Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A Trip Down the Trail of a Rabbit

So last night 3 of the 4 new teenagers from two weeks ago came back to the adult Bible study in Santa Rita. I am teaching a 5 week series on the 10 commandments and what Jesus had to say about them. Last night was Don't Commit Adultery and Don't Steal.

In the middle of talking about adultery somebody asked me about Hades. This took us on a 15 minute question and answer session about heaven and hell where we talked about everything from "absent from the body is present with the Lord" and the rich man and Lazarus, to the Great White Throne Judgement. It is these rabbit trails where people are most involved in the discussion and seem the most interested. It keeps me on my toes because I don't teach anything that I can't read first to them from the Bible, so I have to know where everything is or not bring it up.

Then Bernabé (a 72 yr old lady who comes every week) asked if you could go to heaven if you had fallen in adultery. This was perfect timing because it was right before I started talking about Jesus and the woman brought to him who had been caught. This was also a good lesson because I got to talk about the guys about not giving inappropriate attention to girls and to the girls about not inviting it.

Last week we were talking about honoring your parents and the promise that goes with that commandment. I wanted to prove a point, so I asked Aaron, an older man, if he had honored his parents. "Well, I'm an orphan and never met my parents," he responded.

"Oh, then Fabio, did you honor your parents?" "My parents died when I was really young so I don't remember anything about them."

"Ok...um... Bernabé, did you honor your parents?" "Well, my parents weren't good examples of parents, especially my father who was involved in really bad things so I ran away when I was young."

I stopped asking at that point and continued on with Don't Kill.

Last night we also started taking suggestions for a name for the Bible Study. Some people started suggesting names from churches they had passed on the road. I won't let anything be considered for the vote though, unless they can explain to me what it means or who they are. Some names that did not make the cut last night: Calvary, Saint Peter, Saint Luke, Saint James... The candiates right now are Hope and New Life. In a couple weeks we'll have a vote and everything will be oficial.

3 comments:

  1. "I won't let anything be considered for the vote though, unless they can explain to me what it means or who they are. Some names that did not make the cut last night: Calvary, Saint Peter, Saint Luke, Saint James..."

    No one could explain what Calvary was or who those Saints were?

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  2. Just because you've heard the name, doesn't mean you know anything about it... They knew that Calvary had something to do with Jesus, but I've never used that word when teaching because I tend to only use words that are self explanatory. Nobody could tell me that Peter was a disciple of Jesus, they knew Luke was the name of a book, but didn't know anything else about the good Doctor. I was disappointed by James because we had studied that book and talked about him as Jesus' brother, but there's a lot of new information so a review is needed most of the time.

    I told you we don't work with Catholics...

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  3. Their challenges are sad as it doesn't seem to be isolated cases but entire communities...I vote for New Life! And pray they receive New Life through Christ! (I know I don't get a vote!)

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