As you can see, if you pay any attention to the posting dates, this little blog has not lived up to its initial promise. However, an opportunity has appeared to add some material.
A local church here is taking its people through The Truth Project, a small-group series on Christian Worldview by Focus on the Family. It’s hosted/taught by Del Tackett, whose formative influences in this area include the likes of David Noebel (of Summit Ministries fame) and Francis Schaeffer. I and a number of my congregants have been graciously permitted to tag along, and we’re all enjoying it thus far. We’re only a week into it, so my initial impressions may be off, but thus far it looks to be taking a very academic, intellectual/doctrinal approach; very ‘heady,’ but with a strong lifestyle/application component as well.
Nothing wrong with that; it’s good intermediate-level material. It assumes you went to Sunday school and paid attention for a few years, and are familiar with the common Bible stories and so on. And it takes you from there to embracing a much wider world of application than a pomo-friendly ‘hobby religion’ would allow. Hallelujah, and may there be many more such courses.
But I see an open door to offering a counterpoint from a Narrative Foundation point of view, a more concrete approach that frames the issues in terms of their context within the overall story of humanity. So over the coming weeks I’ll be working up a series of short treatments following the paradigm(s) presented by Stephen (Ac. 7), Paul (Ac. 17, Rom. 9-11), and the author of Hebrews (Heb. 11). There will be a lot of repetition. Can’t help it; I’ll be telling the same story every week. But it’s a great story, and I’ll be telling it with a different facet turned to the light each time.
Posted by Tim Nichols 