faithrunner

I finished teaching another term for B H Carroll last night. The course was New Testament II , Acts and the Pauline Letters . Try completing all that in eight, 2.5 hour settings! 14 people registered for the class, and all but two completed the majority of the classes. I get inspired and enthused as I walk through the inception and growth of the Jesus movement. Last night, as we walked through Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus I was reminded how we have institutionalized what were real-time, need-based instructions from an experience church planter to a wide-eyed neophyte who did not know what to do with false teaching, divisive people, widows, or rich people. Paul's quick time personal letters addressing his proteges' questions and concerns have become the basis for doctrines and practices that limit the church's growth rather than enhance it ; the reason Paul wrote it in the first place. We forget that the church, ekklesia, was an underground, illegal, grassroo...