★ The History of the World in 5 Pieces
This coming weekend we’ll start a new sermon series, patterned loosely on Brian McLaren’s book The Story We Find Ourselves In (my favorite McLaren work). We’ll look at an overview of salvation history in 5 stages:
1. Creation
2. Crisis
3. Calling
4. Communication
5. Consummation of the Age
I liked how Brian told the story as one story with many parts. It’s very helpful to be able to synthesize the entire story as one, not as a large number of inseresting stories or data points or events.
The problem for this weekend is how to begin the story in an experiential way. Ideas so far: Arrange the room so that we’re sitting around a campfire, as the creation story was originally told. Create things out of play-doh for tactile engagement. Separate the men from the women, with some form of grand entrance for the women. Transition the environemtn from absolute darkness to light. Move outside to sit in the park and hear the river. Re-read Gilgamesh to see similar but different early creation stories. Tell some native American creation accounts.
The other questino for the weekend is how much of the creation story to tell: creation of the world; the story of eve’s arrival; adam and eve’s bad breakfast decision; ?
