Pepperdine Bible Lectures 2018

Teacher: Rick Atchley The church of the future is going to look a lot like the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural church of the past. And the churches that have a future will recognize this sooner than later.

Teacher: Jeff Childers How do we picture Jesus? How should we picture him? No portrait of the person Jesus survives, yet he is surely the most frequently depicted person from history. What are the benefits and dangers of our cherished images of Jesus, whether hanging on the wall, painted by our worship language, or held in our minds? In this two-part class, we will look at the most common ways of picturing Jesus down through the centuries, up to our present day, investigating the impact of those images on Christian faith and practice. What values or agendas are conveyed by different ways of picturing Jesus? How true and how healthy is our imagination, in picturing Jesus today?

Teacher: Jeff Childers How do we picture Jesus? How should we picture him? No portrait of the person Jesus survives, yet he is surely the most frequently depicted person from history. What are the benefits and dangers of our cherished images of Jesus, whether hanging on the wall, painted by our worship language, or held in our minds? In this two-part class, we will look at the most common ways of picturing Jesus down through the centuries, up to our present day, investigating the impact of those images on Christian faith and practice. What values or agendas are conveyed by different ways of picturing Jesus? How true and how healthy is our imagination, in picturing Jesus today?

Teacher: Bobby Valentine The story of Jonah tells the tale of a prophet locked in a controversy with Yahweh, the God of Israel. The heart of the controversy is Yahweh's love. Jonah find's God's love to be scandalous not because he has received it but because Yahweh carelessly pours it out upon the enemy not only of Israel but God's own self. Jonah is in full rebellion against love.

Teachers: Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Luke Norsworthy

Teachers: Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Luke Norsworthy

Teacher: Bobby Valentine The story of Jonah tells the tale of a prophet locked in a controversy with Yahweh, the God of Israel. The heart of the controversy is Yahweh's love. Jonah find's God's love to be scandalous not because he has received it but because Yahweh carelessly pours it out upon the enemy not only of Israel but God's own self. Jonah is in full rebellion against love.

Campus ministers K. Rex Butts, Rusty Jordan, and Casey Coston share a vision for planting new university campus ministries that focuses on leading students to follow Jesus. Discussion includes how to be intentional in making disciples from a foundation of God’s grace that equips students to embody the gospel with intentional outreach as participants in the mission of God.

This message by Robert Perez explores accepting our calling and counting the cost, with a little “pinch of Latino spice” from 2 Timothy. May God make us all equal to the task of being called and sent.

Increasingly, we live in a world of walls. Divided and disconnected from our fellow humans, from our loving Father and even from our true selves, we need practices that can lead to wholeness, healing and integration. These three spiritual practices are a step toward tearing down the walls between you, your neighbor, your God, and yourself.

Senior Director of Let's Start Talking, Craig Altrock, shares truths that have guided LST through the pandemic.

Allen Jang shares insight into your Chinese and Asian neighbors as well as practical tips on reaching out to them for Jesus and some unexpected ways God has worked. Allen Jang was baptized out of Buddhism/Confucianism by Dr. Carl Mitchell in 1970. Since then, he had served as a science teacher in a teaching career that has spanned 48 years at two public high schools and several Christian schools. He was honored by the U.S. Congress as a National Honor Roll Science Teacher in 1993, and as Ink magazine Teacher of the Year in 2006. He has published a Bible in Romanized Ping-Yam Cantonese and an English/Cantonese/Mandarin Hymnal available through Amazon. He now serves as the teaching minister of an Asian House Church of Christ in partnership with the Sierra Madre and Baldwin Park churches of Christ.

Christian identity is in moral and political crisis. One major reason Christianity in America has been made into a bad public joke is our failure to rightly understand what Christianity is. Refusing to reduce Christianity to any partisan agenda, we must embrace a Christianity that is neither right, nor left, nor religious, as well as the fact that the gospel is inherently political. Our calling as political witnesses requires, among other things, our insistence that “American hope” is an illegitimate form of Christian hope. The United States is not the hope of the world nor is it a Christian nation. Rather, “American Christian values” corrupt Christianity, and partisanship mocks the true scandal of the gospel. This does not mean, however, any ill-conceived withdrawal from, or apathy regarding sociopolitical concerns, nor does it entail a posture of being countercultural.

Political and national agendas rarely line up with God. Disciples of Jesus need to know how God wants his people to respond to this crisis. This class will give insights gained from Scripture, firsthand experience from ministry to people in detention and deportation and firsthand witnessing of what God is currently doing in various ways at the southern border of the U.S.

Some read the Sermon on the Mount as a list of impossible standards. Others see it as an essential blueprint for obedient discipleship. But what if it's really an invitation to come dwell in God's neighborhood? Drawing from the witness and wisdom of Mr. Rogers, this class helps us envision the Sermon on the Mount as a creative imagining of life in God's neighborhood. From the Beatitudes to the concluding proverbs, the Sermon on the Mount asks us: "Won't you be God's neighbor?"

The current landscape of many churches is one of uncertainty, anxiety, and anger about a changing world. How should the church respond to these difficult times? In this class we will explore how the early church navigated a similar landscape. Instead of choosing panic they chose a posture of patience. That attitude changed everything for the church then and has the potential to do the same for us today.

La espiritualidad es un mosaico de historias de la comunidad a través de varios contextos. Aprender cómo la Iglesia puede ganar perspectiva cuando se trata de emprender en una espiritualidad adecuada en la cultura, sin trivializar la fe.

Jesus listened to those who had no voice and made room for the vulnerable. This class calls us to do the same. Vulnerable children are at the core of God’s mission. Those who adopt God’s mission will listen and make room. Taking up that mission will prompt a revival in the contemporary church.

How is the Father in the Son? How is the Son in the Father? How is Jesus one with the Father? The answers to these questions are bold and confident revelations which were made by Jesus. The answers to these questions reveal for the understanding of the saints in Christ how and when deity, that is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit came to dwell in the believer. This is the boldness, confidence, and joy of the children of God.