Finding God

"Finding God" was the theme of our Bible study at camp last week. Basically, we took a crash course through a portion Luther's Small Catechism (CPH edition). Specifically, we looked at the Apostles Creed. The approach of "Finding God" was couched in the initial question, "Where is God in this broken world?" We looked at such topics as "God is not lost," "God has not lost us," and "God charts a path as we looked at the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The week culminated in having the attendees see that God is now at work through them as part of the Communion of Saints as we had a talent show in place of devotions on our last night in camp.

In speaking with some of my wife's family who were there, I found their comments afterwords quite interesting. It seems that many of the attendees, most of them Lutheran, had never spoken of God as we did last week. While there were many challenging questions from the group, and many long conversations over the nature of God, there was no angst or drama, even when we didn't all agree. One comment I heard second hand was, "That was hard. We don't talk about that stuff at church or in our other bible studies."

Now I would never consider to say that any of the campers had bad pastors or that they were in the dark about the creed. But the comments I received and the positive reaction to the topic really opened my mind on the idea of finding new formats for discussing the catechism. Unfortunately, we only had 6 hours to discuss what I usually take a whole semester to teach my eighth graders in confirmation. Naturally I skipped most of the questions, and that may have added to the difficulty. But I think the difficulty was not a bad thing. It made us really think about things. We got to contextualize the creed into our every day lives and that's what makes the lightbulbs click in people's hearts.

Its also not very often that any group of beleivers gets the opportunity to meet together each morning for an hour over coffee, the scriptures, and the creed, all whilst looking out on the Blue Ridge Mountains. But that's what bible camp affords and we were blessed for it. Although I probably spent more time preparing the study than we spent "doing" it, I learned far more interacting with my "students" than I ever imagined.

Later this weekend I'll try to post the study in its entirety in case others would like to use it. Its not perfect and its not complete, but it's one way to use the creed to touch a life for Jesus.