The Bible can move us much like music does. It's ultimately not about the right answer. It's trying to get us to dance, move around with it, and participate in the flow which is all moving us toward Jesus.

SLIDE GEORGE READ IN OUR GATHERING :

"It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."

—John Paul II, World Youth Day-August 2000

 The church in every generation must make fresh and rejuvenated efforts to understand scripture and continue to raise questions of it in their own time and place.

—N.T. Wright, Scripture and The Authority of God

Someone who holds a high view of scripture approaches scripture with a deep appreciation for its history and the way God has spoken and continues to speak through it. That person recognizes both the Bible's humanity and its divine inspiration, and seeks to study it carefully in order to be shaped and guided by it.

Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it. 

2 Corinthians 3:2-5 The Message Bible

Jarrod Morris - Historical, cultural, geographic, and linguistic contexts matter in how we read and understand the Bible.

We are going to spend some weeks exploring our relationship to this sacred book and how this ancient library of poems, letters, and stories can transform our lives and offer wisdom for a modern world. We understand the Bible as the unfolding story of humanity’s growing comprehension of who God is, who we are, and what our role is in creation. It is the continuing story in which you are both rooted and invited to play a part, in our generation.

We trust the Bible as it points us to Jesus.

We are going to spend some weeks exploring our relationship to this sacred book and how this ancient library of poems, letters, and stories can transform our lives and offer wisdom for a modern world. We understand the Bible as the unfolding story of humanity’s growing comprehension of who God is, who we are, and what our role is in creation. It is the continuing story in which you are both rooted and invited to play a part, in our generation.

Christmas Eve at the Bellevue Community Center

Jarrod Morris invites us into some practices of joy this Advent season.

George invites us into the practice of Advent this Christmas season as a way of keeping time that forms us toward love, God, healing, and growth.

The art pieces George referenced in this teaching can be found online: The Peaceable Kingdom - Edward Hicks & The Peaceable Kingdom With Two Olives - Will Bullas.

George invites us into the practice of Advent this Christmas season as a way of keeping time that forms us toward love, God, healing, and growth.

Has Christianity lost its cultural voice? If that were true, how might it be regained? Let's do some Bible 101. When the Bible speaks of church or community, it uses the beautiful phrase Allēlōn—the 'one anothers' and 'each others' mentioned often in scripture. This is what it means for people to be filled with God’s Spirit.