Four Reasons to Sign Up for Bible Studies at Mosaic
Two years ago, my wife Jen and I were having dinner at our friends' house toward the end of the summer, discussing upcoming plans for ourselves and for Mosaic Church. I told them I was waffling on doing men's Bible study because I was already involved in a number of other silos in the life of Mosaic.
Their response was kind but direct, relating to my own spiritual health: "You need to be there."
They were right, of course, and I'm glad for both friends who will speak truth into my life as well as the studies we've done on Philemon (shout out to the XXL books), Ephesians and Jude. They have formed my character and shaped me in ways I can't even see as we walk through them, one question at a time, one week after the next. A drip, drip, drip on a rock that is shaped by 100,000 of them over a lifetime.
So here are four reasons I hope you join me this fall as both the men and women of Mosaic study Ruth.
1. Transformative Nuggets
It is unequivocally true that we forget the vast majority of everything we ever consume. I forget 95 (?), 98 (?) percent of what I hear, listen to or read, even when it comes to important topics. On one hand, that's frustrating (!), but on the other hand that 5 percent or 2 percent is the life-changing stuff.
This has been true of men's Bible study. I can't give you full outlines of Max Diener's teaching or Ryan Hembree's teaching from a given week or tell you exactly what we talked about during Week 3 of our Philemon study.
But I do remember Ben Marshall exhorting me to not engage in crude joking. And I remember Rob Rudd talking about how a father is supposed to love his children. And I remember Max’s encouragement that forces in the spiritual realm are real and that we must be vigilant to fight against them.
This is God's grace to us. That he would provide both sound teaching and sound minds to remember any of it at all as we war against sin on a daily basis. At maybe the most stressful time of any of our lives, these are the bits and pieces of the gospel that sustain us. We need them now more than we ever have before.
2. Brother (and sister)hood
There are men at Mosaic -- men like Dino Dato-on, Ross Boyd and Don Traister -- that I would simply not know if not for men's Bible study. Those in leadership at Mosaic often hear of a desire for community ties, and there are few things that bind us more substantially than waking up early or staying up late to study God's word together as brothers and sisters.
I was struck by this as I read this recently on the power of reading God's word as a son, but also as a brother and a father. Here's the part about reading as a brother.
We not only need to open our eyes to the pages of God’s word, but we need to open our ears to other men of the word. We need others to speak the word of God into the corners of our hearts, the places we sinfully resist going and addressing. And by hearing and obeying the word from others, something incredible happens — we experience the rare and refining gift of brotherhood (Psalm 133:1). [Desiring God]
3. Fraught Fall
Because of, you know, this global pandemic, Mosaic has scaled back what it is offering this fall. Gone are some of the things it has tested over the last few years and gone are some of the things we have wanted to throw out there for the future. The message here is clear: What remains is only the most important. In a world that wages debate over essential occupations and industries, we believe men's and women's Bible study is absolutely essential to the spiritual health of all of our people. That doesn't mean these classes are an obligation, but it does mean we value them as much as anything else we do in the life of our church.
4. Ruth Rocks
After spending a few years in the depths of Paul's sometimes (ok, often!) muddled syntax, Ruth has been a run-on sentence-free joy to read and study through as we prepare for this fall. Also, I've found it to be incredibly relatable as a book about faithful, ordinary people for faithful, ordinary people. Here's how our commentary said it.
“It portrays God as involved in life’s ordinary affairs; indeed, they are exactly the arena in which he chooses to operate. It describes how God works through, not despite the everyday faithfulness of his people.”
That's beautiful.
We hope to see you at men's or women's Bible study this fall. You can sign up for a variety of times both in-person and from a distance. We love you, and we desire for you to know, understand, comprehend and live out God's word in a deeper, more joyful way than you did yesterday, last week or last month.
Proverbs 8:11 tells us that "wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her." Come join us as we seek that wisdom together through the story of Ruth and with one another.