Questions for tonight: Part I and Our Taproot

Tonight we will discuss Part I, the first four chapters of Christianity for the Rest of Us. Here are a few questions I hope will spark our conversation, with page references to the book to assist you. Please feel free to comment on any or all of these questions here on this blog under the comments section (and comments will be moderated).

Here are tonight's questions:

1- What did church look like for you as a child or young adult? How did you first encounter God? (pages 15-20)

2- What is the best of our past at St. Paul's? What is our "taproot"? (pages 4, 22)

3- How does our tradition connect us to the past and to the future? (page 10)

4- What is the destination on our pilgrimage as a congregation? Where are we going? (page 11)

5- How can we be more comfortable and better skilled at navigating change in the world around us and in our church? (page 24)

6- Butler Bass writes (page 34): "Middles need to be periodically reinvented." What is our middle? What needs reinventing?

7- Do we have a "creative third way" between preaching Hell/damnation fundamentalism and capitulating to secular cultural values of consumerism and political power? (pages 35-36)

8- Butler Bass writes (page 38): "We are all pilgrims in a strange land now, exiles and immigrants in the new world of this post-everything age." How can we offer respite and hospitality to fellow pilgrims?

9- How does our way of being church make us more than a charitable service organization? How does worship, prayer, Scripture and service come together to transform lives at St. Paul's? (page 42)

10- What are the big important questions we ought to be asking? (page 51)