And that’s what Margaret Feinberg offers in her latest book, scouting the divine: my search for God in wine, wool, and wild honey. In this book, Feinberg seeks to better understand the message of the Bible though conversation from people who can best relate to the stories. Check out this overview of the book from the back cover…

A Bible full of ancient truths. A woman living a modern life. Join the critically acclaimed author Margaret Feinberg as she invites readers on the spiritual adventure of a lifetime. In her quest to better understand what God wants to communicate through the Bible, Feinberg explores the symbols and metaphors within its stories. To discover these deeper meanings, she spends time with a shepherdess in Oregon, walks the fields with a farmer in Nebraska, explores a vineyard of California, and talks with a veteran beekeeper in Colorado. Along the way, she gains deeper insight about how Scripture applies to life today and discovers answers to puzzling questions. Do sheep really know their shepherd’s voice? How often does a grapevine need to be pruned? What does it mean when a land is described as overflowing with honey?

What can be more exciting that this book? How about a rock-star crew leading us through this book as we seek to generate some discussion about Feinberg’s discoveries? Over the next few weeks one person from this project will lead us through each part of the book sharing their thoughts, perspectives, and feelings.

The schedule along with who will be sharing is as follows:

• introduction (11/16) – Dan King, @bibledude (bibledude.net)

1. the good shepherd (11/19) – Don F Perkins, @donfperkins (Shizuka Mura)
2. the harvest (11/23) – Laura Chase, @WOMAudio (Life 89.1 FM)
3. the land of milk and honey (11/26) – Karen Spears Zacharias, @karenzach (Karen Spears Zacharias)
4. the vine (11/30) – Sean Wrench, @forsakengen (Forsaken Generation)

• closing thoughts (12/3) – Margaret Feinberg, @mafeinberg (margaretfeinberg.com)

So stay tuned for some great discussion, and please feel free to jump into the comments and share your thoughts! In the meantime, here are a few things that you can do right now…

• Buy the book. It will be a much better experience for you if you follow along in your own copy of the book.
• Subscribe to updates. Get the latest posts in this series in your email inbox or favorite feed reader. This is the best way to keep up with everything!
• Tweet it up! Follow @bibledude and retweet updates from this event. If you want to share your own tweets, make sure that you use the #scouting hashtag.

She walked up to me as I was setting up for my morning session, shook my hand, and simply stated, “I am Alice.” We laughed about that for a moment, but I never realized that this was about to be one of the most powerful moments of this trip for me.

In order to understand what I mean, you’ll have to understand part of the lesson that I was responsible for. I had taught the last lesson of the day in yesterday’s session, and was about to pick up where I left of this morning. I was responsible for teaching the section on finances. Before we finished yesterday I had already started my piece on the importance of separating personal and business money. One of the illustrations that I used was this story about a fictional person named Alice…

Alice has a small shop located in front of her house. She sells groceries, such as eggs, sugar, flour, and soap. If she needs any sugar or other groceries, she takes them from the store. Sometimes Alice loses customers because she runs out of items. She does not have enough money to buy more items until she sells something. She often does not have enough money to buy food for her family. She wonders why her business is not making money. She must ask her husband for more money to put into the business.

After this story we would continue by discussing her situation and how not separating personal and business money was affecting her ability to be successful in her business. So when this woman came to me as I was preparing for my morning lesson and introduced herself as Alice, I thought she was referring to the Alice from this illustration!

As we laughed she continued by telling me, “My real name is Alice. But today I am a new Alice!” In a sort of ironic twist, she actually meant that she was both (1) really named Alice, and (2) that she was also the Alice from yesterday’s lesson. She proudly told me that, “no more will [she] be the old Alice who is not wise with her money!”

She was incredibly grateful for what we were doing for her, and realizing the impact I was having made me feel awesome!  I felt like I was somehow becoming and important part of Alice’s life. Before I left for this trip, one member at my home church had told me that God would ‘knit my heart with theirs, and I just starting to realize that this was actually happening!

By the end of this day we had completed another great session with some amazing people. They were so grateful for what we had done that they even sang to us…

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

As we wrapped up our work in Kenya, we had a couple of days over the weekend before we needed to be in Uganda to do it all over again. So we headed out for a little retreat!

We had found a GREAT deal at a tented camp called Sweetwater in the area of Mount Kenya. I was incredibly excited about this much needed safari retreat!

As we arrived and got checked in, we immediately had to select the safari drives that we were going to go on. One of our options was to do a night drive, and our best chance for that was going to be to do it that night.

After dinner we loaded up in the van (a special one that the roof opens on, especially made for safari drives like this), and headed out to see some of the nighttime activity of the animals.

We saw some cool giraffes, elephants , and many other cool animals. But the highlight of the night was watching a lioness stalking a pack gazelles! It was amazing to see the big cat crouch down into an attack position and attempt to pounce her potential dinner! After several attempts this lioness never did get her prey, but to watch it was an experience that I will never forget!

After a busy week it was great to be in a place of rest but it was even better to be out in the wild in God’s amazing creation! This might sound kind of funny, but there is something about being under the African sky watching these animals that makes Creation make more sense than it ever had before.

After this amazing night drive, it was time to go get some rest. We had to get up early the next day for more safari and enjoying God’s beautiful creation…

Check out more from this series in the africa diaries.

For our next two-day session on basic Christian business skills, we had to drive about an hour outside of town into a much more rural community called Kairi. Most of the drive was down poorly paved and/or dirt roads making this commute a bit of a bumpy one.

The land was beautiful! But along the way, I regularly saw people living in conditions that I just never imagined. The truth of the situation that I was watching as we drove by became quickly apparent to me. THIS is how most people in Kenya live!

While relaxing in my room in the evenings, I tried to take in some of the local culture by checking out what they had on TV. That alone was quite an experience! It has been a long time since I had to adjust the rabbit ears on a set with a 13′ screen!

One evening I was catching the local news out of Nairobi when I saw a scroll come across the bottom of the screen. Apparently Kenya Power was proud to report that now 18% of homes in Kenya had access to electricity! This was something to be proud of because it represented a huge increase in access to power in homes over recent years!

For me, the hardest part about this is realizing that the majority of these fortunate homes were culstered in the larger towns and cities. That meant that the area that I was driving through right now was likely well below the curve on that statistic.

The people were amazing though! As we taught our lessons at this site, I could not help but to think about the conditions that these people lived in. But nonetheless, they came and gave me lots of reasons to hope that what we were planting was going into good soil!

At times their lack of quality education smacked me in the face, but regardless of what they’ve gotten before it was easy to see their hunger for knowledge! I once again felt like the presence of our team and the knowledge that we were imparting literally uncapped their potential. All that most of these people knew was farming, and even that was on a small scale. I saw their eyeslight up as they started thinking about working together to accomplish much bigger dreams than what they previously thought possible. That was really cool!

However, I also realized another need that started to present itself. We were there to teach them BASIC business skills. But as they started to have bigger dreams for what they could do, it became obvious that they would need much more in-depth training and mentoring.

Don’t get me wrong! The two days that we gave them was successful beyond what I ever imagined! But it also opened the need for more. It breaks my heart sometimes to think that while I helped them dream big, that many of them may end up frustrated because they don’t know what to do next.

But these people are resilient… beyond anything that I’ve seen back home in the states. Somehow, they just find a way to make things work. And that is my prayer for these people. Until we can help them get even more education, Lord please help them to make good use of the tools that we gave them. Lord, help them to be successful and multiply. May the seeds that we planted, be fruitful… VERY fruitful!

There is also a bit of sadness as I wrap up this day, because it also means that my time in Kenya is coming to an end. Tonight we all have to pack up because it was our last night at our lodging place in Thika…

Check out more from this series in the africa diaries.

The end result = a piece of art that will [hopefully] be remembered for a long time!

When I first heard about the start-up magazine called GENERATE, I was excited just to find an opportunity to contribute some of my work and experiences. But eventually what I found was that I got to be a part [even if it is a small part] of something special.

And now that I’m holding my copy of the inaugural issue in my hands, I am even more honored to have had the opportunity to contribute to something so awesome.

The first issue of GENERATE just hit mailboxes within the last week, and I can’t already can’t wait until the next issue comes out! And this isn’t a magazine that is going to get relegated to magazine rack duty. Oh no… This is one that rivals the coffee table books that I am often proud to display for all to see!

The stories are raw and real.

The poetry is beautiful and borders on worship.

The interviews are thought-provoking.

The photography and artwork reflect God in an awe inspiring way.

And the overall design is just…   cool.

The end result is a magazine that will make you think and feel, laugh and cry, rejoice and get mad. This magazine is a great collection that reflects the Spirit of Christianity in our day. I think that Makeesha Fisher [executive editor and one of the founders] says it best when she states…

…what I value so much is the collective voice that is coming through. A voice that is honest and conflicted but filled with a generous hope that is so compelling to me. I’d like to focus on the value of story and the inspiration and hope-giving power of telling and hearing our stories. The collective narrative holds no value without the telling and the hearing — which also means that we cannot chronicle and pass along our story as Christians without one another.

Well done GENERATE team! And if you haven’t seen GENERATE yet, then I strongly recommend that you subscribe now.

As I tried to make eye contact with people so that I could give them the nod (which has replaced the need to actually say “hello” to each other), I found very few of them that would even look in my direction.

I know what you’re probably thinking…   since I was on a prayer walk, it was probably my vocal prayers for the heathens and the stack of tracts in my hands that made people turn away from me. But that wasn’t the case! It was the kind prayer walk where we walked in two’s and three’s and prayed quietly under our breath. To other people also walking down the street, I would have been just some other guy walking down the street too.

I didn’t expect people to stop and start random conversations with me, but it was clear to me that there is little sense of true community in our communities today.

READ MORE at the HighCallingBlogs.com website.

Recently I had the chance to catch up with Douglas Estes, the author of SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World. And with the opportunity to ask him any question that I wanted to, I decided to dig into this question about how our theology may (or may not) be affected by all of this technology.  So here is what I asked him, and his response…

BibleDude.net: One of the things that I notice quite a bit within online Christian communities is that ‘denomination’ does not seem as important as the fact that we are all followers of Christ. How do you see the growth of online church affecting our theology? Does it cause us to water down our theology, or does it force us to think more about what we believe?

Douglas Estes: Thanks for the question. It’s not an easy one … you win the blog-tour award for ‘stump the author’ … so due to the complexity of it, I’ll address a few deeper issues, with the final paragraph being a summarizing answer to your questions.

My experience with online Christian communities and internet churches gels with what you’re saying—people that attend and take part in virtual churches tend to do so for reasons other than a denominational label or a theological stance. This is a generalization, I can think of exceptions, but like most generalizations it is generally true. However, we do have a chicken-or-egg issue here: does the internet push church culture to be less focused on denominationalism/theological issues, or is church culture pushing churchgoing internet interaction to be less focused on denominationalism/theological issues? Said another way, people may assume that online church downplays denominationalism, but you could also argue that online churches are simply reflective of church culture at large, which has increasingly been downplaying denominationalism in recent years. I know this doesn’t come any closer to answering your question, but I do feel we need to be honest and say that while the internet may encourage theological fluidity, it also may just be reflecting or facilitating a larger trend in society.

This philosophical issue aside, “How do I see the growth of online church affecting our theology?” I think it will depend on several constants and several variables (but the variables are outside of our ability to know at this point). Let’s consider one constant. We all know that there are sections of the church that are committed to (Christian) ecumenicism, even radical tear-down-the-walls types of ecumenicism. There are also sections of the church that are committed to what they might refer to as ‘doctrinal purity.’ And, of course, people in the middle. As each of these groups increasingly take to the internet, they’ll take their viewpoints with them. I won’t be surprised if in the near future some virtual churches have strict limits on membership while others have little or no limit. (Remember: While there is a lot of debate about the internet (and technology) changing us, let’s not forget that it’s not Prometheus’ fire or a genie in a bottle; we made the internet (Al Gore jokes aside), and we made it in our image. So while we are shaped by technology to a degree, we shape it a lot more than we may want to admit). This is one example of a constant (in this case, human nature) that we know to be true. Another constant is that theology must always adapt to the issues of the day or it will grow stale and die. So we know that the growth of internet campuses must—by its very nature—stretch our theology, and it should do so. There are other constants, but these are two of the most important.

There are also some variables that affect this discussion, such as: Will censorship become a part of the internet, and will some theological viewpoints be censored (such as maybe an internet church that believes in spanking children censored by a government or corporation)? How much will the internet really level the communication playing field (right now, it seems unlikely that a rural church could have a successful internet campus as compared to a McMegachurch)? Will the internet church become an option of the status quo so quickly as to not really challenge the church as a whole (or will we read the book, The 5 Things Virtual Church Can Teach Your Church and be done with it?)

Since this is a blog not a book, let me wrap up with your final two questions: “Does online church cause us to water down our theology, or does it force us to think more about what we believe?” I know this is an unexpected answer but, simply put: No, for most people it does not cause them to water down their theology, and no, for most people it won’t force them to think more about what they believe. The reason I answer this way (a bit pessimistically) is that for people who care about theology, the internet will amplify that by giving them access to people who also care about theology. For people who don’t care much about theology or denominational issues in the real world; they won’t care too much about it in the virtual world, either. Yes, I know that there is a great deal of concern about ‘googling for God’ or consulting Wikipedia on matters of faith but this is a part of the discerning process of humanity since the Fall. Yes, I also know that many internet campuses tend to be less focused on preaching and teaching than a brick and mortar church, but this mostly has to do with the current state of technology. In the end, the depth of theology found in online churches will mostly depend on the depth of its leaders and people (same as with physical churches today). For most people, online church won’t challenge them to think more about what they believe unless they are already open to that challenge. (Of course, the online church can challenge the status quo of church a great deal, and in a powerful way—but it will only challenge those people who are open to the challenge). Ultimately, the internet is a synthetic place/amplifying medium that simply reflects the people who live there/make use of it. Online churches are real churches that exist in synthetic space, and its people will act accordingly.

For more from Douglas Estes:

SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World
by Douglas Estes

The virtual church is here, and it’s poised for explosive growth as a generation comfortable with virtual worlds cultivates faith communities online. What is the virtual church, and what possibilities and concerns does it create? This must-read book opens a dialog no culturally aware Christian passionate about the church and evangelism can afford to miss.

For more from other folks on this blog tour:

• Returned Sheep
• The Digital Sanctuary
• Church Relevance
• Mark D. Roberts
• Tall Skinny Kiwi
• Captain’s Blog

If you listen to Todd’s music, then you probably already know that he’s got a heart for authentic Christianity. His music reflects a man who wants the Real Deal in his life, regardless of what might be popular. Therefore, I didn’t want to just ask him about the songs that he sings, or the tour that he is on, I wanted to find out more about what makes this dude tick.

BibleDude: We all know that you must do lots of traveling and shows. How do you get out of ‘performance’ mode before you play? And if you find yourself in that spot, then what do you do to refocus yourself?

Todd Agnew: I’ve found that I have to stay in contact with God or everything becomes stale. Teaching truth doesn’t work well when you’re not walking with the One who is Trust. One thing we’re doing on the Promise Remains tour right now is we have devotions before the show every night. Each night we dig into one of God’s promises. That way we have encountered Him and His promise in a new, fresh way before we walk on stage. It may not play in our specific set, but it definitely affects our hearts and the place we minister from.

BibleDude: How have you reconciled the need to be an artist with the need to meet marketplace expectations, and what advice would you have for other artists (or anyone else for that matter) who struggle to find this type of balance?

Todd Agnew: Give up. No, just kidding. That balance, if there is one, is probably the most difficult thing in the CCM industry. Years ago, I heard Reed Arvin say, “Any time you put Christ and business in the same term, you’re going to have tension.” And that’s true. Christ gives freely and business makes money. They don’t mix well. For me, I can only walk the path God has for me. I have to trust that He will provide for my family. This record found us in much more of a wrestling match with these ideas than we ever had been before. Everyone had ideas of what would make it “succeed”. But at the end of the day, I can only write the songs God gives me and record them in a way that I hope people hear them.

BibleDude: You’ve said before that while writing some of the music for this album that you sometimes don’t understand all of this stuff, and wish that God would just make it obvious about what He wants you to do. What can you tell me about your personal journey through the process of writing this album? What has God shown you?

Todd Agnew: Well, I got married and became a father. Those are two huge life changes. And we moved across the country. And we had the business tension with the record, from your previous question. So, we had some pretty huge things in our lives. I definitely have been in a place of saying, “God, I want to do what You want, if You would only make it clear what that is.” I have been learning to lean on Jesus. I think at my best I have used Jesus as crutches. I don’t mean as a crutch like people have said before. I mean, the way you walk on crutches. Lean on them, lean on me, lean on them, lean on me. And while that gets you somewhere, it leaves you chafed. Sorry about that picture. But God has been teaching me more and more about depending on Him completely. For being a husband. For being a parent. For being a homeowner. For being a minister. For being a musician. For everything. Only then will you find His path for you. Only when He is all you have will you truly known He is all you need. Or like C.S. Lewis said, “He who has God plus many things has no more than He who has God alone.”

BibleDude: What are your NEEDS? Where do you realize your own frailty as a human and an artist? Where do you reach out to God the most when you realize your own limitations?

Todd Agnew: I think it’s in parenting and husbanding. Is husbanding even a word? Anyway, in those two love relationships, I definitely see myself falling short the most. And I think they are the two most important parts of God’s plan for me. I am learning to lean on Him for every decision, every response. I’m not there yet. But I’m learning.

BibleDude: What’s next for Todd Agnew?

Todd Agnew: Well, we’re out on the Promise Remains tour for the whole fall, with Building 429 and Kimber Rising. It’s off to a great start and should be a great tour. Then we’re off for Thanksgiving and turn around and hit the Christmas tour for a few weeks. I think Rush of Fools and Meredith Andrews are coming with us. I don’t know if that’s official, but that’s what I’m hoping for at least. Then it’s time to regroup and stay home with the family for a while. This will be the first real touring season we’ve been through as a family so I plan to reinvest once it’s over.

BibleDude: Rock on dude! Thanks for taking the time to share your heart with us! We just pray that God continues to work through you in amazing ways. We also pray a blessing over your new family… may it be a shining example to other families, and may God reveal more of Himself to you through your role as a husband and a father! Amen!

Need is available in stores now!

I’m really honored that each of you have taken the time to give a thoughtful reading to this short book.  I often feel that there is a huge gap between the world of scholarship (where I live) and the world of the church.  We publish and discuss technical matters regularly but rarely do we take the time to make these rich things accessible to everyone.  That was my goal in this series.  And that you read it thoughtfully and gave such amazing comments — usually things more profound than I could ever think of — tells me that conversations like this need to continue.

This particular book, Jesus the Middle East Story Teller, is trying to do what we call “contextual interpretation.”  This means that we admit something right up front:  that the cultural, social, political, economic context of Jesus’ world was different than ours.  And that for us to really understand him and his stories, we have to jump back in time and unravel some of these mysteries from the ancient world.  So the idea of borrowing bread late at night, or asking your dad for your inheritance — you name it — these things cannot be understood easily from our position.  It would be like taking a very good joke about the Batman Dark Knight film, burying it for 2,000 years, and then expecting readers in the future to understand it.  “Who was Batman?” they might ask!  And some researcher will write a little book explaining that Dark Knight was a film and that films were things shown on screens, etc. etc.

My encouragement to you is to continue studying context to open the world of the Bible in ways the average person will not.  Always make sure that your sources are reliable.  Always make sure that a contextual reconstruction is based on sound scholarship, the texts of antiquity, archaeology, and cautious cultural analysis.  But if you do, you will have a grasp of the Bible like few others and you’ll be able to speak of God’s word with an authority and power you never had before.

This is a very cool blog group.  And website.  It’s a new discovery for me and I know I’ll enjoy coming back again many times.

Gary Burge, Ph.D.
Wheaton College & Graduate School

BUY THE BOOK   |   FOLLOW THE PROJECT

The Foolish Builder? I beg to differ. I believe a better title for this chapter is Selfish vs. Selfless. If you boil this chapter down to the nitty-gritty, that’s what it’s all about. Let me fill you in:
 
The central story for this chapter is a man who asked Jesus to mediate a family quarrel (Luke 12:13-14). Reading this with modern eyes doesn’t begin to explain exactly what’s going on. It simply seems like someone wanting their inheritance. Gary Burge picks this apart a bit more to give us a bigger picture.
 
He was trying to use Jesus’ influence. In Bible times, a rabbi, or Jewish religious leader, would be called on to settle minor disputes. We might pick up the phone and call a lawyer, but back then, they would find the modern day equivalent of a pastor. Rabbis would be trained in the Jewish laws handed down from Moses. Jesus was widely known as a spiritual teacher, with many people equating him with rabbis, though he had not completed formal rabbinical training.
 
The inheritance was likely land. These days, many of us rent or lease. Those of us who own will likely sell their house and move into a new one once, if not several times in our lives. The idea of a piece of land permanently owned by anyone, let alone a family is a bit of a foreign concept. Fact: in those days land was associated with prestige and honor – not just the monetary value of the land.
 
The man was likely trying to get his own way. He tried to tell Jesus what to do: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” He didn’t ask Jesus to look at the facts and make a decision of his own. He simply told Jesus what to say.
 
Jesus doesn’t take sides. The man was likely to lose the relationship with his brother if Jesus were to divide this land. Christ realizes the central fact in the dispute: it was over the love of money. He refuses the title of arbiter and speaks the next phrase: “Be careful to guard yourselves from every kind of greed. Life is not about having a lot of material possessions.” (God’s Word Version) I always thought that this was a mere lead into the next story about the man who tore down his barns for the sake of building bigger ones to hold his crops (Gary Burge talks about that too, but I’ll let you read it for yourself). Christ was commenting on the inheritance issue, and then clarified the statement with the parable that followed.
 
So what?
 
That’s my favorite phrase to say when reading a passage of scripture. I can dig into the Greek. I can dig into the context of the Jewish faith of Bible times. I can find thousands of commentaries online to pick apart a verse, but so what? Head knowledge is useless unless we apply it to our lives in some way. So here’s “so what:”
 
The legacy you leave will not be what you own, but the lives you touched. PLEASE don’t misjudge me. This is not a cry for you to go dump your money in the offering tray next time a missionary comes to your church (though we should support our missionaries). When most people read this scripture, they interpret it as though we should give away all we have to support the poor and needy. That is well and good – the Bible does call us to help the widows and orphans. But do we do it merely by tossing money at the problem?
 
The chapter, and for that matter, the book, closes with a true story about two men: one named John Bennett. He built mission agencies and traveled the world. At the age of 47, he died of a heart attack. The other was a friend of the author’s that lives in Chicago. He flew all of his children and grandchildren to Ecuador to cast the vision of helping the people in the country. After he dies, he wants his estate to be used for positive means. Both of these men live a life for others.
 
Personally, I’m reminded of my friend, Pastor Ramon Morante. He came to Indonesia with his entire family – a wife and three kids – to help reach the lost here. He was a man that always had a smile on his face. While he had very little most of the time, he would find a way to help those around him. He organized countless mission opportunities to reach out the countless poor of Jakarta.
 
Sadly, just last week, he went to be with the Lord. It was so sudden. One day, he’s there, ministering, sharing, loving, and the next day he’s not there. He will never be there. His memorial service was packed. The small funeral home was packed to overflowing – filled with the lives he touched.
 
I’m not saying that we have to pack up and sell off everything and go live overseas as missionaries. FACT: we are all missionaries. Every time we go to work, to the grocery store, gas station, mall, park, gym, pool, sidewalk, doctor’s office, restaurant, fast food joint, library, coffee shop, yoga class, sporting event, etc., we are all missionaries. We don’t have to try to get everyone we meet to kneel down and say the sinner’s prayer. Rather, we should be “the salt and light” to the world – with our words of love and mercy and with our deeds of compassion and grace.
 
Pastor Ramon was a good man. He lived life to the fullest. He lived life without regrets. We should follow his lead. You don’t know when your life will end, but when you live a life that reaches into the hearts of those around you, it won’t matter whether you know our not. You would be living a life without regrets.

BUY THE BOOK   |   FOLLOW THE PROJECT

About the author: 

Gabriel Morton is a husband, father, teacher, and youth pastor. His passion is changed lives. He loves it when he sees churches uniting in spreading the message of Christ’s love across the Globe. Want some mental floss? Check out his blog Christ in 3D.