At The Bridge we believe in a big God. A God without the nagging feelings of insecurity that we too often experience in our personal lives - a God that can handle people honestly pursuing the truth even when it means questioning the things that as Christ-followers that we are supposed to take for granted. At The Bridge we believe that there are essentially only to types of people as they relate to their knowledge of God and faith - those who are brave enough to ask about what they don't understand, and those who are too insecure to admit that they don't have all the answers. We're trying hard to build a community of the former type of people while making a safe place for the latter group to overcome their insecurities and so I'm pleased to announce that we are now soliciting questions for our new series "Ask Anything."Over the next two months - until the end of the school year - we are going to be asking you to submit your questions about God, life, faith, religion, church and theology. Nothing is off-limits. Nothing is taboo. You can ask about things that confuse you in the Bible, about hot-button and controversial issues, about awkward issues like sex, relationships, ethics, politics, money, leadership or anything else you can think of. Seriously - NOTHING IS OFF-LIMITS - and as those questions come flooding in we will be compiling the list and discerning which questions, or types of questions emerge most often, and those questions will end up as the focus of our fall preaching series where we will do our best to humbly, clearly and honestly answer your questions.
Why are we starting this project so early? I'm sure that some of you have heard of churches who do this sort of thing with live tweeting or texting during the services, putting the pastor or speaker on the spot with questions from the crowd - why do we need 4-5 months of lead time to do this? Well it's simple - we don't necessarily know the answers to your questions and we don't want to arbitrarily filter out all the challenging ones so that we can save face when you ask. And so rather than simply placate you with some pat-answer, we would like to commit to some serious study and reflection on the questions you ask and come back to you in the fall with a well researched and well-thought out answer that honours the sprit of honest inquiry. In the end we may not be able to come back with an answer that you find satisfactory - some questions simply have no answers that can be comprehended by human minds - but that won't stop us from doing our best to search God and the Scriptures for the best answer we can come up with.
How do I get involved?
Participating in Ask Anything can take a few different forms. The easiest way to get involved is to ask questions. You can email me, Tweet us, comment on our Facebook page or use the form on The Bridge Church website. Your question will be recorded anonymously and just before the summer begins we will select the most popular questions and assign them to our research team to begin the process of finding some answers.
The other way to participate is by becoming one of our research assistants. We are looking for motivated people to help with the research that answering these questions is going to require. Research assistants will not be required to preach any sermons, but rather we are looking for people to engage the biblical texts and revenants secondary sources and commentaries to put together a position paper that will be utilized in putting together our presentations for this series. So whether you have questions, or a thirst to find answers, there is a place for you to be involved in this project.
So go ahead, ask anything. What's the worst that could happen?
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