Practice Resurrection Study Guide - Softcover

Peterson, Eugene; Santucci, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802865526 ISBN 13: 9780802865526

Verlag: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Though bringing people to new birth in Christ through evangelism is essential, says Peterson, isn't it obvious that growth in Christ is equally essential? Yet the American church does not treat Christian growth and character formation with equivalent urgency. We are generally uneasy with the quiet, obscure conditions in which growth takes place, and building maturity in Christ too often gets relegated to footnote status in the text of our lives. In Practice Resurrection Peterson brings the voice of Scripture -- especially Paul's letter to the Ephesians -- and the voice of the contemporary Christian congregation together to unpack what it means to fully grow up "to the stature of Christ." Peterson's robust discussion will move readers to restore transformed Christian character to the center of their lives. This helpful study guide is designed to enable small groups in schools or churches -- or even individuals -- to delve deeper into the timely wisdom of Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ. Peter Santucci here breaks up Peterson's book into thirteen "sessions," each of which contains a summary, select quotes to consider, questions for interaction, and a prayer drawn from the text of Ephesians that is covered in the corresponding book chapter.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rebecca Manley Pippert is the author of Out of the Saltshaker and a popular speaker living in the Chicago suburbs. Ruth Siemens spent twenty-one years pioneering IFES campus fellowships in Latin America and Europe, and founded Global Opportunities, which helps missions-motivated Christians support themselves abroad as they integrate work and witness.

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Practice Resurrection

STUDY GUIDEBy Eugene H. Peterson Peter Santucci

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2010 William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6552-6

Contents

Preface....................................................................................viiiSession 1. The Church of Ephesus (Eph. 1:1-2)..............................................1Session 2. The Message to the Ephesians (Eph. 4:1, 7)......................................6Session 3. God and His Glory (Eph. 1:3-14).................................................11Session 4. Paul and the Saints (Eph. 1:15-23)..............................................16Session 5. Grace and Good Works (Eph. 2:1-10)..............................................20Session 6. Peace and the Broken Wall (Eph. 2:11-22)........................................24Session 7. Church and God's Manifold Wisdom (Eph. 3:1-13)..................................29Session 8. Prayer and All the Fullness (Eph. 3:14-21)......................................33Session 9. One and All (Eph. 4:1-16).......................................................39Session 10. Holiness and the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:17-32)....................................44Session 11. Love and Worship (Eph. 5:1-20).................................................49Session 12. Household and Workplace (Eph. 5:21–6:9)..................................55Session 13. The Wiles of the Devil and the Armor of God (Eph. 6:10-17).....................60

Chapter One

SESSION 1

The Church of Ephesus (Eph. 1:1-2)

(pp. 1-29)

Summary

Birth is simple; growth is complex. Introducing people to Jesus, birthing new Christians, is fairly simple. But growing them up into mature Jesus followers? This harder task is woefully neglected. But Scripture is clear — God wants us to grow up. That's where Ephesians comes in. It is our primary text for maturing into a healthy, robust faith.

But before looking at Ephesians, we need to understand the term that gives Peterson's book its title: practice resurrection. Resurrection is not what we do; it's what God has done in Jesus. Jesus is powerfully alive and present with us as we go about this growing up in Christ. To practice resurrection, then, is to keep company with the resurrected Jesus as he leads us into maturity. This is essential: The same one who was in control of Jesus' resurrection is in control of our maturing. And that's not us. We don't get saved and then take over. From start to finish, it's God's work in us.

If practicing resurrection is the what of maturing in Christ, church is the where. Church is the context, but it's not an easy one and many drop out. It is easy to become disillusioned with church and to dismiss it as irrelevant and condescend to its unimpressive members. But church was not meant to be a utopian community, nor was it meant to be the answer to all the world's problems. Rather, Peterson states, "church as we have it provides the very conditions and proper company congenial for growing up in Christ, for becoming mature, for arriving at the measure of the stature of Christ" (p. 14). God intends the church to be as it is. On purpose. Yes, on purpose. To help us get in on that purpose, Paul in Ephesians shows us what otherwise can't be seen: God's will, Christ's presence, the Spirit's work.

Ephesians is unique among the letters attributed to Paul. It's the one letter not written in response to a specific situation or set of problems. Instead of fixing something wrong, it sets out to establish something right. As such, it gives us not an image of a perfect church, but an image of what is actually going on under the hood of every messed-up but Jesus-following church. (It would be a mistake to read Ephesians in order to see what a perfect church would look like, because a perfect church has never existed. Ephesians isn't a how-to model for perfection, but a window into what the Trinity is doing in every church.)

If we see the church as a neglected structure, we'll try to renovate it. If the renovation doesn't meet our lofty romantic ideal, we'll move on and dismiss it. If we see the church as a business opportunity, we'll market it to targeted consumers to make them happy. But neither romantic images or pragmatic business strategies have an adequate imagination for church.

Church is a miracle, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the same miraculous way Jesus was conceived in his mother Mary. Just as surprising. Just as overlooked. Just as scandalous. Just as absurd. The elite and talented aren't the Holy Spirit's choice for forming congregations. The church, Peterson writes, "is the same Jesus story that is presently lived out in congregations ..." (pp. 26-27). The same story. The same conditions.

We don't get to choose the members of our congregations. The Holy Spirit does. It's not obvious at first, but with a long, persistent, and loving look, the body of Christ can be seen in any congregation. Every outsider and even most insiders miss this. If we persist, as outsiders do, to try to see the church through romantic, crusader, or consumer lenses, we never like what we see. Rather, echoing Bonhoeffer's discussion of our wish-dreams of church in his book Life Together, Peterson writes, "The church we want becomes the enemy of the church we have" (p. 29). That is why we have Ephesians, correcting our view of church and restoring its place in God's work of growing us up in Christ.

Quotes to Consider

"Is it an exaggeration to say that birth has received far more attention in the American church than growth?" (p. 3)

"By delegating character formation, the life of prayer, the beauty of holiness — growing up in Christ — to specialized ministries or groups, we remove it from the center of the church's life." (p. 6)

"For far too long now, with full backing from our culture, we have let the vagaries of our emotional needs call the shots. For too long we have let ecclesiastical market analysts set the church's agenda." (p. 7)

"We live our lives in the practice of what we do not originate and cannot anticipate." (p. 8)

"Many Christians find church to be the most difficult aspect of being a Christian." (p. 11)

"Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing human witness and physical presence to the Jesus-inaugurated kingdom of God in this world." (p. 12)

"Church is the appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the biggest headlines...." (p. 12)

The practice of resurrection is an intentional, deliberate decision to believe and participate in resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life." (p. 12)

"Church is not what we do; it is what God does, although we participate in it." (p. 17)

"None of us ever sees the church whole and complete. We have access only to something partial, sometimes distorted, always incomplete." (p. 17)

"Without Ephesians we would be left to guesswork, making up 'church' as we went along, and we'd be easy prey to every church fad that comes along." (p. 17)

"The first conception [by the Holy Spirit] gave us Jesus; the second conception gave us church." (p. 25)

"Paul's metaphor of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0802865526
• ISBN 13: 9780802865526
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 74
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland