For this 9th session of Discover the Word, we began with the article, The God Revealed in Jesus Christ. I told the class that I consider this booklet (article) as some kind of “textbook” and that we will be referring to this booklet often as we discuss other issues and as we go through the materials in the 40 Days of Discipleship.
We had an interesting discussion and although our progress through the booklet was rather slow, I think that listening to the comments and questions were quite beneficial for everyone.
There were three things we were able to take home from our study of the booklet. We learned that our Trinitarian faith is: 1) Trinitarian-based, 2) Christ-centered and, 3) Relationship-focused. That is, our Trinitarian faith is based on the belief in one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is also Christ-centered because Jesus Christ is the center of our faith and devotion to God. We understand the Bible through the lens of who Jesus is. And thirdly, our Trinitarian faith is very much relationship-focused. God is interested in loving relationships.
Last Wednesday evening, our local church leadership in my home church, the ReThink Community asked me to lead in the Lord’s Supper Service which we have traditionally observed annually. This is aside from the regular Lord’s Supper Service which are normally done during worship services or in some cases in other congregations, once a month.
Here’s an edited (shortened) video of our Lord’s Supper Service last Wednesday evening.
Yesterday was another Discover the Word discipleship class and the topic was “Theology in General.” We summarized, synthesized and the class gave their views on what they were able to gather or understand from all the articles and all the discussions. Most of them agreed that indeed theology does affect the way we live.
Additionally, there were some who said that they have begun to anticipate and were excited to attend the class each Wednesday evening because there was always something to “discover” from the study of God’s Word. That was inspiring and encouraging for me to hear. May the Lord continually bless this activity.
There were also some first-timers who attended including two young sisters — one a 13-year old and the younger one a Grade 5 pupil. That was quite challenging to talk about theology with the young ones among us. But it was inspiring to see that these kids have attended. It’s amazing how God works.
Here’s the video of last night’s class. The video lasts only for an hour but the audio continues up to 15 minutes more.
It was inspiring to see what happened yesterday at the ReThink Community, my home church in Santa Rosa, Laguna. The Project Seekers, a community outreach project of the local congregation was finally launched with some 25 house helpers (kasambahay) as the invited guests. These are house helpers who are working at the Laguna Bel Air, our home community. Some of them have already developed some relationships for a good number of years with the local church through its children ministry — their children are part of it.
Senior Pastor Jina Raduban, explained to the guests that they are loved by God and that they are also giving God’s love to their employers through their household work like doing laundry, washing the dishes or cleaning the house. After the worship services they were provided with free lunch and some gift items before finally going home. Pastora Jina told us the next project might be the security guards who are working at Laguna Bel Air.
I’m happy to be part of this ReThink Community. May the Lord continue to bless his work through this community of believers.
The sixth session of our discipleship class started with a review of last week’s topic on “Strong Theology vs. Weak Theology.” After that the group watched two short videoclips coming from Dr. Gary Deddo. These are parts of his lecture in 2010 during a conference in Orlando, Florida. The first one was on “Christ, the Center of All Scripture”and the second one was on “Jesus Christ and Bible Interpretation.” Here are the videoclips for those who are interested:
Since there was a question from last week about Arminianism, I decided to also show a video interview which discusses this topic. This was an interview of Jeff McSwain by Dr. Mike Feazell. Here it is:
We also continued (although quite slow) with our plan to follow and finish the discipleship class materials provided in the 40 Days of Discipleship. For this session we discussed the topic on “Theology Affects the Way We Live.” I also gave the group again an overview of the 40 Days of Discipleship and how we plan to proceed with it.
Since some are following us online, I usually do a video recording of each meeting. But I have to apologize because I forgot to turn on the camera right away when we started. Thankfully, I had an audio recording all throughout. The camera eventually ran out of battery so I was not able to video record the whole thing. The audio recording is just fine though. Here it is:
