Thursday, September 21, 2006

Into Galatians. Austin and I have switched roles and started a men's group at our church on Wednesday nights. He is the jefe of our Friday morning breakfasts, which continue, and I am the chief kibitzer. I am jefe on Wednesday night, and he is the chief kibitzer. (One day we'll take the show on the road.)

I consulted Macon on this venture, and my main question was "Why should I do this", other than the fact that I had been bemoaning the lack of testasterone active in our little church and that Van said to me, in his friendly, understated way, something like "Put up or shut up". That's not what he literally said, but I could see it in his eyes. Macon supported the idea, and gave me some good reasons for pursuing the venture. He suggested we do Galatians, a chapter a week for six weeks, and then at the end of the term evaluate whether to go forward. Our group had a sort of get acquainted meeting last week, and then we dove into Galatians last night.

I like Austin's approach to Bible study. It is an inductive approach, but it is quite informal and consists mainly in challenging questions like, "Well, what do you think?" after reading the scripture passage in question. So that's pretty much what we did last night, after having an ice-breaker question that I thought suitably manly: "Describe your closest encounter with a wild animal". The guys took that question pretty seriously and so I discarded the idea of describing my first blind date as a college freshman. There was a lot of talk of bears in North Carolina, and then we turned, naturally, to consider the first chapter of Galatians. Stay tuned.

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