then we, the church/the people, read the Bible. Not just a leader or a preacher or a Sunday school teacher read the Bible, everyone does.
At Diaspora, we read the Bible, a lot.
The Bible is a love letter from Creator to Created. It tells us of His love, plan, hope for us, and how we can live in peace with God and man.
We enjoy hearing what God has to say.
Is it ever tough to understand or a chore to remember to do our reading?
Sure it is. We are human and don’t always want to do what is best for us. That’s as good a definition of human as I can think of. Maybe some weeks we read it more and others we read it less.
A major part of listening for God’s voice, for what He has to say to us is reading the Bible. And it’s not just for leaders, it’s for everyone. Every week each of us will read whatever passage we are studying. We read it repeatedly. We read it prayerfully. We read it along with the chapters that precede it so we see the overall flow of the book.
Then we have the “word” portion of our time together and one of us teaches/leads. But everyone, young and old, have immersed themselves in the passage and most tell what they learned. It’s not a sermon so much as it is a collaborative process of digging into the word and hearing what God has for us. Spoken through all of us.
…it is a collaborative process of digging into the word and hearing what God has for us…
“Oh no”, some will say, “you’re pooling your ignorance by listening to all the people!”
I don’t think so. Those who have teaching gifts use them. But we all as believers have God’s Spirit within us and He is the ultimate teacher so we listen and share what we’ve learned.
And you know what?
No one of us leads the group astray because we all collaboratively with the Spirit’s leading stay true to what God is saying. There is uncanny but not surprising consistency in what we have learned and heard and what insights we bring. The insights build upon one another. Which makes sense if we are all listening to the same Spirit. If we have a misunderstanding or mistake in our thinking it is usually addressed by the leading of the Spirit to the group. No one of us leads the group astray because we all collaboratively with the Spirit’s leading stay true to what God is saying. Leadership does have the responsibility to ensure faithful teaching. But rather than having to hold back the church/the people usually we find we can unleash the people to hear God’s voice.
