Like Grace, I love the Old Testament ... but in the New Testament, I love I John. And apart from having had a good portion of it read at my wedding, here's the reason why....
Back in 2003, when the 40 Days of Purpose thing was taking off, our church decided to jump on the bandwagon. Not being a Calvinistic church -- and being the pastor responsible for teaching our series of church doctrine classes -- I wasn't up for doing it the normal way (...not that anyone here will be surprised by that :^) ), and proposed to our senior pastor that I write up a 40 day series based on the classes I had written and been teaching for the past three years. He was persuaded by my proposal ... and then I realized what I'd gotten myself into! I had three months to write, format and publish both a 40 days notebook to use instead of Warren's book as well as a simple adult Sunday School and an adult small group curriculum. I knew that God had his hand all over it because it was both finished (just in time) and exceeded everyone's expectations (except for the closet Calvinists, of course ... they were very unhappy campers).
One of the things I wanted to do differently from Warren's book was to have more continuity with the scripture references ... and as I began to think of which texts fit with each week's theme, well, it kept turning out to be from I John! So during our 40 day experience, we worked our way through the entire book. It was wonderful. The small group focus looked like this:
- Week One: Understanding Why We're Here from I John 1:1-2:11
- Week Two: Understanding Worship from I John 2:12-17
- Week Three: Understanding Fellowship from I John 2:18-3-10
- Week Four: Understanding Discipleship from I John 3:11-4:6
- Week Five: Understanding Service from I John 4:7-21
- Week Six: Understanding Evangelism from I John 5
So there you have it!
Who to tag? How about these four....
... okay, no more memes for me for a while!
Grateful that Papa is shown in I John to be light, love and life.