Great Christmas quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer – a famous German Theologian of the early 20th century that died a martyr in a Nazis Concentration camp shortly before the end of the WWII. He died a martyr because he said no to Hilter’s reign of hatred. He chose to return to Germany to fight the good fight because he loved his homeland so.
“No priest, no theologian stood at the manger of Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of all wonders: that God became human. Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable.
Without the holy night, there is no theology. “God is revealed in flesh,” the God-human Jesus Christ—that is the holy mystery that theology came into being to protect and preserve. How we fail to understand when we think that the task of theology is to solve the mystery of God, to drag it down to the flat, ordinary wisdom of human experience and reason! Its sole office is to preserve the miracle as miracle, to comprehend, defend, and glorify God’s mystery precisely as mystery. This and nothing else, therefore, is what the early church meant when, with never flagging zeal, it dealt with the mystery of the Trinity and the person of Jesus Christ”
… . If Christmas time cannot ignite within us again something like a love for holy theology, so that we—captured and compelled by the wonder of the manger of the Son of God—must reverently reflect on the mysteries of God, then it must be that the glow of the divine mysteries has also been extinguished in our heart and has died out.
A Huddle is a group of current or future Christian leaders (usually 6-8 people) where the leader is the active discipler of the members and a discipleship culture is created using a simple, agreed upon discipling language. The Huddle leader invites people into a discipling relationship where grace and investment are given, but they regularly challenge people to live into a life consistent with being a disciple of Jesus. This means that Huddles are not therapeutic in nature; rather, they help people discern what God is asking them to do and then respond.
Huddles meet regularly to build momentum—at least every-other week, though many meet every week, and generally a Huddle lasts between 1.5-2 hours. At the end of each Huddle, members will be able to clearly articulate: (1) What God is saying to them, and (2) What they are going to do about it. The next Huddle meeting holds people accountable to following through on their responses. Huddles do not grow by adding members to the group but when members of the Huddles begin Huddles of their own, keeping with the Great Commission found in Matthew 28, “Go into all the world and make disciples.”[1]
Dallas Willard, in reflecting on the state of discipleship in the United States, commented, “Every church needs to: (1) Have a plan for making disciples, and (2) Know if their plan works.” When reflecting on the concept and success of Huddles in a Q&A session with Bob and Mary Hopkins, Willard commented, “This appears to be one of the few things I’ve found that will systematically and effectively disciple people in the local church setting.” [2]
Huddles were first created at St Thomas’ Sheffield in the UK in 1997 by Mike Breen in conjunction with the creation of Missional Communities and have spread across the world as increasingly more and more churches have become frustrated with an inability to disciple people in their congregations. Particularly within the United States, the use of Huddles have begun to spread with the emergence of key St. Thomas leaders forming 3DM, a movement/organization that helps churches with new discipleship and missional structures.
Churches that have been successful with Huddles tend to have three things in common. First, they live by the maxim: “If you’re a leader in this church, you’re in a Huddle.” [3] All leaders receive ongoing investment, discipleship and accountability. Second, the people leading Huddles have been in a Huddle for a period of at least 6 months. Third, they have an agreed upon on discipling language that is most commonly LifeShapes, which is widely explored in the book Building a Discipling Culture by Mike Breen and Steve Cockram.[4]
Preaching Passages January 1, 2011 thru May 14, 2011
John 13:1-20 Jan 1
13:21-38 Jan 8
14:1-14 Jan 15
14:15-31 Jan 22
15:1-17 Jan 29
15:18-16:4a Feb 5
Feb 9 Ash Wednesday
16:4b-24 Feb 12
16:25-33 Feb 19
17:1-26 Feb 26
18:1-18 March 5
18:19-32 March 12
18:33-40 March 19
19:1-16 March 26
19:17-27 April 2
19:28-42 April 9
April 16 Palm Service
April 21 Maundy Thursday
April 22 Good Friday
John 20:1-18 April 23 Easter
20:19-31 April 30
21:1-14 May 7
21:15-25 May 14
