Over the last couple of months, I’ve been kicking around ideas for putting what I’ve studied and taught in Sunday School and at Southeastern into text. While I don’t think that what I’ll say is a “new” or “fresh” perspective on an issue, I hope that what I write provides a way for people who don’t have the time or resources to go to seminary to share in the benefits from my learning. My education would only really be a waste if I kept it to myself.
Here are a couple of the projects I’m thinking about right now:
Amos Today: How Amos’s words calls today’s church to action. I’ve been studying Amos in my Septuagint class. In his message to Israel he describes the depth of Israel’s sin and coming judgment of God on his people. We are met by a holy God who cares about what his people do. His words are tough yet gracious since they since he reminds of the importance of how we live in his world. Even the “mundane” matters to God!
What the Psalms say about… A few months ago I team taught a 13 week series on various types of Psalms. Instead of dividing the psalms by their genre, we asked how the psalms address different situations in our lives, how they guide our worship, how they structure our prayers, and how they shape our understanding of God and faith.
In addition to these topics, I’ve been struggling with what the content should look like. I would like for this book to be useful in small groups.
How detailed should the book be? How much attention should the book pay attention to academic matters?
On the flip side, how devotional should the book be? How can both the “academic” and “devotional” elements be blended together?
If this book’s target audience is small groups, what kind of material would be beneficial for small groups?
The biggest question I have to answer is how much do I let questions we ask today shape the material? The biblical text often (and ought too!) reshape the kinds of questions we ask and I need to pay special attention to that.
There’s a lot of work to be done, but I’m hopeful that by God’s grace I can produce something that is useful to my brothers and sisters in Christ.
nathanielcooley 