This free online course will explore:
-
Key Terms
-
History
-
Future vision for how the good news allows Christians to live faith out loud
By the end of the course, participants will have new knowledge for understanding the good news of God in Jesus Christ and how the church can respond to that good news.
WHEN: Tuesdays, August 1, 8, and 15
TIME: 6:30 p.m. – 7:45 p.m. CST
WHERE: Zoom (participants must register)
Conversations build on each other, however, attendance at each is not required
Every conversation begins somewhere. And when it’s a new conversation with new people, it helps to begin with introductions!
In this session, then, Anna will introduce key terms and themes, ones which will both ground and lace through our entire time together.
Some terms might be unfamiliar, like “proleptic,” and others every day ones, like “God.” But whether we’re fussing with new words or old words in new ways, this hour will invite us into these series of classes, into a way of thinking theologically, and into some fresh ways of thinking too.
A person learns a lot about one’s present when one looks at one’s past. That’s true for individuals, for families, and for countries, but it is also true for denominations like the ELCA.
In this session, we will look at what is arguably the core principle of Lutheran teaching: that we are justified by faith. Lutherans tend to consider this truth not only to be the gospel truth, but the very gospel itself.
While forgiveness is good news, it isn’t, actually the good news. That’s a different thing altogether. When we re-orient our notion of the gospel to the good news, namely to the news that Jesus is risen, our way of thinking about our identities and our callings and our freedom in Christ changes radically too.
Who we understand ourselves to be determines not only who we are but who we become.
That’s true of people, but also of congregations and denominations.
In this final session, we’ll consider three ways of being church. We’ll reflect on whether there’s a profile that might describe the ELCA, as well as your specific congregation. We’ll ponder why those identities might be, and whether God might be calling the Church to become something new.
This is an independent program of the Lutheran Center for students, staff, faculty, and greater community members. It is not a St. Olaf College credit-bearing course and is not a St. Olaf College Curriculum course.
Rev. Dr. Anna Madsen
Lutheran pastor and public theologian, is host of the Spent Dandelion Theological Retreat Center, situated along the North Shore in Two Harbors, Minnesota, and the creator of OMG: Center for Theological Conversation, through which she writes, blogs, consults, and presents. Her work can be found regularly in Gather Magazine and the Living Lutheran. Her first book I Can Do No Other: The Church’s New Here We Stand Moment addresses the call to speak not just to justification but to justice, and her latest book Joyful Defiance: Death Does Not Win The Day, also through Fortress Press, seeks to ground the experience of joy within the experience of lament, leading to a life which echoes the holy truth of Holy Saturday. She and her husband David Willis have just launched a business for her son Karl, who suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury at a young age. Through Two Lugs and a Nut Workshop, they make candles and etchings, but more importantly they love the fullness and the heck out of Karl.