Ephesians - getting up to speed

We've been in Ephesians together for a few weeks now. We've talked about all the "blessing" God has poured into us through Jesus Christ; about God's eternal plan to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under the authority of Christ; about the gift of the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of the inheritance in store for those of us "in Christ"; about how salvation is a gift from God, by grace and not by "works"--even faith itself is a gift; about how Christ brings peace/reconciliation to those who are separated (Jews & Gentiles) and gives us all our identity as citizens of God's kingdom, members of God's family, and the temple where God's Spirit lives.

From the past few weeks, what do you want to talk about some more? Or what new thoughts or questions do you have, that we didn't get to address in depth already?

An experiment in hermeneutical community

Hermeneutical Community
(her-meh-NOO-ti-kuhl ; cuhm-MYOO-ni-tee)

This is just a fancy and impressive way to say that we are becoming the kind of community that works together to understand the Bible and live it out faithfully. "Hermeneutical" is an adjective that means "interpretive", and "community" means, well, community. We want to try to understand the Bible together, and we want to put it into practice together as a community, and not merely as a collection of individuals.

We created this blog as one way to continue throughout the week the conversations we have on Sunday mornings. Each Sunday we'll post a summary of our conversation from the worship gathering, and then we can go back and forth by posting comments; our two cents. It isn't meant to replace face to face conversation, just to supplement it. As the comments build up, hopefully we'll get to explore some of the ideas raised by the Scripture in a little more depth than we are able to on Sunday mornings. Add enough of our two cents, and eventually we'll have a wealth of rich conversation.

So post your questions, clarifications, new ideas, rabbit trails, hypotheses, and thoughts on how we live this out together. And respond to each other's two cents. A couple ground rules:

1. Be real. There are no stupid questions here, and it's a space to try out any idea--if you're way out in left field we'll let you know, but not in a way that demeans your interpretive attempt. Wondering if a thought makes sense? Try it out. There's room for it here.

2. Be kind. Feel free to question each other, and dialogue about the ideas posted here. But treat each other with love and gentleness, keeping in mind ground rule #1. At least for a while, I'll be moderating comments to enforce this ground rule. I won't allow posts that are unkind.

So let's go for it. Let's be a hermeneutical community!