Matt's Second Blog Post. Yo.

This week in my practicum we talked largely about the scripture passage out of 1 Timothy 2 where it talks about this idea of women in ministry. For myself this used to be a very hot issue in my mind and i thought that no women could be in ministry because of passages like this. However, this passage isnt really about that, it is a very cultural passage (according to the sermon and many other resources). We talked about if we have had experience with this discussion in our lives; i have, my mentor in high school came from a more baptist side of theological thought, and he told me that no women should be in ministry because these verses were to be taken literally in our time as well as in that time. But at the same time i was going to a wesleyan church where they largely said that women in ministry was a normal thing and that it was part of life for some women. 

I had to deal with this problem in my mind my first year going to iwu. I would go to my pastor classes and there would be women in the class... this was a problem in my mind, but i eventually just decided that it really wasnt worth fighting because who am i to argue that God really wasnt calling them to be in ministry? who am i to say that their call is a lie? I cannot do that, so i kind of became ignorant of it; then later on i was able to do some reading and thinking and talking to people i was able to come to the decision that women in ministry is a good thing, because it is still a call from God.

That is what we talked about in sunday school; what the bible says and what we think ourselves. The group was primarily girls though, so of course they didnt fight it. haha.

practicum dos

This sunday we continued our discussion on persecution. This time, kicking it off with a quote from "Tortured for Christ" - "Persecution always makes better Christians" (as Zach noted) We wrestled with this quote to determine its value and truth. One thing we brought up is that from our experiences, Christians tend to get too comfortable - and when we are in a good place, we tend to lose our dependence on God. In the book, the author makes it pretty obvious that he thinks people who are tortured for their faith go deeper into their relationship with Christ than those who don't. I really don't think that I can agree with this, because I think there are many things (persecution included) that bring us into a deeper relationship with God. Yes, persecution may be a catalyst of sorts, bring people closer to God faster, and may weed out those who are serious and who aren't, but it isn't the only way. We dug into Philippians which more or less says that no matter if we are persecuted or not, we are still to be strong in our faith. The emphasis is not on the degree to which we suffer, but our attitude and conduct in the way we live our our Christian lives.
We also talked about what he might mean by "better Christians", - one who wants to reach out to all they meet - and contemplated what we are doing to reach our to others? We also talked about how back in the day, Persecuted people were the Church, the Christians were the most liked, and always were the ones helping those in need. How has this changed today, and why? and what do you think about the quote from the book?
Kara

For this week, our class started our discussion around the quote " persecution always makes a better Christian" from our book. I do not have my copy of the book yet, so I don't recall the title of the book, but I'll have it for next week. From there, we looked at Phillipians chapter 1 and 1 Thessalonians 3 to discover if that quote had any truth. Overall the main point that we saw in the Scripture was that Paul was concerned about how the churches dealt with persecution and that he rejoiced when the gospel was spread as a result of faithfulness to God through the suffering. The church of Thessalonica was the best example of this. They endured there suffering and as a result, they became a model of Christ for the people around them. From this point, we determined as a class that the quote had some truth. Though persecution does not always make a better Christian, it does make Christians more focused and determined to witness to others and provides an avenue to do so. For the point of application, we said that since we do not have a lot of suffering or persecution for Christ, it is harder for us to find people to witness to, yet we are called to do so. To be better Christians, we need to get out of our comfort zones and spread the gospel as we a called to do. 

My Sunday School Practicum Post #1

The time I spent this week for my practicum was 3 hours. For half an hour, I had worship band practice, for an hour I had Sunday school class, and for an hour and a half I went to Sunday service.

In the Sunday school class this week, we had a considerable amount of people. We usually have about 6-8 members in the class and we had 15 this week. Because of that drastic change in number, I do not know all the names of the people in our class. The names I know are Michelle, Nathan, Kara, Toni, and Steven (the pastor). I am really bad with names, so I will continue working on them.

The lesson was on the topic of persecution in the church. At the beginning of the lesson, we continued discuss the definition of persecution. We ultimately concluded the persecution was “suffering for Christ at the hand of another”. The main argument against this definition was whether or not persecution was all suffering or just physical suffering. We could not determine that answer in this particular class.

We also talked about persecution of the church throughout the world. We found out that there are nine countries in the world that are considered hostile to Christianity. We talked about Iran in particular. Iran only allows Christians to worship in groups of five or less. It is also illegal to convert to Christianity if you were not born of Christian parents. Breaking either of these two laws can result in legal murder or extreme beatings by the government. However, we found out that the church in Iran is growing about 300 members per week. This begged the question. Does the church need persecution to truly grow? For instance, having new people come to Christ seldom does church growth in America. Churches grow by taking members from other churches. What does this indicate? With this question class ended.

QUESTIONS

1.) What do you guys think persecution is? Is it merely physical suffering for Christ or does it include emotional suffering?

2.) What do you think is the best way to interject in a Sunday school discussion without sounding arrogant? Does it really matter? 

Practicum uno

I'm doing my practicum at Main Street Wesleyan in Jonesborro, for the 20s group. Its a lot group discussion things, lead by the pastor, its a really good learning environment... This Sunday we discussed the persecuted church. We worked to come up with a definition, whether it is being physically, emotionally, mentally, etc. We found it difficult to come to a conclusion as to what warranted being persecuted, but we did agree that it was persecution for the sake of God. This is, and has been our focus for the last few weeks, and we have come together with the church to pray for the 9 countries (a different country each week) that are undergoing severe persecution today. The pastor talked of how The Church was formed under prosecution, and wonders if that is how the church is built up today. More and more, churches seem to be growing because people are migrating from one church to another, instead of gaining new converts. He posed the question if persecution is the only way to grow the church.
1. Do we need to be prosecuted to be “better” Christians?
2. Why does the church seem to be growing faster under persecution?

-Kara

Practicum Entry 1

I am doing my practicum at Exit 59 church in gas city and Ty Konopinski is the leader of the group. It is called post script (we talk over the sermon and the passage and talk about life and stuff).
Anyway, this past sunday was my first time ever going to it and it ended up being really cool. There were 5 or 6 guys there and 3 girls that were from taylor. We talked over the sermon, which was over 1 Timothy 1:18 - 2:7. We talked a lot about 2:1-2 that read, "I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness." We talked about that in regards to how we had a new president on his way into office and how regardless of anything we need to pray for him and our government, especially if we dont like it.
But other than that we talked a lot about life, and where we are going in life. Darren Campbell, the pastor at the church, talked about the next year for the church and what was going to be happening. He also talked about some church planting that is going to be happening in chicago. When he was talking about that, i was feeling God say that he wanted at least part of my life to be church planting in the inner city. I told this to the group because we talked about how people were feeling after the sermon.
I am looking forward to this semester attending this class, everyone is very open with talking about what they think, and thats how we learn.
- Matt Bedwin