The Bible, You and Us.
Amazing Grace is undergoing an exploration to learn of attitudes
about
Scripture in our
Congregation.
One might wonder what the point would be to such an endeavor. We’re a Christian
church, Christians believes the Bible to be the word of God, why complicate the
matter by asking about attitudes? Besides, people get tired of filling out
surveys.
But when spending time looking at the Bible, it doesn’t take long to realize
that believing Scripture is one thing, but putting into practice this belief in
the word of God is quite another. Consider the following four passages. All are
from the Bible, yet there are varying ways these passages could be read and put
into practice:
+"If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off
and throw it away; Matthew 18:8
+Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a sabbath
of solemn rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall
be put to death. Exodus 31:15
+
Come to me, all you that are weary and
are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28
+…women should dress themselves modestly and decently in
suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or
expensive clothes, I Timothy 2:9
+Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the
life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6
The Bible is:
fascinating, challenging, comforting, confusing, inspiring, among many other
things. Contrary to the some premature conclusions I reached as a teenager, the
Bible is anything but boring. Yet experiences are varied: Some among us have
been hurt by what has been done by others in the name of following the Bible.
Others grew up without any exposure to the Bible now find refuge in the comfort
it brings. Some people are embarrassed to admit about what they don’t know about
the Bible, others are grateful for loving grand-parents and Sunday school
teachers who conveyed a love of scripture to them. Even though there are
manifold approaches and impressions of scripture in our community, it is rare
that a congregation ever takes a systematic solicitation of feedback on the
subject of scripture. Instead, we operate on a handful of collective assumptions
that may or may not be accurate.
I invite you to
please complete a “Book of Faith Assessment”. It can be taken anonymously, takes
just a little more than five minutes, and is open and non-judgmental in it’s
framing of the questions. Copies of the assessment are available in the narthex,
as is a box to place them once completed. We will share some general statistics
of what we learned from the assessments in the coming weeks.
Grace and Peace,