Revolutionary Freedom Fighter, George Jackson, said:
“The ruling clique approaches its task with a “what to think” program; the vanguard elements have the much more difficult of promoting “how to think.”
And that conceptual statement guides me as I lead the Bible Study at the church where I am blessed to serve as Pastor – Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in North Baltimore.
Bible Study has never been something that I’ve been overwhelming excited about namely because in my many experiences it has been either an opportunity for the Pastor to “preach” a lesson or it has looked like a facilitator standing in front of the audience telling them what they should think with very little meaningful interaction. I always said that if I ever became a Pastor that I would have a Bible Study that folks would want to come to.
So far we’re well on our way to creating that type of study experience. Pleasant Hope Baptist Church is on track to have the most dangerous Bible Study in Baltimore simply because I push the people to THINK. I don’t answer a whole lot of questions. I help folks to re-read the scriptures with “fresh eyes” and question what they read. I dissuade them from taking anything they read in the Bible at face value. EVERYTHING is open to questioning, criticism, challenge.
We read the scripture in its context understanding that it was written at a certain time, in a certain location, by a certain person (or persons) within a certain culture, for a certain reason.
The amazing thing is that as we engage in textual criticism and exegete the text in a way that honors the scripture’s original meaning (or likely meaning), my students then begin to draw parallels between the context and/or meaning of the passage we’re studying and their everyday realities.
Two weeks ago as we were studying the persecution of Jesus a discussion was born about the persecution of so many others who stood up against the status quo power structure and were viewed as a threat capable of organizing the masses thus necessitating their assassination or exile. It was such an invigorating discussion. It eventually led to us analyzing the Roman Empire and the Religious Order of Jesus’ time and looking at Baltimore’s Government and Shadow Government today. (We love dealing with “problem texts” by the way – like when Jesus called the syrophoenician woman a dog.)
In addition, we’ve started our studies off with warm up activities designed to get people’s juices flowing. We started with analyzing a Baltimore Sun article one night, we played a Jill Scott song the following week, and we read a Paul Lawrence Dunbar poem the following week. Who knows I might drop some Kanye West on them next time. They don’t know what to expect from week to week. I keep people on their toes and prayerfully am helping them to realize that critical study of the Holy Writ is just as much an act of worship as singing songs on Sunday morning.
We even have the teens coming out to Bible Study faithfully…and bringing their friends!
As we continue in our time of weekly critical study, it is obvious to me that this group will be a very dangerous sect of Believers. They won’t be walking around talking about “Bless me indeed” and “enlarge my territory” while hiding behind sofas when the Jehovah Witnesses knock on their doors.
They’ll be walking around with a heightened awareness of how the revolutionary message of God’s love toward humanity was understood over the centuries and how it applies to their lives and responsibilities to community today.
This Bible Study is a Bad Mutha – Shut yo’ mouth! What? I’m only talking about the MOST DANGEROUS BIBLE STUDY IN BALTIMORE!
Be there!
Every Tuesday 7:00PM
Pleasant Hope Baptist Church
430 E. Belvedere Avenue
Baltimore, MD 21212
(410) 435-0851
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Wish I was closer to Baltimore! I like those God-filled studies and deep discussions of His Things a whole bunch! Keep up the good works for Him!
Go Head brother…I knew you’d be doing BIG things with the flock you are blessed with…aint nothing like “teaching a man how to fish”…those that are brave enough to think outside the bos should never be hungry again!!! I’m proud of you brother and one of these days I’m gon come and get a sample of that “good ol spiritual soul food.”
Wishing you nothing but the best…your sister, Sister Tracy
I help folks to re-read the scriptures with “fresh eyes” and question what they read. I dissuade them from taking anything they read in the Bible at face value. EVERYTHING is open to questioning, criticism, challenge…
Rev Brown,
You are a bad man! It is high time that Christian churches move toward post-secondary education so to speak in terms of examining the Bible. Our present forms and understanding is based too much on 2 to 4000 year paradigms/interpretations that are terribly outdated. I suspect that Constantine’s intentions were noble when we brought in scholars to construct the Canon, however, it is time for sagacious post-modern human beings (with deeper understanding) to rexamine the ancient writ/interpretation of the writ and to place it in its proper context.
I believe that the church is in for a major embarassment soon, science is running far ahead of us. In the interim those who dare to challenge the status quo made end up like Galileo and others did and be excised by the church, but that is what Jesus did! Jesus challenged the orthodoxy!
The Bible was never written to be taken literally. According to Tony Browder, author and lecturer, “the book we have come to know as the Bible is actually a compliation of 66 books”, “‘written by 66 authors over a period of 2000 years.”‘
Among the writers assigned to write one of the books was William Shakespeare. According to Tony Browder, Shakespeare was forbidden by King James to publicize his involvement with the writing project. He found a clever way of hidding his “signature” within the material.
If you look at Psalm 46 (in King James version), you will note the 46th word from the beginning of the psalm is “shake,” and the 46th word from the end of the psalm is “spear.”
One basic truth about the Bible is that it was written in code. These codes encompass allegories, symbolism and numbers.
E-Double,
Never was intended is a bit too strong from my point of view, and therefore I would have to take issue with your conclusion that the canon was never written to be taken literally’, although I agree with why you arrived at your conclusion that it should not always be taken literally. Among other things, it has been tampered with!
Most historical information to the contrary points to the fact that Emperor Constantine and others like him had a motive for expecting the canon to be taken literally within their universes. Constantine for instance would not have gone to all of the trouble to have the canon compiled and to have the original copies strategically placed as he did and taught to the people, had he not intended for it to be taken literally.
In fact, I believe that the word of God was intended to be taken literally. The real challenge for scholars and believers today is to determine what is the word of God and what was added, deleted, co-opted, copied…and left out in the sacrosanct canon!
Unfortunately, most believers have been and are still being taught that the indefensible canon is the unadulterated word of God from cover to cover. We know better, but most ministers are afraid to tamper with historical teachings that lack verity and in many instances manuscript support. Isn’t it sad when we cannot have an open discussion about what someone wrote or claims to have been true! I subscribe to 1 Thess 5:21…prove it!
What is frightening is what happened to men like Galileo and Jesus for that matter when they dared to challenge the religious status quo. We need to be more forthright and say, you know a fuller disclosure has shown that…., so that people can get back to worshipping God and seeking God, and not the will of the canon or Constantine, Erasmus and others. Unfortunately, many Christians have become what they have criticized in this sense. Christians have openly labeled the Jews, accusing them of being stuck in dispensational theology, in their case the Mosaic Law.
Christians are stuck as well in their own form of Dispensational Christian Law, I believe, having outsourced their responsibility for pursuing full disclosure and having leaned too heavily on unproven, outdated, unverified, conflicting…sources, source materials, conclusions and paradigms!
I believe that the scientific community will soon embarrass the church, debunk and disprove much religious dogma and overthrow the faith of those who should have believed in God instead of what someone who may not have spoken for God after all wrote! How about the ongoing study of endocrinology, genetics, epigenetics as they all relate to homosexuality and other human conditions, or people who were born that way, made that way or chose to be that way. Get ready, for we are about to find out who did sin and who did not sin at all that has resulted in such conditions like intersex people! The belief of some Christians will be destroyed in an instance.
The upside is that we can get back to learning and to release the former shackles. The old model was that there is this great cosmic contest whose objective is to determine who can believe the most, based on what unknown and untested figures wrote! That’s not good! We all once believed in Santa Claus I suppose! I suspect that what we refer to as God, happens to be even bigger than the God of Christianity, Islam, Judaism….combined!
When will we simply learn to say that at times we are wrong, or that we didn’t do our homework and simply accepted what someone else wrote or said?
The paradigm is beginning to shift in Baltimore, what an honor to witness this move of God!
Blessings,
Joseph Deck