The Story of Jesus & The Story of God

The Luke series we'll launch after Easter (see posts from March 8-11,20,21) will not be The Story of Jesus series I had originally proposed. I want to explain my thinking on this.

When we did The Story of God in seven weeks, a few people shared that it went too fast and skipped too much. Some people wished it had gone eight weeks (I agree), and others thought 10 or more weeks (I don't agree). In my opinion, ten or more weeks would have lost the sense of the whole Bible and the redemptive story line. My goal was that everyone would come away knowing how it all fits together, and I believe that a longer series would have mitigated against that.

I also believe that seven (or eight) weeks was optimal and sufficient if people participated in all three learning experiences--messages, story-formed way in the small groups and the reading guide. I'm still convinced of that, and I know that people who invested the time came away with great dividends. There was a direct correlation between the impact of the series and investment as I read through over 300 cards telling me of your participation and its impact.

But I also hoped that people would come away hungry for more. And I think we achieved that in the seven weeks we had.

I want to do a Story of Jesus series that accomplishes many of the same goals as the Story of God series. But after reading the poll results, I felt it was too soon for that. I felt that too many of you were indeed hungry for more and doing an overview series was not the way to feed that hunger.

So the Story of Jesus will wait. It should last no longer than eight weeks or it will lose the forest for the trees. But I will plan on doing it before too long. Maybe it would be a great way of wrap up the big lessons learned in Luke. We'll see. But before long, if God wills, we'll do The Story of Jesus.

Story of Jesus Series Poll - A Surprise

I'm preaching on The Gospel of Luke after Easter!

Why the change? And will it be long or short? The change to Luke has to do with my answer to the second question.

One or two of you suggested a series of short series through Mark. That way we can go deep and wide (and take even longer than 15 or 20 weeks to cover the book), maintain momentum and make it easier to invite guests. And that's what I'm going to do. The key is to make each series stand out on it's own and create anticipation while tying each series to the bigger picture of the life of Jesus. I'm going to lean on our Programming Team for this more than I ever have before so that we do this really well. 

We'll also insert some non-Luke series in between the Luke mini-series as we go along.

Needless to say, this will go on for a year or so. Part of the reason I chose Mark for the series on The Story of Jesus is because it is the shortest and most straightforward of the gospels and would be more manageable in eight weeks. But if I'm going to spend a year or so in one book, I really want to spend it in Luke, which is my personal favorite and covers some topics in much greater depth than Matthew or Mark (including prayer, ministries of mercy and the Holy Spirit's role in the ministry Jesus). We did a series on John not that long ago, so that gospel was not an option.

Again, thank you for helping me on this journey. I didn't anticipate coming to this conclusion at all. Thank you for your love for the Word and the ministry of reaching more people for Christ.