Faith Venture

Bible study as a culture neutral experience? Or, better said, cross-cultural experience. Bible Study magazine has an article this month on the organization InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. This is an organization for college students with local associations run by students.

It raised an interesting point. For many students, going away to the university (for my international readers, we use college and university interchangeably over here) is perhaps the first experience in multi-culturism. Perhaps it’s even the first time associating with people of different Christian persuasions.

The idea that the Bible is actually neutral in that regard–where you can gather groups of people from different cultures and different denominations in an honest and deep study of Scripture–never dawned on me. Not that I don’t approach it that way. But as a philosophy, that’s cool.

Perhaps since I was raised Methodist (4th generation, I’m told) with two Baptist minister uncles and then taught in a Catholic school, I regard all these and the rest as just different manifestations of how to worship God. Often it’s a matter of culture and upbringing. Fortunately in the U.S., outside of bouts of discrimination toward new denominations, we have not fought any religious wars along sectarian lines. In Europe, there’s an entirely different experience, which I’m sure deeply influences things there.

Just start with small groups and a Bible. And a passion for learning.

Service opportunities

Thought I’d pass along some reading I’ve done. There is a Website called “Lifehacker.” The hacker part comes from the technology sector where people “hack” electronics and programs to make them better. So Life-hacker is site that offers tips on how to live.

One of the Spiritual Disciplines is service. Many people are either confused or apprehensive about service opportunities. This Life hacker article discusses How to Find a Volunteer Gig You’ll Enjoy. Maybe it’ll help push some of you over the hurdle into a life of finding satisfaction in volunteer service.

This entry was posted on August 29, 2012 at 6:42 am and is filed under Disciplines, Service, Study. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.