Embracing an Adult Faith Participant's Workbook: Marcus Borg on What it Means to Be Christian - A 5-Session Study

by Marcus J. Borg, Tim Scorer (Primary Contributor)

Author and Bible scholar Marcus J. Borg invites us to join him in revisiting Christianity's most fundamental Who is God? What does salvation mean? What place does Jesus hold in contemporary Christian faith? In this five-session, faith-formation resource, participants enjoy the rare privilege of witnessing Marcus in dialogue with a small, diverse group of adults as they honestly―and sometimes painfully―confront the big questions and work together toward authentic answers. Each session includes a 10-minute presentation by Marcus Borg followed by interaction with the group. The program print resources are designed to help your small group "join the dialogue" in your own setting.

The study addresses fundamental questions that adults struggle with as faith matures. It can be used as a resource for personal reflection as well as small group experience.

The five sessions
• God
• Jesus
• Salvation
• Community
• Practice

Participant Workbook ― contains all the material needed for use by class participants as well as notes for the class leader to facilitate each session; leadership can be shared among members of the group.

SOLD SEPARATELY. Packaged DVD Contains the video for the five sessions

Genres: Religion, Christianity

61 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2010

About the author

Borg was born into a Lutheran family of Swedish and Norwegian descent, the youngest of four children. He grew up in the 1940s in North Dakota and attended Concordia College, Moorhead, a small liberal arts school in Moorhead, Minnesota. While at Moorhead he was a columnist for the school paper and held forth as a conservative. After a close reading of the Book of Amos and its overt message of social equality he immediately began writing with an increasingly liberal stance and was eventually invited to discontinue writing his articles due to his new-found liberalism. He did graduate work at Union Theological Seminary and obtained masters and DPhil degrees at Oxford under G. B. Caird. Anglican bishop N.T. Wright had studied under the same professor and many years later Borg and Wright were to share in co-authoring The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, an amicable study in contrast. Following a period of religious questioning in his mid-thirties, and numinous experiences similar to those described by Rudolf Otto, Borg became active in the Episcopal Church, in which his wife, the Reverend Canon Marianne Wells-Borg, serves as a priest and directs a spiritual development program at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Portland, Oregon. On May 31, 2009, Borg was installed as the first canon theologian at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

Marcus J. Borg is Canon Theologian at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, OR. Internationally known in both academic and church circles as a biblical and Jesus scholar, he was Hundere Chair of Religion and Culture in the Philosophy Department at Oregon State University until his retirement in 2007.

Described by The New York Times as "a leading figure in his generation of Jesus scholars," he has appeared on NBC's "Today Show" and “Dateline,” PBS's "Newshour," ABC’s “Evening News” and “Prime Time” with Peter Jennings, NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross, and several National Geographic programs. A Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, he has been national chair of the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature and co-chair of its International New Testament Program Committee, and is past president of the Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars. His work has been translated into eleven languages: German, Dutch, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, Russian, and French. His doctor's degree is from Oxford University, and he has lectured widely overseas (England, Scotland, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Hungary, Israel and South Africa) and in North America, including the Chautauqua and Smithsonian Institutions.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty useful study guide to the DVD course for small groups. We did this for a Lenten study this year, and it was very successful. Obviously, the DVD is an important part of the study. You don't want to go with just the guide. We just showed the ten minutes of Borg talking about topics and cut off the small group that he was leading in the series. All in all, it was worth doing.

[Diane]

Possible for Wow study group.