Mid-Week Memo

Hi Five Oakers,

I have SEVEN things I want to share with you.

#1 - Get a recap of the service with highlights of our prayers, readings and songs here.

#2 - Here are your comments from the Communication Cards:

• Thank you and God bless!
• Glad I didn’t miss the message today. That really helped with my questions about the marriage vote coming up and you didn’t even have to specify. Made a lot of sense. [I’ll be addressing the subject of gay marriage in the third/last message of the new series we're launching this weekend. I won’t be addressing how to vote since we don’t recommend political policy solutions. But we do speak to the issues behind the political solutions. I'm certain that Christians that agree on a biblical understanding of gay marriage do not agree on whether the amendment is a good policy solution. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is when Christians don’t think biblically about the moral issues of our day. We always need clarity on those. And the clarity needs to be built on truth and grace.]
• Jesus reigns!
• Missing the skits and video clips that are sometimes used. Will those come back? [Sorry, no plans at this time, but you never know. We are considering one for our Christmas services but it may be shot for video.]
• God is good! His mercies endure forever! Because His goodness is his nature?
• Loved the songs and the harmony. Tim you always are so welcoming and do a great job with announcements. Henry thanks for your passion for the Bible and ensuring we are literate and love it! Great mini-series. Love the closing song Hillsong.
• Thanks for this series – if only every Christian. 
• Worship program is dated “Sept. 29 & 30” oops! Great energy and teaching.
• Thanks worship team!
• Nice! 

#3 - Here’s a recap of the message in 10 tweets:

• 1/ “Eat This Book” series, part 4 (last message).
• 2/ We slather the Word with ketchup when we intellectualize it. This is where we slather it with expensive ketchup.
• 3/ God's Word is addressed to us personally but always in the context of community. Always. No exceptions.
• 4/ Yes, we get many "how-tos" from this Book, but that's not the intention of most passages in the Bible.
• 5/ The Bible tells the story of our rescue. Jesus, the cross & the resurrection is how he rescued us & will renew the entire creation.
• 6/ Everything written in the Bible is part of a string of comments & a historical moment in time.

• 7/ To ignore context is to disrespect what God is actually saying.
• 8/ Imagine Lois leaves me a to-do list & I don't do it. Instead I spend the time putting it to song & sing it to her when she comes in the door
• 9/ “Listening requires listening to the way it is said (form) as well as to what is said (content).” Eugene Peterson
• 10/ If it seems complicated to you it's only because you haven't thought about what you do every time you read a letter, novel or recipe.

#4 - Off the cutting room floor:

Because this is a very personal Word from God to us, we need to read it carefully. Eugene Peterson addresses this in Eat This Book:

"Because we speak our language so casually, it is easy to fall into the habit of treating it casually. But language is persistently difficult to understand. We spend our early lives learning the language, and just when we think we have it mastered our spouse says, “You don’t understand a thing I’m saying, do you?” We teach our children to talk, and just about the time we think they might be getting it, they quit talking to us; and when we overhear them talking to their friends, we find we can’t understand more than one out of every eight or nine words they say.

"A close relationship doesn’t guarantee understanding. A long affection doesn’t guarantee understanding. In fact, the closer we are to another and the more intimate our relations, the more care we must exercise to hear accurately, to understand thoroughly, to answer appropriately.

"Which is to say, the more “spiritual” we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. This is not a task from which we graduate."

#5 - Several people told me how much they loved this series. It’s one of my favorite topics. But here’s what I’m thinking. If you geek out on this stuff like I do, maybe you ought to consider joining the Group Life writing team. We also need folks who edit or help in the administration of this ministry. Let me know if you want more information on this.

#6 - A few weeks ago I mentioned our need for auditors and three people responded. Very grateful! We only needed one for this year. We also had the largest group of people ever respond to the Nominating Committee’s search for Governing Board. Probably more than twice as many as we’ve ever had respond. An embarrassment of riches, actually. We also had more respond for Elder than we had spaces to fill. I love that you guys love our church enough to be willing to take on such significant and demanding responsibilities. Thank you for being the church that you are. It reminds me once again how much I love our church.  

#7 - Have you invited anyone to a church service lately? This might be a good time as we launch a 3-week series on marriage focused on God’s definition of marriage. How you define marriage in your mind—what you expect, how you think it works, how much work you think it takes—deeply impacts your experience. Is there someone you know who needs to hear this?  

See you on the weekend.

Blessing to you, Pastor Henry

Weekend Message Q&A

Here are the questions I received based on the weekend message.

Q – Should we keep in mind what was happening when something was written or the events that happened in the time the writing is in? For example, do we read something written now about a past event with the knowledge of the past or the present?

A – I’m not sure I understand the question. I’ll take my best shot at addressing some issues around historical context when reading.

• Historical context can refer to the occasion of a particular writing. For example, Paul writes 1 Corinthians in response to a letter church members wrote to him and he wrote in response to reports he had received by others who were familiar with the situation in Corinth, recent visitors and members of the church there.
• Historical context can also refer to the general historical/cultural situation in which the document was written. For example, in reading 1 Corinthians and the issues Paul faced there it’s good to know some things about life in that city socially, economically, religiously, etc. Even the history of that city. 
• The reader also has a historical/cultural context that impacts understanding. This can help and hinder understanding. It can especially hinder understanding when we are unaware of the extent to which our reading is impacted by our assumptions/worldview. And even if we are aware, we’re never completely aware of our own assumptions or the assumptions of the author. But our own context can also help. For example, American missionaries come from a world that is very skeptical of “miraculous” (even in the church), but sometimes theyserve in worlds that have not been as influenced by the enlightenment, where they still believe in spiritual realities. These missionaries have found, for example, that the new converts can relate to the miracles in Scripture and, in turn, they experience much more of the miraculous in their lives. This then has deeply impacted many of these missionaries who have brought a fuller and more accurate understanding of the Bible to American Christianity. All that said, if you go to another culture and immerse yourself in it long enough you begin to discover the that people are not all that different after all, no matter the culture. Their problems and joys are quite similar. This is true also if you immerse yourself in ancient literature. You are often shocked by how “modern” their thinking is. So the differences should not be overblown.

Q – I've known people who use historical/archaeological information to "prove" that the Bible is false because they can't pin down the people in the Bible to information/documentation in historical records. How do you get historical context in that case?

A – There are thousands of respected and credentialed historians and archaeologists that would say otherwise. Take a look at “probe.org” and enter archaeology into the search box. This would be a good place to start.

Q – Loving the story of God book! Thank you, Henry! Question in Genesis 1, many times it says “let there be,” etc. But when speaking of man it says “Let us make man in our image”. Didn’t google this, thought you shed light on this (if there is anything to share). Great worship set Justin! Praise Him! 

A – Not sure if this addresses your question but here’s what the ESV Study Bible says on that verse:

• Gen. 1:24–31 This is by far the longest section given over to a particular day, indicating that day 6 is the peak of interest for this passage. The final region to be filled is the dry land, or Earth (as it has been designated in v. 10). Here a significant distinction is drawn between all the living creatures that are created to live on the dry land, and human beings. Whereas vv. 24–25 deal with the “living creatures” that the earth is to bring forth, vv. 26–30 concentrate on the special status assigned to humans.
• Gen. 1:26 Let us make man in our image. The text does not specify the identity of the “us” mentioned here. Some have suggested that God may be addressing the members of his court, whom the OT elsewhere calls “sons of God” (e.g., Job 1:6) and the NT calls “angels,” but a significant objection is that man is not made in the image of angels, nor is there any indication that angels participated in the creation of human beings. Many Christians and some Jews have taken “us” to be God speaking to himself, since God alone does the making in Gen. 1:27 (cf. 5:1); this would be the first hint of the Trinity in the Bible (cf. 1:2).

Q – Wondering if there is a Bible App for daily reads – a good recommendation? 

A – Yep. The very best with lots and lots of choices for Bible reading plans is the YouVersion app and the YouVersion website. You get to check off each day you read in whatever plan you choose, and they’ll even send you reminders and encouragement when you fall behind. You can even recorded versions of every text in most of the primary translations.