Week Three Exercise

16 November 2009 / I love to tell the story!

One of the challenges of supporting learning in Christian community, is helping people to engage the Bible. But it’s not as if they’ve never heard of the Bible before. We’re not “starting from scratch,” but rather building on — and in some cases seeking to challenge — things people have already learned. In your other classes you will work on issues such as interpretation, historical context, language parsing, and so on. In this class we’re going to begin by considering some of what people may already “know” about the bible.

Here is a series of seven very short video clips. I’d like you to view the clips, and take some notes for yourself. Please do not share these clips with children unless their parents have given permission to do so.

Some questions to consider: How is the Bible represented? How does it mean for people? What function is a biblical text or image playing? How does the context in which the Bible (or specific biblical verse) is mentioned, affect the meaning that is made with it? If this is all someone knew about the Bible, where would you start in religious education?

You could think about these clips as data for an exercise I often do with people, called the “media realities” exercise. Once you’ve engaged them yourself, you’re then ready to work with your small group on the specific set of cluster questions assigned this week. Please note: these clips may take some time to load, so give them at least a couple of minutes.

Clip 1

Clip 2

Clip 3

Clip 4

Clip 5

Clip 6

Clip 7