Many years ago I felt the call to ministry, primarily what was then “program ministry.” In the ’90s, church was all about programs. Our mission was to engage people in activities and programs by making them engaging and with some kind of spiritual component.
Then, the questions were posed: What is a disciple? How do we make disciples?
This sent me on a journey of exploring the differences between programs and discipleship; the difference between Christian Education and discipleship; and most importantly how the way we read Scripture is different when our purpose is different.
Something caused me to remember that reading the Bible as God’s Story, not just encyclopedia of God information.
I remembered a book that I was supposed to read in my senior Bible seminar in college, Robert Lodahl’s The Story of God. I repurchased the book but found it just as dry as I did more than a decade before, so I went in search of another solid source of the narrative reading of Scripture and found The Great Adventure and Walking with God by Jeff Cavins and Tim Gray.
For me, as a Protestant, I found these resources tremendously helpful, but wanted to make sure that the general, narrative teaching in these Catholic resources was not in conflict with protestant teachings. Unfortunately, there is no “Protestant Catechism” but I found this narrative approach to scripture is growing in discipleship circles across the Protestant spectrum.
See the bibliography page for the books I’ve read that have helped to develop this perspective. Unfortunately, blogs and such are not included because it never occurred to me that I would use the information in this format, but only in developing my own understanding of discipleship.
Journey Through Scripture 