One Sunday morning I sat on a red padded pew with bright stained glass all around me, and I worshipped.  I worshipped when the horrible hymn droned on for every freaking verse.  I worshipped when the children’s message focused on an age group that did not exist in the present group of people.  I worshipped during the liturgical prayers that asked God to forgive the church corporately for their selfishness and pride.  And I worshipped as the pastor spoke from the book of John on a passage I’d heard a million times before.

If you were to open N.T. Wright’s first book from his magnum opus series, “The New Testament and the People of God”, you would find the first 300 pages or so an instruction manual on how he reads and studies the scripture in 3 parts.  He explains in great academic detail that he reads the Bible as Theology, History, and Literature.  Ignoring any of these disciplines as one studies leaves the student with an incomplete picture of God’s word and the context in which it was written.

With this in mind, the reader of Wright’s biography on one of the most important and influential followers of Jesus is in for a deep and intense look at not only what Paul wrote to the churches, but why he wrote and acted as he did, and by those actions and writings, why his work spread throughout the Roman empire and beyond, effectively changing the world and it’s direction.  The book is a drink of water to anyone tired of normal modern understandings of the Apostle focused more on proving an enlightenment based systematic theology It is an ode detailing the kinds of problems, solutions, and teachings, the great evangelist and church planter communicated to those small groups of believers he introduced to Jesus.  “I believe that in our diligent searching of the scriptures we were looking for correct biblical answers to medieval questions.” Wright says as he gets down to the business of sharing the life of Paul with his readers.

As long as I live I’ll never forget the feeling of holding our record advance in my hand. There were two checks, one from WB, and one from CFA, totaling roughly 120K. We felt so important. We were also lucky to have Jon in our ear, constantly reminding us “you haven’t done crap yet so don’t get too ahead of yourselves.”  We each got to keep around $10k, and the rest was spent on lawyers and record production. I banked my money and didn’t quit my day job.

In an age where our president can literally say (or tweet) anything he wants, and people who previously screamed at the top of their lungs for the head of other leadership with obvious moral challenges now defend the current administration with circular, straw man, and every other kind of bad arguments, I know now that the church lives in this same world of unaccountable leadership.

The gateway drug was “Velvet Elvis”, Rob Bell’s first book that anybody had ever heard of, and it was amazing!  I read through it in a matter of hours over the course of two days and afterwards I pretty much devoured anything he wrote or anything he said online via his messages.  I could not get enough of what Bell had to say, and it begun to have a serious influence in my life.  One book/video after another he began to break down the systematic theology I believed until I all of a sudden, it became easy to ask myself, “Is this ‘Jesus dying and rising from the dead’ thing just like all of the other things I broke down?”  And I was a pastor!

This is the hardest thing I’ve had to write. I’ve started and stopped a dozen times, unsure of what to write. Almost a year after our stepping out in faith came crashing down,I’m still trying to figure things out and where to go from here. Being in a “wilderness” certainly feels like an apt description.

The phone rang. It was our manager Jon. “Just heard from Virgin and Atlantic. They’re both interested. You had better get better, and fast.” Panic set in. We were not ready for this. Our songs were not ready. Our relationships were not ready. Our live show was sure as heck not ready. Jon was/is not one to mince words. “You better get your ass in gear” he said. More on that while I take you a few steps backwards in time.

How you approach it depends on how you might approach learning itself. My Dad is into origins, and enjoys studying original Greek and Hebrew. Some new believers might like this. They could read with a concordance, looking up “Grace” or “Love” or “Mercy” and be led to specific sections of scripture. This is great for people who like to chew their meat a lot. Others might want to start with more basics, such as the Gospels and, as Al mentioned, the three letters of John. I love Ephesians. It’s practical and offers great tools for new believers, such as putting on the armor of God, a powerful analogy for equipping yourself for the spiritual battles to come.