Contagious Revelation

A few notes on what we're doing at our church...

Our pastor is wrapping up a series on being a Contagious Christian. Yes, the theme comes out of all the attention being paid to H1N1 flu...While we don't want to spread illness and germs, we DO want to spread the love of God. It's really focused on equipping people with ways to witness. It's been an excellent series of sermons.

I led a 5-week study of The Shack in our Sunday School class, which concluded last Sunday. So today was the first day for our class to study the book of Revelation. The guy who is leading our class is a scholar who once taught at a Christian university. I love what his handout said across the top:
Revelation-The book of encouragement for Christians. (God has everything under control.)
I have never looked at this book that way. To me, it contains all the wild imagery that struck fear in my heart as a young child. So, I am really looking forward to learning more about a book that God intentionally included in the canon. By the way, if you've never studied the canon--how we got the books of the Bible that we have today, you are really missing out. We did a big canonical study earlier this year in our Sunday School class. It's one of the best and most eye-opening studies I've ever done. It gave me a new and fresh way of looking at the entire Bible. We explored why we have these books and not others. We started with the Old Testament and examined the early Jewish texts and how they were used. And finally, we looked at how we got the New Testament, who wrote the books, for whom and why. Eye-opening, indeed. Which brings me back to Revelation. We will be studying the book, as best we can, from the perspective of the early Christians in an attempt to better understand the book. I have no doubt that in hearing God speak to the early Christians through this text, we will also hear God speaking to us.