NOW WHAT?

by Lead Pastor Joel Wight Hoogheem

This May, Lord of Life will complete our journey through The Story. Our community will have traveled through the entire biblical narrative, from Genesis to Revelation. It has taken a lot of hard work and dedication to make this project come to life, and it is a testament to the faithfulness of Lord of Life’s members and attenders who were willing to take the risk of faith and dive in.

Our first order of business will be to celebrate! The Story will wrap up in worship on the weekend of May 13/14. We’ll take a look back at how God kept God’s promises throughout the entirety of Scripture and look ahead to how God will continue to keep those promises for the rest of our lives and beyond.

Our second task will be to find ways to stay engaged with the biblical story. Hopefully your interest was piqued by something you read in The Story, something you talked about in a small group, or something you heard in worship. It’s likely that the Holy Spirit is at work through your questions, your insights, and your engagement with the Bible.

If you’re interested in having a good resource that can help you explore the Bible more deeply, I recommend a good study Bible. The two best ones I’ve found for congregational use are the Lutheran Study Bible (published by Augsburg Fortress) and the CEB (Common English Bible) Study Bible. Both offer insights into each book of the Bible, along with historical and literary insights throughout. These study Bibles also align well with our theological traditions and perspectives as ELCA Lutherans.

If you’d like to have a helpful overview of the Bible, a couple books to read are How the Bible Actually Works by Peter Enns and Making Sense of the Bible by Adam Hamilton. Both of these books are accessibly written and give good insight into just what the Bible is—and what it isn’t.

If you want to wrestle with some of the challenging realities of Scripture, two other books I recommend are The Difficult Words of Jesus by Amy-Jill Levine and Inspired Imperfection by Gregory Boyd. Instead of shying away from or glossing over the hard parts of the Bible, both of these volumes dig right in.

And if you’re looking for a way to stay dedicated in your habit of reading Scripture, I recommend finding a Bible reading plan that works for you. The Bible app (from Lifechurch.tv) has hundreds of different reading options, from thematic plans to whole Bible plans. You can get daily notifications to help keep you on track.

As a community, Lord of Life has made it a priority to hear the story for these past nine months. One more next step for us is to make it a priority to live the story. Just as Lord of Life has focused on the Discipleship Practices of Worship and Learn this past year, we will dig deeply into Serve and Give, beginning in September. This will be a great opportunity for us to take what we’ve heard in the good news of Jesus Christ and put it to use to serve the world.