I think it was Karl Barth who said “we ought to preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.”
The last couple of weeks at our Upstream gatherings we have been simply choosing current issues and connecting them with the Biblical story.
Tonight Herds did a great job of helping us engage firstly with the question of ‘why did so many Aussies love Steve Irwin?’ (interesting question) and then we split in 3 groups to discuss different newspaper stories.
1. There was a letter to the editor from a gay teenager asking that all future anti-gay letters with a religious bias be left unpublished because he felt he had suffered enough already from his time in a church.
2. An article that looked at divorce becoming more common among 50-59 year olds
3. An article on the environment and the consquences if we choose to neglect our responsibility to it.
All 3 generated some excellent interaction as we tossed them around. Its vital that faith and life rub closely against each other and that we deal with real life issues from the scriptures otherwise we risk irrelevant faith or cultural accomodation.download drag me to hell movie