I lead a small group/Bible study which meets every other Monday night from 7pm - 9pm at the CAC building, across from the the Friendship Centre of Highpoint subdivision in Romeoville Illinois. It can be easily found off Weber road, just south of Carillon/I55, and just north of Airport Road.
This small group is a part of my home church - Community Christian Church - but anyone is invited to come and attend. At this point, we do not have child care, and we are open for adults, both single and married, men or women, believer or non believer.
If you are interested in coming, please know that this is a Bible study group where we dig deep into the scriptures. Discussion is encouraged, Bibles are required, and detailed outlines are prepared, printed out and available. However, it would be very helpful if you could copy/print out the same outline posted at this site, and come prepared with your Bible and outline ready. They will always be posted here by the weekend before the next meeting. You can find them in my "Gracenote/E-book" page under "Genesis Small Group Outlines".
Currently we are going through the book of Genesis, and are currently about in the muddle of this awesome book. If you are interested in any of the previous outlines, they are all posted here and are available.
My background has been one involved in ministry for many years, both in music and in teaching. Most recently, at a former church, I was an associate pastor and gave expositional Bible studies regularly. Although I hope to help people gain Bible understanding and knowledge, if that is all it ends up doing, I have largely failed. I believe that Bible knowledge alone, will only lead us into pride and self importance. All through this group, I will attempt to focus Biblical stories, knowledge and principles into practical day to day living and struggles in which all of us deal with here and now.
Although I use several Bible translations, one that is very helpful in bringing out difficult words into our language is The Message. It is a translation done by Eugene Peterson, and I feel that he best describes embarking on a journey through Genesis in his introduction, and I strongly suggest anyone who is considering coming, to read it. Thanks and grace & peace to you! John Boda
First, God. God is the subject of life. God is the foundation for living. If we don't have a sense of the primacy of God, we will never get it right, get life right, get our lives right. Not God at the margins, not God as an option, not God on the weekends. God at the center and circumference! God - first and last -God -God -God!
Genesis gets us off on the right foot. Genesis pulls us into a sense of reality that is God-shaped and God-filled. It gives us a vocabulary for speaking accurately and comprehensively about our lives, where we come from and where we are going, what we think and what we do, the people we live with and how to get along with them, the troubles we find ourselves in and the blessings that keep arriving.
Genesis uses words to make a foundation that is solid and true. everything we think and do and feel is material in a building operation in which we are engaged all our life long. There is immense significance in everything that we do. Our speech and our actions and our prayers are all, every detail of them, involved in this vast building operation comprehensively known as the Kingdom of God. But we don't build the foundation. The foundation is given, and it is firmly in place.
Jesus concluded his most famous teaching by telling us that there are two ways to go about our lives, we can build on sand, or we can build on rock. No matter how wonderful we build, if we build on sand it will fall to pieces like a house of cards. We build on what is already there, on the rock. Genesis is a verbal witness to that rock; God's creative acts, God's intervening and gracious judgments, God's call to a life of faith, God's making covenant with us.
But Genesis presents none of this to us in an abstract, bloodless truth or principle. We are given a succession of stories with named people, people who loved and quarreled, believed and doubted, had children and married, experienced sin and grace. if we pay attention, we find that we ourselves are living variations on these very stories. Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and his sons, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Joseph and his brothers. the stories show clearly that we are never outsiders or spectators to anything in heaven and earth. God doesn't work impersonally from space, he works with us where we are, as he finds us. No matter what we do, whether good or bad, we continue to be part of everything that God is doing. Nobody can drop out, there's no place to drop out!
So we may as well get started and take our place in the story - at the beginning.