Question Group Tonight! "What is the biblical vision of Judgement?"

April 6 - "What is the Biblical Vision of Judgement?" This session will be led by special guest presenter - Hunter Beaumont. Hunter is pastor at Fellowship Denver, holds a Master's degree in Historical Theology and is very well versed on the issues at stake with this topic and how the church has dealt with it over the past 2000 years. Hope to see you guys tonight!

What role does 'hell' play in the biblical vision of the afterlife?

There are lots of questions right now about what role, if any, hell/judgement plays in the big picture of Scripture. A famous pastor/writer Rob Bell has a new book out that proposes a controversial view of this topic which has been all over the news. Bell will be in Denver promoting his book in early April so we decided to have a Question Group forum to help clarify some of the issues at stake so that people can sort out for themselves what they believe about the afterlife.

April 6 - "What is the Biblical Vision of Judgement?" This session will be led by special guest presenter - Hunter Beaumont. Hunter is pastor at Fellowship Denver, holds a Master's degree in Historical Theology and is very well versed on the issues at stake with this topic and how the church has dealt with it over the past 2000 years.

April 13th - "Heaven on Earth? Unpacking Kingdom of God according to the Historical Jesus" This session will be led by, well, me. Back in the day, I was a research fellow at Cambridge U. in historical Jesus studies and hopefully can bring some insight on how Jesus viewed the afterlife in what he called "the Kingdom of God".

April 20th - "Understanding the historical background to Jesus' Resurrection" This session will be led by me again and I will place Jesus' resurrection in its historical context showing a number of unusual historical circumstances surrounding this surprising event.

April 27th - "Life after life-after-death: The Meaning of Jesus' Resurrection" This session will be led by special guest presenter - Professor Craig Blomberg. Prof Blomberg is Research Prof of New Testament at Denver Seminary and is one of the world's leading experts on the historical Jesus. We are very excited and honored to have him come and help us understand better the meaning of resurrection.

The Question Group will be held at Dazbog Coffee located on 12th and Clayton and will start at 7:30PM every Wednesday in April. Hope to see you there!

A Few More Questions

Hi Everyone,

Dave and I have noticed that sometime last fall, the excellent questions we were receiving simply stopped coming in for no apparent reason. As you know from the title, this blog is driven by your questions. We find our enjoyment in discovering together what interests you may have in God, Christianity, the Bible, and Jesus, and whether we can share in those interests through meaningful discussion.

Since the questions aren't coming in, I thought we might throw a few your way. We would like to ask you, the reader, to comment on our blog. How can we improve it and make it a useful space for inquiry and discussion? What can we do (or stop doing) to keep your interest alive in the discussion? And finally, what questions would you like to see discussed on the blog?

You can also find our emails listed in the sidebar, if you have questions or comments about the blog that you do not wish to see published here.

Thanks for reading.

Irrational Christians

Here’s an interesting question I came across a few weeks ago:

Do Christians have to adopt an irrational position in order to believe in Jesus? Isn’t it irrational to believe that God exists, that Jesus was God, that he was risen from the dead, etc.?

What do you think? In order to believe the claims of Christianity, does one have to set aside reason?

Any thoughts?

Prayer, Part II

Hi everyone.

In the previous post, Dave opened up a discussion on prayer in the Christian church and addressed the overall topic of what it looks like to be a Christian.

Dave also mentioned our revamp of the blog. We sat down together and looked over all the posts on the blog so far, grouping those questions which received the most comments under categories to explore in greater detail. Thus, as Dave wrote last week, we hope to "go a bit deeper into the central issues that people grapple with as they engage with the Christian gospel."

We wanted to kick off a new round of inquiry on the Question Group blog with a topic familiar to just about everyone. In addition to the questions about prayer and its importance in the Christian church, I want to ask a few more related to our individual experiences with the topic. Please feel free to address any of these with a comment; or if you have a new question you would like the group to discuss, you are welcome to pose it to the group via comment as well:

Whether you are a Christian or not, chances are you have had some experience with prayer. And yet, a fundamental assumption of prayer is that we can somehow and in some way communicate with God. How is this possible? How do we know our prayers are being heard? Does this question ever bother you (as it often does me) when you pray?

A more traditional question involving prayer is why pray at all? If God is all-knowing, then God already knows what we will pray for even before we pray. What, then, is the purpose of prayer? Is it only done to change our perspective, give us practice in faith/patience, etc.? On the other hand, is it possible to change God's mind at all with our prayers?

What is your personal experience with prayer? What problems and issues arise in your mind when you think about these experiences?

What is a Christian? Part One: What Christians do

Hey Gang. Hope you all have had a good beginning of year and are settled into a good rhythm. Clint and I have been working on revamping the blog so that it is a more helpful tool for folks who have questions about Christianity. In order to achieve this, our goal this year is that our discussions be more focused which will allow us to go a bit deeper into the central issues that people grabble with as they engage with the Christian gospel.

So, with that said, the first central issue we are going to concentrate on for the next several weeks is "What is a Christian?" There are a lot of ways to answer that but right now we will start with one of the basic things that Christians do: pray. Very early in his ministry Jesus taught his disciples how to pray and expected that prayer would a fundamental part of being his follower. We see that prayer was a critical part of the early church experience and that the writers of many of the New Testament books integrated personal prayers into their letters to churches. So the question is, why do you suppose this was such an important part of following Jesus? For someone who has questions about Christianity, what does it mean that prayer played(s) such a critical role in following Jesus?

Question Group Tonight

Just a reminder that our new Question Group series begins at 7:30 tonight at Dazbog Coffee located on 12th and Clayton in Congress Park. Tonight we will deal with the question, "can I find real meaning and purpose in the claims of Jesus?" Recently a lot of thinkers (e.g. famous atheist Sam Harris in his new book The Moral Landscape highlighted on 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart') have been seeking after happiness and meaning to no avail. Tonight, and for the following two Wednesdays, we will pose these of questions of meaning and purpose to the Historical Jesus and see what we discover. Hope you come check it out...

How do I know if I have really turned my life over to God?

Hey Gang. A Starbucks friend - who is also a fan of the blog - gave me this question a couple of week ago when I was making my 5AMish coffee run with Bex (my baby boy).

How do I know if I have really turned my life over to God? What are the indicators that I have achieved this or not?

Great question. It can be difficult to know if we have done enough to connect to God. In fact as we read thru Scripture we are not given too much confidence that we can really connect with God. Paul states straightforwardly in Romans 3:10-12 “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

So, what is it gang? How do you know that you have turned your life over to God?

Is predestination just?

Here is an interesting question which deals with the relationship between predestination v. human responsibility. Anyone out there want to take a stab at this?

It seems to me that some people are born with certain personalities (ex. an addictive personality) that almost seems like they didn't even have a chance before they were addicted to something. Are some people predestined to a life with more obvious sins to be examples for others to learn from? If so, is this just, in the sense that some never recover from these habits?

If life is going OK, why do I need God?

Good morning all. Here is another excellent question emailed to me for the blog. It deals with the need for God. I have a handful of friends who have had a good life and to date have never really felt the need to know God. I also know some folks who have had very difficult times in life and likewise see no need for God because he allowed them to suffer so much. Can any of you out there identify with this?

Why would a person that has lived a virtually struggle free life see a need or desire for a relationship with God? For example, I think the struggles I faced growing up and the poor decisions I made make me appreciate God's grace probably moreso than someone that has lived a virtually struggle free life and just tends to be a "good person".. Where do they find the need for God? Does it take struggles, tragedy, etc. for a person to appreciate the love and grace of God?