Resurrection: Matt. 28.12-15

When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.

While the women bring the good news to the disciples, the guards go to the chief priests and elders who create  a lie to counter the good news. The solution of the Jewish leaders was to bribe the Roman soldiers. Having failed to prevent the resurrection, they are reduced to trying to render it unbelievable. This may have been an ever present problem to Matthew’s church as it still is to the church today.

Jesus Comes to His Church to Commission It: Matt. 28.16-20

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

This final paragraph is unique to Matthew. It is the key to understanding his whole of his Gospel. The words of Jesus may be divided into three sayings:

Saying #1. The Announcement Of His Authority: Because he died and was resurrected, Jesus had received total power over the universe. This power enables him to initiate a universal mission. What all believers and unbelievers alike will see and experience at the end of time, the church will see and experience from the death-resurrection onward — the power of God to do his work.

Saying #2. The Commissioning Of His Disciples: This commissioning is divided into three parts.

Part #1: The disciples were sent into the world to make disciples. The whole gospel of Matthew has explained what being a disciple means. In short, it means to follow Jesus by obeying his teaching and doing his works.
Part #2: The second part tells them that they should baptize these disciples into this new relationship with God as a marked sign that death to the old creation and birth into the new creation had occurred.
Part #3: They are told that they should involve themselves in all areas of what Jesus taught. This means to imitate Jesus in preaching and performing miracles. They must do the words and works of Jesus.

Saying #3. The Final Promise to Sustain: The final word takes the disciples into the future from their present experience until his return at the close of the age. Here is Jesus consoling and strengthening his disciples. He will not be an absentee landlord. He will be with them as his name from the beginning of the book reveals — he is God-with-us. This is the all-powerful Jesus setting his dynamic rule into his new people so they may do his continued his work on earth. The picture is completed by Matthew not showing Jesus ascend as in Luke and Acts. He is pictured as coming to his church and remaining with it all the days to the end of the age.

Suggested Reading

• How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels Tom Wright
• Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters Tom Wright

Four Specific People: 11.27-50.26

The Story Of Abraham: Gen. 11.27-23.20
Abraham lived in Ur and moved to Haran with his father Terah. He was called to journey to Canaan by God. God revealed to him that he would be the father of a great nation and the nation will have a land which will be theirs to live in. He made a trip to Egypt where he lied about his wife. Abram gave Lot the choice of where he wanted to settle and they separated. Invading forces captured Lot and his family and Abram rescued Lot and paid tribute to Melchizedek. A covenant of blood was made between God and Abraham and bondage in Egypt is envisioned. Ishmael was born to Abraham because Sarai gave her servant Hagar to him. This caused bad blood between Hagar and Sarai. God appeared again and promised Abram and Sarai that they were going to have a child in direct fulfillment of the promise given earlier to Abram by God. Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah. The Abrahamic covenant was sealed with circumcision. Abraham was visited by angels and told of Sodom’s destruction. Abraham bargained with God over those who were living a righteous life in Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot escaped as Sodom and Gomorrah was being destroyed by God. He becomes the father of the Amorites and Moabites by his daughters. Abraham lied again about his relationship with his wife. God protected them even though Abraham lied. Finally, Isaac was born and Ishmael and Hagar were sent away. God called on Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac and Abraham showed his willingness to obey God’s request. Sarah died and Abraham bought a burial plot for her.

The Story Of Isaac: Gen. 24.1-26.35
Isaac is revealed as the real heir to the promise of God. A servant is sent to find a bride for Isaac by Abraham. Rebekah was found and brought back to marry Isaac. Jacob and Esau are born after the death of Abraham. Just like his father, Isaac lied about his wife.

The Story Of Jacob: Gen. 27.1-36.43
Jacob procured the birthright from Esau and deceived Jacob was looking for a wife, God confirmed the covenant made with Abraham in a dream. Jacob went to work for his uncle Laban in order to marry Rachel. At the conclusion of the seven years he was tricked into marrying Rachel’s sister, Leah. He was given Rachel as a wife but worked another seven years for Laban. At the expense of Laban, the flocks of Jacob increased.

His family also grew. Laban pursued Jacob after he left with family and flocks and they made a treaty. Jacob prepared to meet with his brother after many years. God and Jacob wrestled and Jacob’s name was changed to Israel. When the brothers met they reconciled. Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, was raped. Jacob abolished the idols from his camp. Rachel died.

The Story Of Joseph: Gen. 37.1-50.26
Jacob chose Joseph as his favorite son. Joseph shared his dreams about authority and incited jealousy between his brothers and himself. They sold him into slavery and lied to their father, telling him that Joseph was dead. Judah fathers twins by Tamar (see Matthew 1.3 where she is listed in the genealogy of Jesus). The wife of Potiphar tried to seduce Joseph and, for his honesty, he was thrown into jail. While there, Joseph met the Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker. He interpreted their dreams. When Pharaoh had a dream and no one could interpret it, Joseph was remembered. He interpreted the dream and became the second in command in Egypt. He helped to prepare for the coming famine. When food became scarce in Canaan, the brothers of Joseph came to buy food. They did not recognize him and he did not tell them who he was. On a return trip Joseph revealed himself and told them to bring his whole family to Egypt. Jacob discovered that Joseph was alive. The family settled in Goshen after meeting the Pharaoh. The blessing of Jacob was given to Joseph and his two sons. Jacob also blessed all twelve of his sons before he died. When Jacob died, Joseph had his father embalmed. Joseph reassured his brothers. Joseph died.

Question Genesis Answers
The book of Genesis answers the crucial question of who God’s people are and what we are about in the face of rival gods and values. It does this by providing us with the beginning of many beliefs. It discusses: creation, God, sin, salvation, the family, what the mission of believers is, judgment, mercy, grace, and hope.

• Find the pattern of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the garden story. Contrast humankind’s behavior of disobedience today. Are they the same or different?
• What laws, customs, and cultures influenced the behavior of the patriarchs? Does culture play a part in the way you govern ethics today?
• How can we reaffirm that we are God’s creation?

Helpful Resources

• Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary
• The New American Commentary Volume 1 – Genesis 1-11
• Genesis 1-11: Tales of the Earliest World
• The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17 (New International Commentary on the Old Testament)
• The NIV Application Commentary Genesis

An Brief Outline of Genesis Four Definite Events: 1.1-11.26

God Is A Speaking God: Gen. 1.1-2.3
The first chapter plus is often called an anti-polytheistic tract. (What a mouthful!) This means that it was told first and later recorded to help the Jews understand their belief in One God in a land of many gods. Read it by itself apart from the story that follows. In the truest sense this is not a story. It falls into interesting sections beginning with “And God said,” and ending with “evening and morning….” This repetition was to help the Jews memorize the material before it was recorded.

The Beginning And Fall Of Humanity: Gen. 2.4-5.32
God created Adam and made him a garden for a home. When Adam could not find a helper among the rest of creation, God created Eve and the first family began. Eve was presented with a temptation. She and Adam both ate the forbidden fruit. God pronounced judgment on Adam, Eve, and the serpent. The reader is presented with the truth that the sinful condition of the world cannot be blamed on God.

The Horror Of The Flood: Gen. 6.1-9.29
Horror stories abound in today’s movies. They have nothing on the horror story of the flood. One thing is different, instead of Freddie coming back again and again, the story of the flood had a happy ending. Humankind was destroyed by God because the malignancy of sin had infiltrated every aspect of life. In the midst of this world tragedy, Noah found grace from God. He built an ark for protection.

The Confusion Of Language: Gen. 10.1-11.26
Sin found its pinnacle at Babel. God stepped into history and confused the languages because of man’s continual desire to become like God.

Helpful Resources

• Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary
• The New American Commentary Volume 1 – Genesis 1-11
• Genesis 1-11: Tales of the Earliest World
• The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17 (New International Commentary on the Old Testament)
• The NIV Application Commentary Genesis

A Quick SnapShot of Genesis

Author: Traditionally Moses
Focus: Beginnings

Four Definite Events: 1.1-11.26

• God is a Speaking God: 1.1-2.3
• Beginning and Fall of Humanity: 2.4-5.32
• The Horror of the Flood: 6.1-9.29
• The Confusion of Language: 10.1-11.26

Four Specific People: 11.27-50.26

• The Story of Abraham: 11.27-23.20
• The Story of Isaac: 24.1-26.35
• The Story of Jacob: 27.1-36.43
• The Story of Joseph: 37.1-50.26

The Pentateuch
There are five books in the first larger section of the Bible called the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch is made up of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These five books are taken as one book by the Jews. The Pentateuch is ascribed to Moses as seen in Exodus 17.14; 24.3-7; and Deuteronomy 31.24f. Most likely Moses was responsible for choosing the material which is recorded therein, but not necessarily writing every word found in it.

Introduction To Genesis
Genesis stands at the beginning of the Bible with stories about Beginnings. The first word of Genesis in the Hebrew language is translated “In the beginning.” The name Genesis comes from the Greek translation of the Old Testament which is called the Septuagint (LXX).

The Book of Genesis has two major sections with numerous stories. Genesis was recorded to help Israel begin to understand who God really was and how he had successfully acted on behalf of his children.

Overview Of Genesis
The first eleven chapters of Genesis cover the events of Creation, Fall, Flood, and Nations. They are set in primeval history and their theological concern is to demonstrate the genesis of sin and its growth. Briefly, the events go like this: God creates the world, with Adam as the crown of creation. Adam corrupts his relationship with God through his disobedience and is expelled from the garden. His family grows and increasingly strays from relationship with God. Finally, only Noah finds favor with God. Noah builds an ark and escapes the catastrophe which batters the earth.

But the descendants of Noah violate their relationship, too, and pridefully strive to reach the heavens by their own means (the tower of Babel). Out of Ur, God summons a man, Abraham, whom he takes to a new land.

Genesis 11.27 begins the narrative section of the Old Testament. The story embarks with Abraham moving from Ur to Haran to Canaan. There are four important characters within these chapters: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. The author’s theological interest is demonstrated in these stories and centers around the faithfulness of God, the covenant; the circumstances of man as compared with the promises of God, and how they work together. At the end of Genesis, the family moves to Egypt.

Historical Background Of Genesis
One must allow Genesis 1-11 to be set in a time period of the undated past. The period from Adam to Abraham has no specific date attached. The Western mind tends to literalize the figures of the genealogies which leads to a date of only a few thousands ago. One must attempt to look along other lines for understanding these chapters. These ancient Near Eastern documents must be understood as their writers and readers understood them. The genealogies are probably not to be seen as a full chronology as much as the writer supplying a link to the past, from Adam to the flood and from the flood to Abraham, the father of the Hebrews.

The stories of the patriarchs in Genesis 12-50 fit unquestionably and authentically in the milieu of the second millennium. In Mesopotamia the second millennium began with the third dynasty of Ur (Ur III, c. 2060-1950). Ur III fell to the Amorites. From this period comes two law codes: the Sumerian (New Bible Dictionary, Third Edition. pp. 1137-1139) and the Akkadian, both of which antedate the code of Hammurabi. Mesopotamia during this period was in political confusion.

On the other hand, in sharp contrast, Egypt was remarkably stable. The twelfth dynasty’s Pharaohs undertook many ambitious projects designed to further national prosperity. In short, they enjoyed prosperity seldom matched in their long history.

Palestine was recovering from upheaval and confusion. This recovery occurred under a fresh cultural influence which spread over the whole of Palestine and Syria. Strong cities were built and urban life flourished. This developed as new groups of immigrants arrived and increasing numbers of semi-nomads settled down.

The patriarchs are portrayed as semi-nomads living in tents, wandering throughout Palestine. These stories are set in the Middle Bronze Age (1950- 1550 BC). Abraham to Joseph (Genesis 12-50) is grounded in a more detailed world history.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Why Should You Read The (Jewish Bible) Old Testament?
Here is some familiar ground that we covered previously. The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) provides the foundation for understanding the New Testament. It is often neglected or only read in part. Because of the prominence of the Law in the Jewish Bible, the idea of the grace of God is almost lost to its modern readers. It is often pointed out by readers of the Jewish Bible that God appears to be a God of wrath and judgment. However, some Old Testament characters present God as a God of love and justice. (Moses: Deut. 4-6; Jeremiah: Jer. 9.23-24).

The Jewish Bible (OT) provides the historical background which allows us to understand the message of the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament echo the Jewish Bible over 600 times. Jesus constantly appealed to its teachings as did Paul and other New Testament authors.

The history of the Old Testament is primarily found in the first seventeen books (Genesis-Esther). We must remember when reading this history that it is theological history. It was history told with a purpose. The history that is told is selected history to demonstrate the purpose of God to bring salvation to his creation. The whole Bible is often called salvation history because the God of the Bible is a missionary God.

What does it mean that God is a missionary God? Dallas Willard in his book Divine Conspiracy speaks about a “barcode faith.” Like barcodes on store purchases it doesn’t matter what is inside the package, the scanner just responds to the external barcode. Todd Hunter, has been known to say something like; “Christianity has become a mental assent to a set of beliefs around one theory of the atonement. You get a barcode and that assures you that you can go to heaven.” In short, nothing on the inside of a person has to change.

Marcus Borg in his book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time closes his book by talking about the familiar Christian phrase — believing in Jesus.

For those of us who grew up in the church, believing in Jesus was important. For me, what the phrase used to mean, in my childhood and into my early adulthood, was “believing things about Jesus.” To believe in Jesus meant to believe what the gospels and the church said about Jesus. That was easy when I was a child, and became more and more difficult as I grew older.

But I now see that believing in Jesus can (and does) mean something very different from that. The change is pointed to by the root meaning of the word believe. Believe did not originally mean believing a set of doctrines or teachings; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean “to give one’s heart to.” The “heart” is the self at its deepest level. “Believing, therefore, does not consist of giving one’s mental assent to something, but involves a much deeper level of one’s self. Believing in Jesus does not mean believing doctrines about him. Rather, it means to give one’s heart, one’s self at its deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit.

Believing in Jesus in the sense of giving one’s heart to Jesus is the movement from secondhand religion to firsthand religion, from having heard about Jesus with the hearing of the ear to being in relationship with the Spirit of Christ. ¹

God is not merely interested in our believing him, but that through our believing that we become the “salt” and “light” to his creation. He is about saving his world, putting it to rights. We learn best how to become a part of this “mission” by reading, understanding, and then living into HisStory.

Reflections

• What is your definition of the Bible?
• Where did you learn your definition?
• If the purpose of Scripture is to share God’s missionary activity in redeeming his creation, then why do you think that we spend so much time reading it for other purposes?
• What do you think about Dallas Williard’s “barcode faith” theory?

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

The Purpose Of The Scripture
When we come to the Bible, we come to God’s word, written to communicate God’s truth to us. One might define the Bible as God’s word written in the words of men. It tells a story and affirms that God has acted on behalf of man for his salvation and restoration. God certainly could have chosen any way he desired to communicate to us, but the fact remains that he chose a certain method to communicate his truth.

The result of that choice by God is the Bible, which we may hold in our hands, the contents of which we may hide in our hearts, and live out in our lives.

Scripture tells us that God has spoken to us, but what has he said? For one to be in a better position for the Holy Spirit to communicate effectively to him/her the truths of God, one must at least know the purpose of the Bible. If you are to begin to have a proper grasp of the meaning of Scripture, you must decide what its purpose is. To know the purpose of any object helps you define its use. Let’s use a hammer as an illustration. The primary purpose of a hammer is to drive nails. If it is used for that purpose, the intended results will be accomplished. If, however, it is used for other than its purpose, the result could be disastrous. Suppose for a moment that a child was given a hammer without being instructed concerning its use. You may find a hole in the wall instead of nails in the studs. The same is certainly true about Scripture. If you are to discern its meaning, you must know its purpose. If not, Scripture usually gets used in all kinds of ways that it was not intended to be used and holey walls become abundant. That brings us to its purpose.

The purpose of Scripture is to share the redemptive history of God. It is meant to convey a knowledge of God, who is known chiefly by what he has done and in the person in whom he was incarnate. The religious interest of the authors of Scripture control their selection of events and the importance attached to them. They often write for other ends than to simply impart knowledge. They may, on occasion, desire to move their readers to adopt a certain attitude toward life, i.e., religious, social, or political. On the other hand, they may wish to encourage them or calm their troubled minds. The characters of Scripture really lived life and had all the emotions with which we all contend.

Paul, writing to Timothy (2 Tim. 3.16-17), gives us the purpose of Scripture in a simple and precise manner. Paul tells us “…All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for…

• Teaching: which provides instruction for us
• Rebuking: which shows us our sin and summons us to repentance
• Correcting: which restores us to an upright position
• Training in Righteousness: which directs us to walk in the right paths as opposed to wrong paths.

The end result, … so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (v. 17). The word “equipped” is the same word that we find in Mark 1.19, there translated “mending” (RSV, in the NIV it is translated “preparing”), and in Ephesians 4.12 where it is translated “to equip.” In each of the contexts it means “to be put together.” In the vernacular, it means that God’s Word taught to us helps us “get our act together.” As we look at Scripture, we should realize that its purpose is to “mend” us and make us conformed to the image of Jesus (Rom. 8.29). If one uses Scripture with this purpose in mind, there will be much less chance of misusing it. The purpose of Scripture then is to help us understand the following:

• How God has acted on behalf of his children.
• How God relates to his creation, i.e., humankind.
• How man should relate to him as God.
• How man should relate to man.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Some Objections To Reading Scripture
Many believers have a silent objection to reading the overall story of Scripture, or even reading some of the smaller stories completely in favor of reading a few unattached verses. They will seldom vocalize this because they do not wish to bring disapproval on themselves. If they do vocalize an opinion, it usually falls into one of the following objections:

Objection #1: The Bible Is Too Big. Where Do I Begin?
They are right! The Bible is a big book. In my personal copy of The New International Version: Textbook Edition (2011), there are about 1250 pages of text to read—and small type at that. But this objection can be overcome. There is an ancient proverb which says, “The longest journey begins with a single step.” I have provided a guide for reading the whole story in God’s EPIC Adventure ¹ and a reading plan called “Reading the Bible Without Additives in 100 Days” to help overcome this objection. ² So, when you read the entire First Five Books of the Bible (Pentateuch), you may know how the story of God’s call and covenant with his people fits together.

Objection #2: The Bible Is A Dull And Boring Book!
I wrote a little booklet entitled: “It’s not the book that’s dull!” This tongue and cheek sense of humor was to get people to focus on some of the real reasons why they had the feeling that the Bible was dull and boring. Here are two reasons:

• The translation that most readers are reading may be difficult to read. So, when reading the Bible, secure a Bible translation which is up-to-date. If the translation you read is full of archaic language or nonsensical sentences, your tendency will be to see Scripture as just a dusty-old-history book written to a previous generation, and never read very much of it. My recommendation are the New International Version of the Bible (2011 Edition), or The Books of the Bible (a version of NIV without chapters and verses) or The Good News Bible. They are both good translations and easy to read.
• Another reason a person may find the book dull and uninteresting is because it is often read like a newspaper which has no value beyond the day of its reading. The Bible has had more influence on the world than any other book. One secular author has said that a person who has not read the Bible is an illiterate person. A strong saying! Think about it.

There are other objections, I am sure. These are the two which I encounter most often. My opinion is: if you learn to personally use materials like you are reading, with your family or your church community, and you read Scripture in an up-to-date translation, you will find that the Bible is not too big to conquer or too dull or boring to read. It will become alive and active in your life. Your job is to be impregnated with the sacred text so that you can imagine how you should respond to life situations and the improvise how to do respond. Remember: wholeness (as in reading the whole Story of Scripture) heals while fragmentation injuries!

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

The Importance Of Knowing
It has been my experience as a pastor and college instructor to note that many Christians do not read the Bible as a story. Therein lies the problem! They read their favorite stories or verses. They sometimes read in Psalms or Proverbs for devotions. While this style of reading is better than no reading, it still falls short of being helpful in understanding what God is saying and doing in the Jewish Bible. Each year many Christians make a New Year’s resolve to read the Bible through. They jet through Genesis, take an excursion through Exodus and have their last gasp in Leviticus. Leviticus has been the burial place of many New Year’s resolutions.

The Old Testament remains the book you always wanted to read and understand, but never did.

In his book Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, (0226327345) Will Herberg notes the following:

In the five years from 1948 to 1953, the distribution of Scripture in the United States increased 140 percent reaching an all time high of 9,726,391 volumes a year. People were apparently buying and distributing the Bible at an unprecedented rate. Furthermore, over four-fifths of adult Americans said they believed ‘the Bible to be the revealed word of God’ rather than ‘a great piece of literature’. Yet when these same Americans were asked to give the ‘names of the first four books of the New Testament of the Bible, that is the first four gospels’, 53 percent could not name one. (35 percent could name all four; 4 percent could name three; 4 percent could name two; 1 percent could name one.) The Bible can hardly be said to have entered the thought of Americans quite as much as their views on its divine inspiration and their eagerness to buy and distribute it might suggest.” ¹

I would suggest that Mr. Herberg’s analysis has not changed, even in the past fifty years. I have noted the same lack of knowledge of the Bible among thousands of believers. People who choose to read and study Scripture really want to know how Scripture fits together. They want some basic grid through which they can read it. As we previously suggested, readers certainly know some of the more familiar stories, i.e., Noah, Moses, David, etc. Sunday schools have done a good job of teaching these great stories. What they do not understand is how the Story of Scripture fits together. ²

In the December 1979 issue of Christianity Today the CT-Gallup Poll is overviewed. ³

Their findings are not unlike the findings some twenty years before. This poll was conducted with those 18 years old and over ⁴.

Of those polled in the general public, the following results were noted:

• Only eleven percent read the Bible every day compared to ten percent who read it weekly and seven percent monthly. Thirty-seven million adults never read the Bible.
• Fewer than three in ten correctly identified, “Ye must be born again,” as the words of Jesus to Nicodemus.
• Fewer than half (forty-two percent) could name at least five of the Ten Commandments ⁵).
• The findings among those who call themselves Evangelicals were not sufficiently different.
• Only six in ten could correctly identify, “Ye must be born again,” as the words of Jesus to Nicodemus.
• Only half could name five of the Ten Commandments ⁶.

In 1999-2000 American Bible Society distributed 4,494,991 Bibles, 11,713, 519 New Testaments, and 85,945,643 Bible portions and selections. ABS is one of the largest Bible distributors in the world. The International Bible Society, which is the owner of the New International Version, (now called Biblica) distributed 2,581,602 Bibles, and 11,371,473 Bible portions in 2001. These are only two distributors. This does not count all the publishing companies in the U.S. The point is there is a continual increase in the availability of Bibles, while at the same time there appears to be no increase in Bible literacy.

In the Fall of 2010 American Bible Society as for prayer for the United States in relationship to this issue:

Please pray for the Bible crisis here in our own country. Studies show that people may have a Bible on the shelf but are not reading it. This is contributing to a general lack of knowledge of God’s Word and a decline in moral values. ⁷

George Barna’s report “Six Megathemes Emerge from Barna Group Research in 2010” demonstrates the same conclusion:

The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
What used to be basic, universally-known truths about Christianity are now unknown mysteries to a large and growing share of Americans–especially young adults. For instance, Barna Group studies in 2010 showed that while most people regard Easter as a religious holiday, only a minority of adults associate Easter with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Other examples include the finding that few adults believe that their faith is meant to be the focal point of their life or to be integrated into every aspect of their existence. Further, a growing majority believe the Holy Spirit is a symbol of God’s presence or power, but not a living entity. As the two younger generations (Busters and Mosaics) ascend to numerical and positional supremacy in churches across the nation, the data suggest that biblical literacy is likely to decline significantly. The theological free-for-all that is encroaching in Protestant churches nationwide suggests the coming decade will be a time of unparalleled theological diversity and inconsistency. ⁸

Thus, the problem that needs to be addressed is to help you and others as readers of Scripture to fit the pieces of Scripture, in this case the Pentateuch, together in order to have a reliable grid through which you can read the Pentateuch completely delighting in what God has done and continues to do.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Two Ways To Read Scripture
There are at least two ways the Bible can be read by you as a reader. You can read Scripture as a book of past events, or you may read it looking for a present communication from God for your life.

If you should choose to read Scripture as past events, you will see the centuries from which the inheritance of the Western religious world came. You will encounter the enthralling stories of the ancient world, which bordered the Mediterranean Sea. You will have a glimpse of the rise and fall of many empires. All these events are told in action-packed narratives. You may observe, as you plunder through the pages, the roots of one nation emerging into world dominance, called by her God, and covenanted to her God to provide for humankind a redeemer. You might investigate some notes of comparison: Israel leaves Egypt for religious freedom—Englishmen left England for religious freedom; The Canaanites and the invading Hebrews—the Indians and the invading New Americans. You may hear the voice of the prophets calling Israel to honor the covenant or reap the consequences, as you hear the modern preachers calling for repentance. But, alas, it remains ancient and jumbled. Our modern mind notes how dislocated the material appears. The ordering of the books both Old and New Testament are not conducive to reading the storyline. The addition of chapters and verses cause us to pause at the wrong time in a story and slows down our reading to a snail’s pace. Our eye gladly stops reading these reflections and the book is put down, often picked again in the next day or so, but the same frustrations result. Those that have grown to read the fragments have developed a habit of reading that it’s hard for them to get their head around the idea that their just may be a better way of reading.

If, on the other hand, you read it looking for a present communication from God, you may miss the richness and importance of how God has dealt with his children from the beginning of time, thus knowing how he might deal with your community of faith or you in a present life situation. If you just dip in and out of the sacred text hoping that something will inspire you for the day, and while that may happen, there really is a better way of consuming Scripture. Reading whole stories at one sitting is surely better than reading a disconnected set of verses. Well, in my opinion, it is.

It should be said, however, that the first way noted above is much more apt to get you closer to hearing the real God of Scripture than the last way. This is not to say that one should abandon the latter way of engaging Scripture, but rather minimize it in favor of hearing and knowing what God originally said to the first hearers/readers, while wondering and asking what the author might have intended for his/her readers to understand. Why? Because whatever God said through the authors then, he is still saying today. The message does not change, it’s just often allusive when we read in a fragmented way.

The First Five Books [The Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy)]

Why Should You Read The Jewish Bible (Old Testament)?
The following series of posts cover the First Five Books of the Bible, often called the Pentateuch or the Torah. It will introduce the readers to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The World’s Best Seller
The Bible is heralded as the world’s all time best-seller. Most likely the most printed book but may be the least read book, at least the Old Testament portion. Readers tend to read their favorite parts but not the whole unless it is read as part of a reading program which chops it up into daily fragments that often doesn’t help the reader get the sense of the whole narrative. It has been translated into over a thousand different languages. Over ninety-five percent of the world’s population has some portion of Scripture, which is available to them to read. It is a collection of books whose message has changed lives over the centuries. It is important to read it, but it is also difficult to read because it comes from a different time and different culture. To help us understand the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), we must have some basic information to assist us.

The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) provides the foundation for understanding the New Testament. As suggested above, it is often neglected or only read in part. Because of the prominence of the Law in the Jewish Bible (Old Testament), the idea of the grace of God in the Jewish Bible is almost, if not completely, lost to its modern readers. It is often pointed out by readers of the Jewish Bible that God appears to be a God of wrath and judgment. However, some Jewish Bible characters present God as a God of love and justice. (Moses: Deut. 4.1-6.25; Jeremiah: Jer. 9.23-24). And after all, God is the main character of all of Scripture including the Jewish Bible.

An often overlooked point is that the Jewish Bible provides the historical background that allows us to understand the message of the New Testament. The authors of the New Testament echoes the Jewish Bible over 600 times. Jesus constantly appealed to its teachings, as did Paul and other New Testament authors. Without understand its storyline, the New Testament is out of the grasp of the biblical reader.

The history of the Jewish Bible is primarily found in the first seventeen books (Genesis-Esther). We must remember when reading this history that it is theological history with a missional point. It was history told with a purpose. The history that is told is selected history to demonstrate the purpose of God to bring salvation for his creation. The whole Bible is often called salvation history because the God of the Bible is a missionary. God’s overall purpose is to restore his original creation which the story arch of the Old Testament and New Testament: from creation to new creation.

The early church had only one Bible, although not in the form of a book as we have today. The Jewish Bible (Old Testament) was the Bible of Jesus and the Apostles as well as the church of Paul’s day. This indicates to me that it is needful, if not essential, that the church today knows something more than it already does about the Jewish Bible. The roots of Christianity are to be found in the Jewish Bible. It has been and continues to be my experience that the church does not understand very much about the message of the Jewish Bible.

Wright on Hell

Wright on Hell & Bell

Surprised by Hope (Paperback)

Surprised by Hope (Kindle)

The Story Before the Story is a straight forward presentation, which provides the reader of Scripture a simple but compelling introduction to reading Scripture as a story. This book interacts with four important concepts: foundationalism, fragmentation, story, and kingdom. Reading with a foundationalism concept without knowing it leads to a reduction of the text into principles, which produces patchwork followers of Jesus. The author believes that reading fragmentively produces fragmented lives in the followers of Jesus. Reading Scripture as a story is the antidote to foundationalism and fragmentation. Kingdom theology is the glue for the reader that holds the story together. This book is an invitation to read Scripture with both eyes open.

We have some interesting ideas about life. Most of them tied to Greek philosophy. In the church among follower of Jesus, we have tied our way of thinking, reflecting, and living around more Greek philosophy than Biblical theology. Here’s a recent presentation that deals with some of those issues.

Enjoy!

Opens September 23, 2011 at Select Theaters

Gerard Butler, Michelle Monaghan, Kathy Baker, Michael Shannon, Souleymane Sy Savane, Madeline Carroll

In this inspirational true story, Machine Gun Preacher is about Sam Childers, a former drug-dealing criminal who undergoes an astonishing transformation and finds an unexpected calling as the savior of hundreds of kidnapped and orphaned children.

Yesterday, I got an up close look at goats when the Westside Goat Girl brought a small herd of goats, fifteen of them, to trim back some of the blackberry bushes in my back yard. Here are some things that I saw while goatherding in the suburbs.

First, there was one goat who was clearly the leader of the group. Within three hours he had found a small break in the fence and led all the goats out of the back yard and into the neighbors’ yards and at one point led them all up the street away from my house. My neighbor banged on my front door and when I got outside what I saw was a bit humorous, my neighbors had turned into instant goatherders with brooms, rakes, and anything they could find to help corral this feisty group of goats. What struck me as I joined the fray was that the lead goat took the whole group from a perfectly abundant food supply to something that he may have thought was better just over the fence. I thought of how many times I have seen the “goats” in the church rally around a “goat” who led them away from an abundant supply of nourishment to something that was thought to be much more “nourishing” or shall I say thought to be “more spiritual.” And, like the goats from my back yard, just followed along and then were lost to find their way back, even with a good many folks trying to show them the way.

A second thing that I noticed was that when the “goat girl” showed up, (I had called her to let her know her goats were now free ranging) she began to call out to the goats by their names as she got out of her truck and by the sound of her voice and bit of racket from a bucket, the goats who just a few minutes before were all over the place began to gather around her and then followed her back into the back yard to the supply of food they had been brought there to consume. We’ve all heard it before, “sheep know the shepherd’s voice.” That was clearly evident. Approximately 8-10 neighbors, including myself, had tried to corral them and in less than five minutes she had them back safe and sound in their fold. I thought how wonderful it would be in the church if we actually believed that we can understand the shepherd and stop all the running hither and thither following the latest “goat” fad.

A third thing that I saw was one of the makeshift goatherders from the neighborhood trying to keep the herd from continuing up the road caught one of the goats by his horns and tried to cause the goat to have a change of direction. That didn’t work as the goat lowered his head and put on the breaks from his front legs. He was going to go where all the other goats were going and this good Samaritan was not going to change his mind. But, when the shepherd called him by name, he was one of the first ones to fall in line and got back to his lush pasture. What if we as followers of the good shepherd could lay aside our desires to follow the old goats of our lives and in the moment of hearing the shepherd’s voice, we lost our desire to be stubborn and quickly returned to the safety of the fold for the nourishment that the shepherd prepares for us.

Well, all in all it was quite an experience.

Eye halve a spelling checker
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques for my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it to say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
It’s rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
Eye am shore your pleased two no
It’s letter perfect awl the weigh
My checker tolled me sew.

Margo Roark.
The English Spelling Society

http://bit.ly/qe04RZ

Sunday, as I sat through a service at the local community of faith that my family attends, I had the following thoughts.

We are so impregnated with individualism and consumerism. But, unlike a pregnant woman, we don’t realize it. Individualism and consumerism affects the olders and the youngers. It is not a respecter of persons. But, it still surprises me.

In Sunday’s service, the speaker was ill and it was a struggle for him to communicate. What I was struck by was his individualism and consumerism. He first read Psalm 130. With the lens of individualism and the need to consume, it looks like this Psalm is a personal cry for personal help. But, a more thorough reading might suggest that this was not about the Psalmist crying out for his own personal relief, but for the relief of the nation of Israel, the community of God, (church) in the Old Testament because of their sins. Our speaker personalized the sacred text and in doing so made it appear for his listeners that it was about his own and their own personal needs. Is it wrong to cry out to God when in need? No! But, it might be wrongheaded to use this text to support such a cry.

Next, we then moved with no segue to the story of Bartimaeus. The essence of the presentation was centered around the request of Bartimaeus to be healed. Reading with individualistic, consumerism eyes, we often put ourselves in the place of Bartimaeus as he asked for healing. But, what might Jesus be doing in this story and what might Mark mean as he tells this story? Jews, with impediments like blindness, being deaf and dumb, hemorrhaging, being crippled, were excluded from full membership of the community. When Jesus healed them, it was not about meeting a need to be consumed by the individual. It was about being fully restored to the people of God. Tom Wright suggests: “The effect of these cures, therefore, was not merely to bring physical healing; not merely to give humans, within a far less individualistic society than our modern western one, a renewed sense of community membership, but to reconstitute those healed as members of the people of Israel’s god. (Jesus and the Victory of God. 192).

In the sharing time, I was struck by one comment that suggested that Bartimaeus got his identity by being blind as he was called “blind Bartimaeus,” in the KJV of the text, but that translation has not been held over in more current versions where he is referred to as “a blind beggar.” Surely, one may choose to see what one wants to see in a text, rightly or wrongly, but are we then free to submit our findings to a community already infected with individualism and consumerism without first, at least, identifying what Jesus may have been doing or Mark may have been teaching?

So, I wrote my friend a short message inquiring about the following:

What part of what you did yesterday fed consumerism among those gathered?

What did God get out of our time together? It’s really about him and not about us.

What if the way we go about receiving from God is backwards?

What if the purpose of our gatherings is not about what we desire to receive but about God desiring us?

Remember, he was already there when we arrived and remained after we left. What was he looking forward to as we gathered? Another time of sitting around asking that he meet our needs, or a time in which we simply worshiped him without any expectation of receiving anything, but the pure pleasure of worshiping him.

I only lived under my dad’s direct influence for eighteen years and only twenty-seven years in total before he passed on. I have lived longer without his physical presence (almost forty years) than I was privileged to live with his physical presence. Out of the many things he taught me three come to mind today:

First, he taught me to be truthful by allowing me to experience the consequences of untruthfulness. I skipped school one day and told him I had attended. I was expelled by the school for three days because he turned me in. I thought I was going to have a small vacation from school. But, my dad had talked my boss into putting me to work for those three days without any pay for the work I did. It was a vivid lesson.

Second, he taught me the value of working for yourself instead of the other guy. In his seventy-seven year life, he worked for the other guy for a total of six months.

Three, the power of working hard and taking vacations was important. He was a barber for most of his life and an entrepreneur and owned several other businesses. In my teenage years, he took a two week vacation every summer. He had to shut down his one-man barber shop for those two weeks, which meant there was no income. So, he worked hard the other fifty weeks to have a vacation the two weeks.

My dad was a wonderful father. I think of him often and miss him to this day.

What life lessons did your dad teach you?

What if church used Open Space Technology on occasion? The following are its four basic concepts:

• Whoever comes/is here are the right people
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
• Whenever it’s over, it’s over

I might add, everyone gets an opportunity to speak. What would that look like? Maybe we should ask Paul, he wrote about it somewhere!

googling God’s Will: Why Keep Searching For It When It’s Not Lost?
Winn Griffin
Harmon Press (January 7, 2011)

Years ago when I was first told that God loved me and had a wonderful plan for my life I believed it. I still do. But in recent years I have come to the conclusion that His plan for my life is not as elusive as I once thought. Dr. Winn Griffin, in his succinct little book, Googling God’s Will, agrees. While acknowledging an overabundance of books and websites devoted to the subject of seeking God’s will, he feels the need to offer his own insightful view using contemporary metaphors like Google, GPS systems, and power steering in an attempt to remove what he considers unnecessary barriers that muddy the water and prevent us from resting in God’s will.

Although I would have never phrased it this way, I used to suspect that God was playing some sort of cosmic hide-and-seek game with me. It was like he had this perfect will for my life but wasn’t about to tell me what it was, preferring to hide it from me, forcing me to search for it by trial-but-mostly-error fashion. Some days I would think I was warm but mostly I felt cold. I would wonder why it was so hard to know what God expected from me. These days that seems like a silly notion, and the way I have just phrased it to you it probably sounds silly to you, too. So, if it is silly, why do so many of us practice “seeking” God’s will in that way?

A particular insight Dr. Griffin helped with is that the worldview of the Bible (Middle Eastern) and ours (Western Enlightenment) are markedly different. If we are to understand the Bible’s intended message, we need to understand the context in which it was written. For example, one of the marks of “Enlightened” thinking is its emphasis on individualism, a concept that would have seemed strange to the Middle Eastern mind that thought more in terms of community than individuality, and pronouns we often read as personal are, in fact, collective. So, when we read “you” in the Bible it often, if not usually, means “you all.” Griffin writes, “When it comes to God’s will, we are often looking for answers in all the wrong places. We [Westerners] want to know what God’s will is for our individual life. What we often get as an answer by our teachers is a bandage, but the sore never heals, because we have never treated the root cause of our problem. God appears to act and guide from a community base than an individual base.… God’s will can be as simple as understanding our need for belonging … It may be said that God’s will for us is to be intimate with him … for the sake of others.”

Dr. Griffin’s book, though concise (just 100 pages), is one of those books that takes a while to read. It’s like a nutrient rich meal, a little goes a long way—it takes time to digest. But for me that is the mark of a really good book.

Winn loves spending time with his family, collecting baseball cards, watching movies, eating banana sandwiches (now with Splenda), traveling, reading mystery stories, and watching sports. He has received Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and two Doctor of Ministry degrees: the first was in Biblical Studies; the second at George Fox University, Portland, OR, in Leadership in the Emerging Culture. He serves as an adjunct professor at Bakke Graduate University, Seattle, WA, and he is the author of God’s EPIC Adventure: Changing the Culture by the Story We Live and Tell (Harmon Press: 2007).

Share something that you learned yesterday. Notice something today.

Technology is wonderful. Yesterday, I watched as my daughter, Jeramie Joy, who has a heart pace maker, put a pad over the area where the pace maker is and pressed a button to a monitor which collected information form the devise inside her chest and then automatically dialed her cardiologist and downloaded the information to his computer. Amazing!

Another Sunday has come and gone in which I spent a short period of time inside a building where we followed a pattern that has come to be called church. We gather. We drink coffee and have surface conversation. We sing. We hear announcements. We listen or not to someone teach/preach. We are invited to ask God into our broken lives or we are beckoned to an altar to ask forgiveness of our sins. We drop by a glass with wine or juice and broken crackers and dip and eat or small shot glasses reminiscent of a bar are passed around with juice or wine and we call it communion. Yesterday as I left this weekly routine, I asked myself the same question that the song title asks: “Is that all there is?” Surely, the answer has to be no!

One wonders when we will change our paradigm. When will we discover that Sunday is the day of the week that should remind us that in Jesus we live in a new creation as new human beings with the assignment of demonstrating that new creation to others around us. Tom Wight asked in his recent book, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today, the following question: “What are you going to do this Sunday that is creative, that brings justice and mercy, that offers healing and hope” (170). One has to wonder that instead of living to turn the world right side up, we continue to live in the world thinking its thoughts and practicing its actions. One wonders what would occur if we took Wright’s question seriously? One wonders why we are always inviting God to do something when he is working already nonstop? One wonders when we will comprehend that he is inviting us into what he is doing, inviting us into his unbroken world instead of us inviting him into our broken world. So, what are you going to do next Sunday that brings justice, mercy, healing and hope to your neck of the woods?

In the video below according to Seth Godin, megachurch is a factory. He also suggests that most leaders are managers and that a leader says what she/he believes and see who follows. He also think that if you help folks find what they want to do and then get out of the way and let them do it, success will follow.

It’s well worth the 7:05 run time.

I originally wrote this blog post May 28, 2003 and thought it would be fun to post it again.

Today while visiting a mall I took a moment to step into the “Christian Bookstore.” The store is about one-third books and two-thirds “Jesus Junk.” I guess to be authentic it should be called the “Christian Book and Jesus Junk Store.” In the book that I mention below there are two bookstores called “Christian Supply.” If you are a pastor I guess your can go there when you supply of Christians is running out and pick up some more.

When I decided to leave, I stopped and picked my very own copy of the newest and latest “Christian Business Directory.” The executive director thought it keen to say that this book had been published as a resource “for you to know where the Christians are in the marketplace and how you can find them.” And that by looking at the book you would get a “complete picture of the whole body of Christ working together for the sake of the Gospel.” Just what we need another Christian ghetto. Maybe we should put out an “UnChristian Yellow Pages” that doesn’t allow Christians to advertise therein so we can know who the real target of the church is.

I had to force my finger from entering my throat. My left hand was overworked from holding on to my right hand. I wasn’t even Biblical (whoa, did I really say that?) because in this case my left hand knew exactly what my right hand was doing.

The most fun was in the list of churches that managed to get listed in the directory. My son and I had a great time reading them. He gave me some of the ideas below to add to my own which appear inside the parenthesis.

We started out with the Anglicans but only one made the cut. Next came the Assembly of God (if only all their assemblies were of God). The Baptist were next: General Baptist Conference; Baptist American; Baptist Conservative; Baptist Fundamental Independent (there was only one of those); Baptist General; Baptist General Conference; Baptist Independent (I guess they don’t associate with the other Baptist); Baptist Reformed (this could only mean that all the other Baptist before were un-reformed); Baptist Regular (what? all the others must have been irregular); Baptist Southern (I guess if we can have Southern Fried Chicken in the Northwest we can have a brand of Baptist that are southern). Wow, I made it through the Baptist. Then there was Bible Missionary (you must own a Bible to be missionary?).

Next was Christian (I concluded that none of the other churches were Christian because this group was listed separately). Then came the Christian & Missionary Alliance; Christian Disciples of Christ (since disciples of Christ should be Christian can you have an unChristinan Disciples of Christ) and Christian Reformed (I seem to recall, yes there it is right above, something called the Christian Church; I concluded that that group must really be the unreformed Christians). Next listed was the Church of Christ and the next one really was funny to me, it was the Christ of Christ United, but it was listed separate from the Church of Christ (can that really be?). We moved on to the Church of God (wow! God finally made it into the name again) and the Church of God Anderson IN and the Church of God Cleveland TN (they are surely a long way from home on Sundays). Then, we have the Church of God in Christ (I wondered why the Holy Spirit didn’t make the cut). Next, we have the listing called Community (one could possibly conclude that none of the other churches listed were communities). Next, the Covenant and Evangelical Covenant were listed (I guess the former is not really an Evangelical church). Now in the “Es” we have the Evangelical Free (Free from what I thought). The next category was only one church: Family Fellowship (does that mean that you are only family if you attend there?).

We then have the Fellowship of Christian Association (do they really only fellowship with other Christians, no wonder the world is going to hell in a hand basket). Then we have the Foursquare Gospel (I have always considered that a really funny name, it always makes me think that the gospel is really square. Could you have a three or two square gospel?). Next were the Friends (I surmised that all the other churches probably didn’t have any friends because they were all in this place). The next one listed was Full Gospel (no part gospels will do and I guess that Paul might not fit there either). As if Full Gospel was not enough we have the Full Gospel Pentecostal (a kinda of Gospel and Acts thingy?). I thought we had left the Baptist (how many more can there be?) when I encountered the Fundamental Independent Baptist (only one, I guess that’s why they are independent, I guess we could call them the FIBs for short).

Then we have the General Assembly of Regular Baptist (can you be a Regular Baptist and not be a part of the General Assembly or does this mean there are irregular Baptist in all the other Baptist churches?). Next was the Independent (of course they are listed independent of all of the other churches as their name implies). But wait, we also have the Independent Fundamental Christian Association (an association of one, how strange). Then we have the Inter-Denominational churches (they can’t figure who they are a part of so they are listed as being in the middle until they grow up and discover which denomination they side with). Next were the Lutherans; the Lutheran (ELCA) [only those inside would know what ELCA would stand for]; and the Lutheran Missouri Synod (only one, there must be more in the home state of Missouri, don’t you think?). Then we have the Mennonite Brethren (Is this an all male church?); Messianic (are they the really anointed ones), and Methodist Free (maybe you can go to this church and the Evangelical Free church and it doesn’t cost anything). Next listed: Methodist United (but as above these United Methodist are listed separately). Then Methodist of North American was listed (I wondered if they were in South America if they would still call themselves the Methodist of North America, probably so!). Just when I thought it was safe and there were no more Baptist, up popped the Missionary Baptist (they must not be very missionary because there was only one of them listed). The next category was Missionary Church (I guess these folks decided not to be Baptist); and then the Nazarenes (I didn’t get how a group of natives from Nazareth would have a church in the Northwest). It was there on the page Non-Denominational Bible churches and then Non-Denominational churches (I guess that you don’t have to have a Bible to get into the second kind). I couldn’t believe my eyes: North American Baptist (how many more of these brothers and sisters are there?).

The Open Bible churches were next (do you think that they positioned themselves this way because the Bible is not opened in so many other churches?). The next listed group was Pentecostal (I guess they don’t consider the Assembly of God or Foursquare their Pentecostal brothers and sisters!). Right behind them and differentiated from them was the Pentecostal/Full Gospel (guess the other group only has part of the Gospel). The Presbyterian, Presbyterian Church USA and the Presbyterian Orthodox were next (the first group must be operating in the USA without permission while the second one must have permission while the last group suggest that neither of the other Presbyterians are orthodox). Next were the Salvation Army (do you have to enlist to go here?) and the Seventh Day Adventist (could you be a Seventh Day Adventist and subvert their dominate paradigm and go to their church on Friday or maybe Sunday. (I guess that would make you a Sixth Day Adventist or a First Day Adventist). Finally, the United Methodist (again united but listed separately, what are they thinking?).

Well that was the end of the list and not to soon for me. However, don’t think that because your church is not listed above that it’s name or group is any better off. You probably can’t do any worse! Just remember, the church names of today will be the fodder for twit tomorrow. I’m glad God has a sense of humor about all this name stuff. If he doesn’t we are in some deep stuff! So what’s in a name? Sometimes som’um and sometimes nuttin’! What’s in your church name?

What are some of the names of churches that seem strange to you?