ReInventing Jesus at Vintage Faith

We've been going through a 5 week teaching series at Vintage Faith Church called "Re-Inventing Jesus" which was named after the title of a recently published book of that name. The title plays off how in our culture there is a "reinventing" of Jesus happening and we address how to respond and think about what is being said.

With the interest in The Da Vinci code, we designed a series that does not go into all the issues of whether Jesus was married to Mary or the Roman Catholic secret groups - we basically designed a 5 week series to teach theology and apologetics.

We started the series teaching on why "doctrine" is important, then went into what do we mean when we say the Bible is "inspired" - and yesterday we brought in a guest speaker, Dr. James Sawyer, who is one of the authors of the book "Reinventing Jesus". Dr. Sawyer is the professor of Theology and Church History at Western Seminary.

Dr. Sawyer primarily focused on the canonicty of the New Testament (a word which he explained). We set it up where I asked some questions and he would dialog and teach about it. It kind of felt like a church history class. He covered how the New Testament was compiled, addressed the various Gnostic gospels and how to look at them etc. We then had a time of open Q and A about anything about the formation of the Bible. The questions were really, really good ones and there were plenty of them. But we ran out of time at each of the gatherings and could have easily probably had another 30 minutes of just Q and A about the topic.

Here's what I witnessed. That going into theology at this level and going into "reasons" of why Christians believe what they do - is very much needed and not only needed, but seeing the response of people at our church, very much desired. We almost sold out of all the copies of the book "Reinventing Jesus" that we had available.

As a church, we have a general vision sort of a statement that says: We are asking God to transform us into a ... worshiping - community - of- missional - theologians". We put the word theologian in there, as we want to create a culture in our church where discussing and learning theology will become a norm for us. We have a long way to go on this, but I hope we continue to think and pray how to make this a reality. I am thinking we will schedule classes and more teaching on theology and bring in gues theologians for events.

So, it was really fun to have a Sunday with a theologian in the true academic sense of the word with us, to help teach and be there for Q and A.  We have two gatherings (and a third we teach at that is the Presbyterian church one) and did this at all three. The evening one was so crowded that we had to pull out a bunch of extra chairs and had people sitting all over the floor.

The book "ReInventing Jesus" is by three authors, Dr. Sawyer who spoke at our church is one of them. I have bought all the Da Vinci Code books and I feel this book is by far the best one out there. Reinventing Jesus transcends the Da Vinci Code stuff and is more a book on the origin of the New Testament for the most part. It is definetly a book for the average person to learn about how oral tradition and a memorizing culture was behind how things were written back then, all about textual criticism and why we can have confidence in the New Testament today. How books were selected etc. I can say there it is one of the best books I have ever read that goes into the apologetics of the BIble and I hope that The Da Vinci Code tie in, doesn't give a short shelf life to this book, as it really is a book that is like taking a class on the origin and trustworthiness of the Bible, not the Da Vinci Code.

Next week in our series, I am teaching about the deity of Jesus and the Council of Nicea, and the last week will be about problem passages in the Bible and looking at if what we have now as a BIble is close to what was originally written.

I am thinking we will want to have regular visits by guest theologians and even create special events to discuss theology as a church. But, it was definetly a positive Sunday from my perspective seeing the way people responded to wanting to know and discuss theology.

We also had our good friends Dan and Anika from Portland playing music with us yesterday. They just graduated from Multnomah Bible College and are in an eclectic Celtic punk hippy sort of duo band called Odon Soterias that they are now on tour with. After the 7 PM worship gathering was over, they did a mini-concert. I watched  dozens of people dancing around and formed one of those rhumba-like hopping dance chains and were circling around the aisles of pews and then in and out of the sanctuary. It was very joyous. I was thinking as I watched that happening, if the Presbyterian Church had any idea before we moved in that there would be a joyous dance chain zipping around their sanctuary to Celtic sort of punk songs about Jesus. It was a nice Sunday. Theology and Celtic punkish hippy worship music.