Humanity. Church. Truth.

And in the Learning Community that I've been part of this week, our fourth and final session: Scripture.

Our theologian this time around was Stan Grenz, and our practitioner: Brian McLaren.

In a very unexpected but delightful way, these two men switched roles in a sort of way.  After Brian gave us a brief overview of how scripture is handled differently by those from opposite ends of the theological spectrum (and lead us in some amazing ancient common prayers), Stan came up and told us two stories: his own personal story growing up, and then the story of Jesus in Mark 10:32-45.

Rather than lead us in a complicated and heated discussion on how our epistemologies affect the way we interpret and interface with scripture, Brian and Stan were "modeling" a relationally oriented hermeneutic, helping us to tie Stan's personal story about growing up with Jesus' story and interaction with James and John, with each of our own stories and the world we live in today.

Using our birth months as an easy way to pose four different questions to us, we were asked to respond to the following:

Winter people: what is this passage saying about you?

Spring people: what is this passage saying about our communities?

Summer people: what is this passage saying about foreign policy?

Fall people: what is this passage saying about the interpretation of scripture?

The responses and discussion they stimulated were very interesting.  I admit, part of me wanted to be a little more intellectually stimulated, but you know what? I came away agreeing that this was probably a very effective way to communicate their heart  and message to the 120 some people in attendance.

Oh! And thanks to Keith Seckel (a regular participant here at Paradoxology), here is Brian McLaren's PowerPoint from this morning (you're the MAN, Keith!):

Download McLaren_bibleec.ppt