Choirs, worship songs, after service coffee - the all new religion chat thread

[niminypiminy]

A new place for us to share the lovely, silly and annoying things that happen in church life and share our great love of Graham Kendrick.

I'm sorry there isn't a friendlier church in reach for you DutchOma. I'm sorry I assumed it was easy to find another one.

Having to find another church always goes with a lot of pain and is never easy. In the end it will all work out.
Just at the moment I need to find a way to remain loving and kind to the church that I cannot (for the time being) cope with.
And find the love that I need somewhere else.

I'm sorry Oma, that's really hard.

God is Love God is Love God is Love. Love is the ribbon woven through the gospels, it's the air we breathe and the essence of God. Yes, God gets angry sometimes but I look at Jesus - his wrath wasn't for those coming to church (or synagogue), it was for those standing in the way of people coming to Him.

Once you've actually got through the doors into church, we need welcome, love, truth, grace, mercy. Not anger and hate - too much of that outside already.

i'm sorry Oma :(

I hope you can sort it out for the best, and make sure you think about yourself

I'm just not going to do anything at all. I'm not going to listen on line any more, not sure if I will go to the church meeting at the end of the month. Nobody will notice or care. And yes, I am thinking of myself.

Can I ask for a book rec from you lovely people? My scriptural knowledge is very shallow (I know the stories, and can identify what's going on in most stained glass windows, but that's about it). I can't make it to the Bible study classes at my church, and I'd like something to put what I read into a proper context. I'll probably start with one of the Gospels, and I'd like something that will explain the context in which it was written, points out references to other writings and other bits of the Bibke, explains translation issues and discusses various possible interpretations of the text. I'm happy with stuff that's fairly academically heavyweight, but my ideal would probably be something written by someone clever enough to express complicated ideas in relatively simple language.

Do any of you have any suggestions?

Do you want one book which covers the whole Bible in detail? Or a book for each Bible book? Or an overview kind of general introduction? It sounds like the first, so maybe a biblical commentary. I use the Jerome Biblical Commentary, but that's from primarily RC authors. I suspect there'll be an Anglican equivalent but I don't know what it is.

The first or second, I think. Possibly both.

The NIV study bible has much of what you're looking for - introduces every book and places it in historical context, has alternative translations and extensive notes - each page is half scripture and half notes, cross references, etc. Also has some handy time lines and maps, pages linking all four gospels so you can see where they overlap and differ, that sort of thing.

More detailed after that - Stott's commentaries are fairly traditional, but there are more modern ones too. I cannot remember the name of the last one we did which is frustrating.

How about finding a : Through the Bible in a year course? You don't have to do it in a year, but you will have the satisfaction of having read the whole of the Bible. I have done it twice, once with Bob and once without.

I got a youth bible that's got some great study aids in it.
www.rhive.co.uk/Product/Bible-League-International/The-ERV-Authentic-Youth-Bible-Red/15080036
It's rather good, and because it's aimed at "youths", it actually uses plain.English

I use The Oxford Bible Commentary by John Barton and John Muddiman - it's a really good one-volume commentary which draws on the latest research but is reasonably accessible. I also use the series of Sacra Pagina commentaries on individual New Testament books - written by Catholic scholars, really excellent but also pretty technical.

A book that I found really helpful at an early stage of my becoming familiar with the Bible was Reading the Bible Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg. Borg is pretty liberal theologically (much more than I now am) but he is also a really reputable scholar and he writes in a very engaging way. He doesn't cover the whole Bible but does chapters on individual books (there's an excellent discussion of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs). It won't be all you need for ever but it does introduce quite a lot of the main issues in biblical scholarship in an accessible and thought-provoking way.

More student-y but still very useful are the Exploring... series from SPCK. There are two for the New Testament and several more for the Old Testament. They take you through the historical context, different approaches to the text and give lots of questions to think about. Or you could try one of Tom Wright's 'For Everyone' series - there is one for each gospel. Wright is a major scholar but these are very accessible. He has now covered the whole of the NT.

Oma that is such a hard situation. I hope you know how much you are loved on MN - I know that this is not the same as a real flesh-and-blood church, but I hope it is something.

Thanks Niminy. I am feeling better now I have made a decision about the church. Also I have realised how much of a God-given talent my knitting is and how much of a ministry I can exercise through it. So that for the time being this is going to be the only contact with the church: through the knit club. I know there are people who would miss me there, even though they are not in leadership and, in some cases, not even in the church themselves.

Grrrrrrrr gggggrrrrrrrrr!
NV's last service today.
So everyone's posting on fb about how much they'll miss him, how humble and full of integrity he is.
Ffs. Full of integrity! [anger] he wouldn't know integrity if it slapped him! He mows how to perform lip service and how to pander to people without following through on his words with actions!
How can they still trust him?!
And one of the ones who's said it knows the full story and she still believes him and trusts him!

The post doesn't have the same feel to it without the correct emoticon

I think I feel like, that because everyone thinks they're both lovely, that they can skim over the bad stuff without acknowledging it or dealing with it.
I want bad stuff to be dealt with and measures taken and lessons learned. rather than going "but they're nice so we can ignore it"
I did like him, but he went against me and against what is right, and didn't make amends. That's what upsets me and what I cannot get past - if you get something wrong you have to make amends or you haven't learned a thing from it.
I lost trust in people who can't learn from their mistakes.

That's really hard, Nickel. I'm sorry. It's horrible to lose trust in people. I hope that moving forward you can rebuild some trust in church somehow.

I'm finding a lot of churches that seem to care more or do more.
Saints needs to get their heads out from under the pews and do something radical. It just seems they like the status quo and won'taddress any problems as problems.
I don't know how they expect to revitalise their congregation without stopping to think and stopping ignoring that everything's not okay.

Definitely agree nickel

to Oma and Nickel, been thinking of you both.

Hooray, I found you! I've been searching but you were well hidden. Now you've popped up on my active threads again! I'd better go back and see what's been going on!

I'm glad making that decision helps you Oma. I went many years without being part of a church. I think our journeys can need different shoes at different times, if you see what I mean. The teaching from the front is a small part of church life, and you'll get what you need from the the knitting group. IYSWIM. That reads so clumsily, but I know what I'm trying to say!

Key thing is, Nickel, NV's gone! I hope things get easier now.

Yeah.
But the rest of the leadership team is still there.
The only reason NV turned out so crap is that he spent too long not wanting to offend people or some other such nonsense. Rather than just actually doing what he said he would do.
Others in the leadership team have proved incapable of doing their jobs.

You're better out than in, Nickel. It's nice to have a church home and to belong, but your relationship with God may be stronger when you do not rely on people in your church.

Very true.
I do like being in a position where I don't have to learn names or other things, and where I know what's going on. Kind of to be able to have control of things I suppose.
Maybe the last couple of years with their ups and downs was me being shown I can't have that, even in a place that's supposed to be filled with love.