I Am a Church Member, by Thom Ranier

Chapter Three

1. Show from key Bible verses the difference between church membership and country club membership from the perspective of personal preferences and desires. Of course, the Bible doesn’t speak of country club membership, so you will need to assume the benefits of belonging to one.

2. Find and explain key passages in the Bible that talk about Christians being like servants. How would you describe a servant as it applies to being a member of a church?

3. Why do many churches have worship wars? What does that have to do with the right or wrong attitude about church membership?

4. Describe someone in your church that best fits the description of having the mind of Christ and a servant attitude. Find key New Testament passages that would fit him or her. 

5. Go, verse by verse, through Philippians 2:5–11. Explain how the attitude of Christ in each verse becomes a pattern for us as church members.

   Chapter Four 

1. Using scriptural backing, explain why the pastor’s family is such an important factor in his ministry.

2. What is meant by above reproach in 1 Timothy 3:2? Is that standard even possible for the pastor?

3. Explain the implications of the devil’s trap in

1 Timothy 3:7.

4. What is the meaning of outsiders in 1 Timothy 3:7? Why should they be a concern to church members or pastors?

5. Find some key passages in the Bible where intercessory prayer takes place (someone praying for someone else). Relate those passages to praying for your pastor.

I Am a Church Member, by Thom Rainer

Chapter One

1. Explain how country club membership and church membership are so different. Give scriptural references to support the differences in church membership.

2. Explain why church membership is a biblical concept, using 1 Corinthians 12 as your biblical foundation.

3. How is the “love chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13, related to church membership? Explain, using all 13 verses of the chapter.

4. How are the different parts of the body (ear, nose, mouth, hand, foot, eyes, etc.) related to church membership? How do the parts play out in your church?

5. In relation to church membership, why is it important for members to know and use their spiritual gifts? Relate your answer to 1 Corinthians 12.

   Chapter Two

1. What did Paul mean when he said in Colossians 3:14 that love is the perfect bond of unity? What does that mean for the local church today?

2. What is the best path to take if someone brings gossip to you in your church? What does the Bible say about gossip?

3. How is forgiveness related to unity in the local church? What does the Bible say about forgiving one another?

4. Look at Matthew 6:14-15. Relate those words to being a church member. What does it mean if one church member does not forgive another?

5. Read all of 1 Corinthians 13. Paul wrote the “love chapter” to the church at Corinth where problems with unity were pervasive. What does this chapter mean for church members today? Explain as you go through each verse.

Testing Scripture, by John Polkinghorne

Chapter Ten

1.  What John has to say concerns eternal truth, which is embedded and expressed in historical events. The Prologue (John 1) speaks of the union of the eternal with the temporal. For John, the incarnate Word is the true form of the divine presence with humanity.

- How do you imagine this union of the eternal with the temporal?

- What are the consequences of this union for believers?

2.  To the modern reader, John’s use of ‘Word’ (in Greek, Logos) may, at first sight, seem strange and puzzling. Its aptness for John’s purpose lies in the double reference that it makes to both Greek and Hebrew thinking.
The fusion of the ideas of enabling order and unfolding dynamic process, suggested by the double linguistic reference of John’s use of Word, is highly consonant with science’s understanding of cosmic history.

- How do you respond to Polkinghorne’s scientific explanation and integration of the Greek & Hebrew interpretations of “Word?”

3.  This extraordinary passage (Colossians 1:15-20) is claiming a cosmic significance for Jesus Christ, an assertion that is being made about a person who had been crucified perhaps thirty years before the epistle was written. As in the Prologue to John, it is stated that Christ truly makes known the divine nature as ‘the image of the invisible God’.
What interests me especially in this passage is the last verse, which says that Christ reconciles all things by ‘making peace through the blood of his cross’. Notice that it is ‘all things’, not simply all people. Redemption is proclaimed to be cosmic in scope.”

- What are the many ramifications of such cosmic redemption?

4.  Polkinghorne’s third biblical reference is Romans 8:19–23. Why should God have subjected the creation to futility? There is a resonance here, not only with modern scientific predictions of eventual cosmic futility, but also with the inescapable cost of evolutionary natural process. There has to be enough genetic mutation to produce new forms of life, but not so much mutation that these new forms do not get established as species on which the sifting effects of natural selection can act. Creative processes of this kind will necessarily generate ragged edges and blind alleys as well as extraordinary fruitfulness. In this insight there is some help for theology as it wrestles with the problems of disease and disaster in the divine creation. They are not something gratuitous, that a God who was a bit more competent or a bit less callous could easily have eliminated. They are the inescapable cost of the good of a world in which creatures are allowed to make themselves.

- In light of this explanation, what is God’s will for creation?

5.  The costliness of evolutionary process means that the creation has indeed been ‘groaning in labour pains until now’. However, the last word does not lie with death and futility, but with God. It is the Christian hope and belief that the divine faithfulness will not allow anything of good eventually to be lost, but God will give to all creatures an appropriate destiny beyond their deaths, as the old creation is ultimately transformed in Christ into the new creation.

Christians believe that this process has, in fact, already begun in the seed event of the resurrection of Jesus. Paul sets before us the hope and promise ‘that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God’. Ultimate cosmic destiny and ultimate human destiny lie together in the One who redeems all things by the blood of his cross.

Romans 8 is one of the most profound and hopeful chapters in the New Testament and reading it in the light of modern scientific understanding helps us to find new levels of profundity in it. 

- How has Romans 8 given you insight to and appreciation of the grand scope of redemption and renewal in Christ for the cosmos?

- What does this divine agenda, already active since the resurrection of Jesus, give you hope beyond this life?

Testing Scripture, by John Polkinghorne

Chapter Nine

1.  While the whole of Acts describes the development of the early church, Peter and Paul remain its chief leaders. 

- Including the book of Luke, how would you characterize the persons and ministries of each of these pivotal men?

2.  We cannot be certain of either the authorship or dating of the book of Hebrews, yet, its Christology presents a mature understanding of the role and work of Jesus in securing our redemption.

- Why is the suffering and death of Jesus, being fully human, central to the message of atonement in Hebrews? 

3.  The Epistle of James… is very much concerned with issues of right conduct and the author famously declares that ‘faith without works is dead.’ James is emphasizing that true faith must be manifested in deeds as well as words.

- How do you interpret James’ statement, and where do you see the truth of it in one’s daily life and in the life of the church?

4.  1 & 2 Peter serve different audiences and purposes. 

- How do these themes of patience – both in suffering and awaiting the Lord’s return – speak to the trials of the church today?

5.  1 John invites readers to beware of false prophets and to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”  In the end, love and faith prevail over all worldly trials.

- How has such advice served you in your faith development?

- How do we “test the spirits” today?

6.  Revelation ends with a grand and inspiring vision of the new Jerusalem, where ‘death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away,’ and where there is ‘the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.’

- How do you both envision and anticipate the new Jerusalem?

Testing Scripture, by John Polkinghorne

Chapter Eight

1.  The most common title assigned to Jesus in the Pauline writings is ‘Lord’, occurring well over two hundred times. Although the Greek kyrios could amount to no more than a courtesy in common conversation, much like the English use of ‘sir’, its presence in such theological contexts as Paul’s letters surely carries with it an inescapable reference to the Jewish custom of saying ‘Lord’ in place of the unutterable name of God. It is, therefore, highly significant that the earliest distinctively Christian confession appears to have been ‘Jesus is Lord.’ Despite his being a monotheistic Jew, Paul is bracketing together God and Jesus in an extraordinary way.

- What levels of acceptance and resistance might Paul have encountered in his public announcement, “Jesus is Lord?”

2.  In the New Testament, the problem of how to understand the relationship between the Lordship of Jesus and the Lordship of the one true God of Israel (Deuteronomy 6.4) remains unresolved. The issue is simply present, arising as a fact of experience, encouraged not only by belief in the Resurrection but also by the new life that the first believers found had been given to them in Christ. Paul can only describe the latter as being ‘a new creation, everything old has passed away; see everything has become new.’

- How do you experience the Lordship of Jesus and of God?

- How does this Lordship offer a “new creation” in you?

3.  The Pauline witness is absolutely clear, both about the presence of human and divine attributes in Jesus and about the reconciliation (atonement) he has effected between a righteous God and sinful humanity; but in neither case are we given, in Paul or elsewhere in the New Testament, a detailed theological theory of how these things can be. Experience was everything; theorizing could wait.
 

- Such “experience” must be understood “theologically.”  How do the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds assist us with this task?

4.  Another remarkable attribute of Christ that is emphasized by Paul is that, though of course the Christian community knew Jesus was a human individual, it had nevertheless experienced a corporate element in its relationship with Christ. Paul tells the Corinthians that they ‘are the body of Christ and individually members of it.’ He is not using ‘body’ simply as a simile, but for him it is a spiritual reality. Without denying the humanity of Jesus, this participatory language points to a reality in him that exceeds the simply human.

- How does this “corporate” nature of Christian faith differ from today’s cultural appeal of “individual spirituality?”

5.  It is instructive to see how Paul uses the Hebrew Bible as his scriptural resource. The most systematic of the Pauline letters is Romans, and this provides a good focus for such a study. These examples, which have parallels elsewhere in the New Testament, show that the early Church, while respectful of Scripture and wishing to make clear its belief that Jesus fulfilled the expectations and hopes of Hebrew prophecy, felt able to use that Scripture in a manner that was free from a slavish dependence on original use and meaning. It allowed itself to manipulate what had been written in order to conform what was being said to what it had learned by its actual experience of the new life that had been given to it in Christ.

- Is the Church still free today to interpret the Scriptures in light of what we are learning by our experiences of new life in Christ?

6.  I have referred to ‘the Pauline writings’ because it is not certain that everything to which Paul’s name has been attached was actually written by him. Remember that in the ancient world there was not the modern concept of authorial integrity, so that it was not considered fraudulent to present writing arising in a tradition that stemmed from an original author as if it had actually been written by that author himself.

- Given this explanation, how do we benefit from both Paul and the broader Pauline tradition that supports his extended ministry?

Testing Scripture, by John Polkinghorne

Chapter Seven

1.  Throughout the Roman world crucifixion was regarded with such horror that ‘cross’ (Greek stauros) was a word of sinister meaning to a degree that it is hard for us to recapture, since for us it has come to mean simply a conventional religious symbol. There is no depiction of the crucified Christ in Christian art until the centuries in which crucifixion was no longer a contemporary reality. The earliest Christians preferred to represent Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

- The cross upon which Jesus died carries multiple meanings.  What did it mean to those first Christians, and what does it mean to us today?

2.  There are stories in the Gospels of persons who were apparently dead being restored to life. However, these are resuscitations, that is to say, those so restored will undoubtedly in due course die again. They have only experienced a temporary reprieve from mortality, somewhat like people in our own day who have had near-death experiences. Jesus’ resurrection is quite different. He is given a permanent victory over death.

- Why is resurrection such a unique & difficult reality to embrace?

3.  The earliest statement of the Resurrection that we have occurs in the Pauline writings, which predate the Gospels. (Writing to the Corinthians about the year 55…).

- What was the timing and nature of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to Paul?

4.  At first sight it might seem that we are simply confronted with a bunch of variously made-up tales, constructed by different Christian communities as ways of expressing their conviction that in some way Jesus continued to be their living Lord. However, there is an unexpected and persistent feature of the stories, expressed in different ways that persuades me that their historicity needs to be taken seriously.

- What was this “feature?”

5.  A second line of evidence is of course presented in the Gospels, which all tell the story of the discovery of the empty tomb (Matthew 28.1–8; Mark 16.1–8; Luke 24.1–10; John 20.1–10). There is a good deal of agreement between these gospel accounts, even if there are differences about such details as the names of the women and the exact time of morning they made their discovery.

- In what ways do the gospels address the challenges of believing in the empty tomb?  Then why isn’t everyone convinced?

6.  For the Christian believer, the Resurrection makes sense because it represents a triple vindication. It is the vindication of Jesus, for his life had a character that meant that it should not have ended in rejection and failure. It is a vindication of God, who was not found after all to have abandoned the one who had wholly committed himself to doing his Father’s will. It is a vindication of a deep-seated human intuition that in the end the last word does not lie with death and futility, but we live in a world that is a meaningful cosmos and not ultimately a meaningless chaos.

Christians see the resurrection of Christ as the sign and guarantee within history of a destiny that awaits the rest of humanity beyond history (‘for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ’, 1 Corinthians 15.22).

- What does your baptismal covenant mean to you…that you will one day, beyond this life, share in the resurrection of Jesus?

- What does Jesus’ resurrection mean for the renewal of creation itself?

Testing Scripture, by John Polkinghorne

Chapter Six

1.  Even a casual reader will soon perceive that, while there is a good deal of similarity between Matthew, Mark and Luke (the ‘Synoptic Gospels’, so-called since they share a common point of view), John is distinctly different.

- What explanations does Polkinghorne offer for this distinction?

2.  The essential point that the Gospels are seeking to get across is expressed in John, where it is said, ‘these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name’ (20.31). This concentration on what is primary means that we should not look in the Gospels for complete consistency of subsidiary detail in what they have to say. We may easily imagine these differences of detail arising in the period of oral transmission that preceded the assembly of the stories in consolidated written form.

- How does this shape or re-shape our grasp of the Gospels’ formation and purpose?

3. If these considerations persuade us, as I believe they should, to take the truthful intent of the evangelists with due seriousness, they will lead us to go on to enquire what we can reliably learn about Jesus from the Gospels. We shall be concerned with finding out both what he said and what he did.

     - Surely the first thing that strikes one is Jesus’ use of parables.

     - Next, one might look for certain turns of phrase that are  

       repeated and which seem to be characteristic of him.

     - One final example of the striking character of the discourse of  

       Jesus can be found in the manner in which he often dealt with

       hostile questioners.

- Review each of these patterns and discuss their importance.

4.  I have already indicated that I do not suppose, however, that every word attributed in the Gospels to Jesus was actually spoken by him in his earthly life. The custom of the ancient world was such that it would not have been considered fraudulent to attribute to a historical character words he might have said in a particular circumstance, even if it was not part of that character’s actual experience, provided it was thought that the statement was compatible with what the character would have been expected to say had he been in that situation.

- How does such communication differ from that of today?

5.  We need also to recognize that there are words of Jesus that are ‘hard sayings’, with which we have to struggle in various ways. First there are the sayings that uncompromisingly challenge the reader with the cost of discipleship, making it clear that to follow Christ will be a demanding vocation. Other hard sayings arise in the context of disputes with the scribes and Pharisees, who are frequently condemned and called ‘hypocrites’ (e.g. Mark 7.6–13). There are sayings of Jesus about judgment in which he speaks in a manner that the modern reader may find disturbing. Finally there is the long apocalyptic passage in Mark 12…and of an end-time of catastrophic woes and suffering to be followed by the deliverance of the elect.
 

- What makes such sayings “hard?”  Is it Jesus…or us?  Why?

6.  Perhaps the most certain fact about the deeds of Jesus is that he was an outstanding healer.  Jesus is also credited with other remarkable deeds.  John’s Gospel insists that miraculous acts are to be understood as ‘signs’, that is, they are windows through which one can look more deeply into the reality of what God was doing in Christ. They are not to be treated as if they were simply a series of stories of wonder-working. To be theologically credible, miracles must be revelatory events, not capricious conjuring tricks.

- How does Jesus serve as that revelatory window through which you, too, witness the deep reality of what God is doing today?