Scholarly Fellowship

Those are 2 words used to describe our Bible study. Jason, our fearless leader, had a meeting with other "growth group" leaders at his church. They were asked to define their respective groups and note group goals. Jason polled our group last night to get our perspectives, and the consensus is that we're fairly into fellowship with monthly grub gatherings and frequent times of "hanging out" within the group. We can have a grand good time by cooking up a storm and merry-making at dinner time. As a group, we don't work together to outreach in one particular ministry because we all have various ministries that we're involved in as individuals. We come together once a week to recharge corporately, to pray for one another, and to learn from the Word. We also don't use our weekly meetings as our only time to reflect on the word; everyone in the group seems to do their own personal Bible study on their own time. As a result, we get together and dive deeper and discuss more scholarly things than the "typical" Bible study. We can delve into deep "scholarly" topics on issues that I didn't used to know how to spell, like eschatology. Overall, it's a nice balance. It's one of the best Bible studies in which I've been able to participate.

Speaking of fellowship, we typically begin Bible study at 7:30pm on Thursday nights. We usually spend a good 30 minutes hanging out and talking and catching up. I usually adjust Allycia or catch up with her. Last night, she shared pumpkin cake with cinnamon butter. Steve made homemade eggnog, and we also had holiday teas. Then, around 8pm, we start with prayer and whatever topic we're currently discussing--now we're starting a study on the book of Ephesians. We usually wrap it up around 9pm with prayer requests, then end with more fellowship. The entire time, we play with or avoid Maggie, the fun-loving Labrador who loves to lick tea cups, hands, and feet. She also loves to bug Josh who hates dogs (and all animals). She's especially funny when we pray, because she likes to get attention, so she licks or bumps into every single person whose head is bowed in reverence.