Thanks for the great discussion the other night on the Bible. I thought you all had a lot of good things to say about it. I was especially glad to see that we're all pretty much on the same page in regards to approaching the Bible with humility, being willing to question our assumptions, and being open to letting the Bible question and challenge us as well, without trying to tame or explain away all the difficult things in the Bible. As both Matt and Steve pointed out, there are certain things that we hold to as our essentials, those things that define us as Christ followers that we can't always be questioning. On some of those things we come to a point of simply taking that leap of faith and saying, "Even without absolute certainty I choose to believe and live accordingly." However I'm also glad that we were all sensitive to people who will still struggle and question even our essentials, and want to make room for those discussions as well. I especially appreciated what Matt and Josh both said about needing to really listen to people who look at the Bible through completely different lenses than we do - e.g. atheists, agnostics, etc. - and really respecting their opinions, learning from them, and engaging them in constructive dialogue.
So thanks for a good talk. If anyone has further thoughts about what we talked about the other night, feel free to post them here. And remember, next Vision Team Meeting we'll be brainstorming together with Monaca's help all of our values, those top things our ideal church
has to have. And then I'll take what we come up with and rework our values statements to incorporate all of our shared ideas.
Oh, and don't forget that at Core Gathering this coming Saturday we'll be having a time of sharing "God Things" which could be testimonies or prayer requests, or it could be a song or poem or reading or scripture that is meaningful to you that you want to share with the group. So please give it some thought and come prepared with something to share.