Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Advent Book Study Introduction


Advent Book Study
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Sermons

I am inviting you to read along with me this Advent.

We are going to try something different and the plan is for me to lead a book study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons ...
during Advent this year.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of Advent: "The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus comes. Christmas comes. Christians rejoice!”

Each week participants will read a selection from the book. During the week you may post your reflections, comments, and questions below via facebook. Then I will post a podcast on Friday with my personal reflections on the material. We already have a good number of people participating and some congregations are doing the study together.

When the podcast is posted you will be able to get it from libsyn.com, itunes, or via epicenter.org. We will tweet and facebook update when the podcast is ready.

This week as we arrive at the first Sunday in Advent, December 2, 2012, we will read to page 40 or up to the Berlin years for those using Kindle or another reader.

The next week we will approach Advent 2 on December 9, and read from pages 41-81 or up to the London years.

As we approach Advent 3 on December 16, we will read pages 82-143 or up to the War Conspiracy. And, for the last week of Advent and December 23, we will begin at page 144 and finish the book.

I hope that people will read and send me questions or thoughts in the week previous to each podcasts so that I can respond to those comments in the reflections. I’m excited to see how this interaction works so that we can do additional studies together during Lent and at other times of the year.

I look forward to hearing from you!

 

http://www.epicenter.org/article/bishop-to-offer-bonhoeffer-book-study-in-advent/


Check out this episode!

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Quotes

  • "Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • "Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer." Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • "Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others." Kathleen Norris
  • "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." John Wesley
  • "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G. K. Chesterton
  • "One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans." C. S. Lewis
  • "When we say, 'I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,' we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the church seldom asks us for forgiveness." Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
  • "Christians are hard to tolerate; I don't know how Jesus does it." Bono
  • "It's too easy to get caught in our little church subcultures, and the result is that the only younger people we might know are Christians who are already inside the church." Dan Kimball