January 28, 2002

DPE

I've made some preliminary decisions on my preaching schedule for our conversations. I will be providing exegesis and sermons for the following texts. The texts from John are longer narratives. Most likely I will select a pericope within the larger narrative for preaching. I will be interested in learning how the rest of us handle these long texts. Anyway, my plans are to work with the following texts for the following dates:

Feb. 17th Matthew 4:1-11 The Testing in the Wilderness.

Feb. 24th John 3:1-17 A Religious Man Comes by Night.

Mar. 3rd John 4:5-42 A Thirsty Woman at the Well

Mar. 10th John 9:1-41 A Blind Man Receives Sight

Mar. 17th John 11:1-45 A Dead Man Receives New Life

Mar. 24th Phil. 2:5-11 A Great Hymn of the Church

Mar. 31st John 20:1-18 The Ressurection of Our Lord

April 14th 1 Peter 1:17-25 Our Faith and Hope is in God

April 21st John 10:1-10 The Good Shepherd

& Psalm 23

After examining the epistles for some these narratives they will provide some interesting dialogue with the texts. As for what I plan to with regard to the method I will begin working through each of the steps until I hear that we have divided them up in some way. I realize that I have selected two texts past the date when our work is to come to an end for the requirements of the Course. However, I will be preaching those texts anyway. So I have decided to go ahead and include them in the list. I realize that I have chosen the Gospels for the majority of the time. However, I think it will work well for a Lenten theme I will be working on based on Deut 6:4-5, THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE. Each of the narratives builds on one another. We will be choosing hymns and anthems that echo the concerns of each of these texts. We will introduce this theme for Lent beginning on Ash Wednesday. This will be a nice lead into the Matthew text because Jesus quotes this scripture himself.

January 28, 2002

JEA

Thanks DPE for the quick response on text selection. We'll see if the others would like to follow your lead and agree on these texts too so that we can all be looking at the same text and, possibly, dividing up the steps for "emphasis" by each member. We have lots of options at this point, so let's talk it out. Also, we need to give attention to the selection of two other conversation partners...LRG has lined up his two already!