#thestruggleisreal -
Day 5
In May and June, Toni Ruth and I (and Richard) will be preaching a series based on Paul's letter to the Galatians called #thestruggleisreal. During this series, I'm going to be posting regularly with some brief thoughts on various passages from Galatians. I hope that you follow along as we look for God's grace in the midst of some very real struggles!
Ok, so last week, I
may have said that I would be posting everyday. Well, I didn't mean every day.
Actually, I had planned to post 5 times a week, but things got kinda
crazy last week, so I'm hoping for 5 this week! So, on with the posting!
I really love to teach
Bible Study. Other than the sacraments, it's probably my favorite thing about
serving in ministry. I don't really think that I'm particularly skilled at teaching - I don't have any discernible
methodology, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about technique or strategy,
and I usually don't take into consideration the reality of multiple
intelligences*. Occasionally, somebody might ask me about how
I teach or how I prepare lessons and I don't have all that much to offer other
than read the passage/book, look at 1 or 2 commentaries, and plow through
verse-by-verse. I've often told my Bible Study groups that I teach
verse-by-verse because I can never decide which parts of God's Word are
unimportant enough to be ignored**.
It gets pretty
frustrating when trying to preach or teach on a passage in one of Paul's
letters, which are fairly structured arguments. For example, I'm preaching this
week on Galatians 5:16-26 and as I was beginning my study of the text this
morning, I did some work on the context of my passage. Where does if fit with the rest of the
letter? How does it flow out of what comes before? Once you
start pulling that
thread in one of Paul's letters, it can be kind of daunting. Suddenly you find yourself tracing Paul's argument 2 or 3 chapters before the passage you're supposed to be focused on. I mean, go and read 5:2-15 - there's some
really incredible stuff there and it all serves to set up what Paul is saying in the last half of the chapter. I'm certainly not skilled enough to preach on
all of that and it's so dense that it probably wouldn't be wise to do so anyway. Besides, there's the complicating factor that
it's not the text that I'm supposed to be preaching on this Sunday.
start pulling that
thread in one of Paul's letters, it can be kind of daunting. Suddenly you find yourself tracing Paul's argument 2 or 3 chapters before the passage you're supposed to be focused on. I mean, go and read 5:2-15 - there's some
really incredible stuff there and it all serves to set up what Paul is saying in the last half of the chapter. I'm certainly not skilled enough to preach on
all of that and it's so dense that it probably wouldn't be wise to do so anyway. Besides, there's the complicating factor that
it's not the text that I'm supposed to be preaching on this Sunday.
That's the benefit
of this series of posts - I can write about all the stuff that won't make it
into a sermon! So, this week most of my
posts will be about things that grab my attention in 5:2-15. I hope that you find
something of interest in that as well…
*I'm not proud of that, by the way
**That's actually true, but I've also used it as an excuse to cover up the fact that I often didn't do the really hard work of summarizing and condensing.
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