Tonight’s topic for our Bible study on Google Hangouts comes from the parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matt. 13:24-43). To me, this passage is as interesting for the other passages it evokes as it is for what it says. And like many parables, it seems to raise as many questions as it answers….
Our first try didn’t go that well. I spent a couple of hours talking to folks about technical issues. You ned to have Google hangouts working. If you want I can test it with you sometime before the study. This coming week we’ll be studying for proper 11A, and we have selected Isaiah 44:6-8, Psalm…
My wife Jody and I will be leading a Monday night Bible study via Google Hangouts. Everyone is invited. Jody already posted about it, and her post includes the initial question and the scriptures for tonight. We thought about many approaches to choosing our texts, and we finally settled on using the current readings from…
Anyone who has made a serious effort to teach from the Gospel of John has likely experienced the difficulty of giving people a clear picture of the connections between various parts of the book, not to mention the frequent allusions to passages in the Hebrew scriptures. One can easily run out of fingers to “hold…
Some time ago I was invited to answer questions from a group of wonderful young people. They were invited to ask me any question they wanted. On about the third question, as they were discussing the background between them, I had my finger in a place in my Bible where I was going to start…
No, not the authors of the biblical text, though that’s an interesting topic. I’m talking about disagreeing with a study guide author, in this case a study guide author I chose both to publish and then to use in my Sunday School class. One class member was surprised—not shocked, annoyed, or disturbed, but just surprised—that…
Reading Chris Seitz on the Biblical Crisis in the Homosexuality Debates (by Alastair Roberts) reminded me of three things I already believed: It is very dangerous to try to develop hermeneutics while wrapped up in a debate on a particular topic. The best test of one’s hermeneutics is to change the subject. Does it still…
I thought I’d write just a few reflections on our class today. In general the class was less interested in authorship than either I or the author of the study guide were. We had folks using the Wesley study Bible and the CEB Study Bible, both of which brush past the authorship issue. While I…
While I was off teaching Revelation elsewhere, my Sunday School class at First United Methodist Church of Pensacola studied from Harvey Brown’s new book Forgiveness: Finding Freedom from Your Past. Harvey’s book is just 40 pages (it’s in our Topical Line Drives series, and that’s the limit), and we discovered just how many questions can…
Rev. Jeremiah Gibbs provides an interesting answer. I tend to be more restrictive in my use of the term “scholar.” I use it to describe those who do research and writing that is read and used by other scholars. On that basis, I regard myself not as a scholar, though I would attempt to do…
