Hello Kaleid Ladies!
Do you ever wonder about the depth and breadth of what we call “the Gospel” in our churches? How it actually is meant to look in the lives of Jesus-followers or what Jesus actually meant when he proclaimed “good news” to people in his day?
Do you ever sense that our standard-church Gospel has a thin-ness to it…that it might be, that it needs to be, much more rich and powerful than we imagine?
Lisa Sharon Harper’s book The Very Good Gospel will be our companion at Kaieid this summer. Every week we will share a little tidbit–a quote or excerpt–with you as we consider what Harper calls a “thick” gospel.
This week we offer you a formal, final invitation to join us on June 14 and 28 for a discussion of the book. We will meet over drinks and dessert at Saranell’s home in Decatur, and we would love to have you!
As a teaser, consider the following anecdote from Chapter 1, and think about joining us if you’d like to talk together about what Lisa Sharon Harper’s room full of ministry companions came up with when they did what she asked them to do. Harper recounts…
“Two years later I was speaking to a group of college ministry staff. ‘What is the gospel?’ I asked them. This was a particularly provocative question for those staff members, who were experts at communicating the good news of the gospel as it had been handed down to them. They knew all manner of frameworks and diagrams to make the message simple. But beneath the surface of their successful frameworks, a void occupied the center of the message.
What exactly was Jesus’s ‘good news’?
The group formed four teams to examine the New Testament gospels: one examined Mark, another explored Matthew, another dissected Luke, and the last investigated John. They had twenty minutes to discern each gospel writer’s understanding of the good news.
When time was up, this diverse group of men and women came back together to share what they had discovered. These accomplished ministry staff members were amazed. The good news of the gospel writers was not quite the good news they had been preaching. The gospel writers’ vision was much bigger.” (The Very Good Gospel, p. 6-7)
Won’t you join us next Wednesday evening?
Gratefully,
The Kaleid Team
P.S. As we think about how to observe Juneteeth, consider watching this video from The Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing to learn more about the history of the Pittsburgh community in Atlanta.