Here’s an email invite I sent out to our church and friends who might be interested to have some “intentional” conversations and learning together in the coming months.
Gracious Christianity Learning Circle – starting May 9, 2007 Wednesday 8pm
Greetings fellow pilgrims of BLC and friends!
Here’s the information of the “course” (I prefer to call it a learning circle) which will start this coming Wednesday. For those who are coming, please email me back to confirm.
What?
Gracious Christianity as an ideal focuses on Jesus’s directive to love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and to love our neighbors–all of them–in the same way we love ourselves.Why?
It is not easy to live graciously as Christians. Our culture tends to push us toward either confrontation or apathy and many churches do the same. So we ask:
How can we help each other live more gracious and grace-filled lives as Christians?
What ideas, ideals, images, and experiences enlarge the graciousness of our faith?
How can we love God, the world, and others more intelligently and effectively?
- Where can we find encouragement and hope for living graciously as Christians?
Thus, the goal of gracious Christianity is to help the world’s two billion Christians (a third of the globe’s population!) make God’s kingdom of peace, justice and compassion a little more visible on earth every day.
When & Where?
We will meet on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month, at 23, Jalan Abdullah off Jalan Bangsar, The Father’s House (BLC premises)
The time is 8pm – 10pmThe dates and topics are:
May
9 Introduction: What is Gracious Christianity
23 God and Creation
June
13 Human Nature
27 Hearing God’s Voice
July
11 The Fullness of Salvation
25 The Spirit and LifeAugust
6 Being Church
22 The BibleSeptember
12 The Future
26 What’s Next?
How?
The basic format for each time we meet together will be as follows:
1. Summary of the themes and open discussion
2. Small Group Conversations – all will go to their LiFe Groups or newly formed groups for more in depth discussion and prayer.
3. Stepping out of our comfort zones: There are suggestions to practice the specific themes (part of the reason we are doing this fortnightly is to allow participants to focus on the following week on practice)
The Study Guide we will be using can be downloaded from here http://www.graciouschristianity
.org/study_guide/ Who?
This Learning circle (“course”) is especially for Christ-followers who want to “live the love we profess”. Those who have finished the catechism class will find this to be a good sequel to all we’ve done so far with a broader emphasis on the specific topics. “Older” Christians” will find this a necessary refresher and be ready to be surprised to “grow” deeper in your faith.
I will be facilitating all the sessions. Participants will be invited to be more involved in presenting the summary themes from the book.Everyone is encouraged to listen, share and learn from each other in the smaller groups.
All are challenged to practice what we learn and allow that rhythm to open space for the Spirit to shape us into God’s ideal!
Sivin
p.s. For those who like more technical terms: The course above is basically keeping orthodoxy closer to orthopraxis in the context of orthopathy. In short, the dance of theology, ministry/mission and spirituality. It is an attempt towards communal theological imagination and spiritual formation with a goal towards reflexive action. The assumption is we trust the Spirit to move amongst us as we open ourselves to God and one another as well as bring the realities of our daily lives and what is in the world in touch with the Gospel (wow this was a long sentance!). The learning circle is a practical way towards taking steps in becoming missional Christians (John 20:21) and more ….
p.s. 2: If the previous p.s. seems complex no worries. 🙂 Go back to the 5Ws and 1H earlier.
sometimes it’s just sad isnt it? that gracious christianity is an oxymoron itself…
peiling – it’s sad, and yet it’s true. But the good news is there are many quietly living out faithfully God’s graciousness in quiet ways, and that motivates me to join in.