New Thursday Morning Bible Study Topic

I am blessed to facilitate a weekly Thursday morning bible study at the church which has been meeting for the past couple of years.

We have focused on a variety of topics such as the "Just Neighbors" study on local and national poverty issues, the United Methodist Book of Resolutions which covers over 300 denominational stances on various social issues, the United Methodist Hymnal and the meaning of the hymns, the Book of Romans, the Book of Colossians, the Gospels, the Book of Revelation, several video studies by New Testament scholar and Anglican Bishop, N.T. Wright, and more recently, the "Prayers, Presence, Gifts, and Service: Forty Day Journey" stewardship campaign.

Tomorrow, we are excited to begin a new topical study focusing on the newly published book by the New Testament scholar, Scot McKnight, "The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible."

This is the kind of book that has a way of upsetting our apple carts because it helps us to see our own assumptions in our personal interpretations of biblical texts. Some of our assumptions are based more on commonly held interpretations about the bible rather than on a careful study of the original meaning of a particular text. McKnight offers specific examples of some of these commonly held assumptions.

What I like most about this book is that the author emphasizes how the bible has an overarching grand narrative which links the texts together. By knowing what the grand narrative of the bible is (the book describes this) we put ourselves in a much better position to interpret a particular passage of scripture.

But what does a blue parakeet have to do with all of this? Come Thursday morning at 10 A.M. and find out!