{"id":978,"date":"2018-09-17T20:03:39","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T20:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/?p=978"},"modified":"2018-10-10T21:53:13","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T21:53:13","slug":"immerse-pastor-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/2018\/09\/17\/immerse-pastor-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Immerse Pastor Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

What made you decide to do Immerse?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Like most African American churches, we have a weekly Bible class that I lead. But I knew intuitively that our study of the Bible just wasn\u2019t where it should be. Its strange, new Christians were pretty engaged, but veteran Christians rarely participated. When I would ask questions, they would just look down. When I heard about Immerse I was hopeful of what it might do. The book club model appealed to me.<\/p>\n

How did you communicate the challenge of reading Messiah<\/em> in 8 weeks?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I was pretty straightforward with the group. We\u2019re a close-knit congregation, so I told them that if we were going to do this, they would need to read in advance, or it wouldn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure what to expect the first week. I knew that in our previous Bible studies, the faithful might glance at the lesson a half-hour before coming to class. But I was seriously blown away! People had obviously read. People who hadn\u2019t contributed for years started sharing openly. Honestly, I couldn\u2019t get people to stop talking. And the conversations were different. I remember one lady saying, “I\u2019ve read this a thousand times and never saw that!” Another participant said, “I didn\u2019t realize Paul was in jail when he said that!”<\/p>\n

I held my breath for the next week. Maybe week one was an anomaly. But weeks two and three were more of the same. People had obviously read and the conversations were lively. Frankly, one of the biggest challenges was with me. I was used to carrying the conversations. I had to quickly adjust to the role of the facilitator. The other challenge\u2014and it proved to be a challenge all eight weeks\u2014we never ended on time. No one was looking at the clock. I finally had to cut it off because the children\u2019s workers were getting frustrated.<\/p>\n

Wow! Did this impact the church beyond the weekly Bible class?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It did. After week one, people were coming to me to see if it was too late to start and asked if they could get the book (it was funny, but that\u2019s how everyone started talking about it\u2014\u201cthe book\u201d). Then week two a lady showed up who I\u2019d never met. Week four her husband came. As it turned out, he wasn\u2019t a Christian, but picked up Messiah<\/em> from the coffee table and started reading. When his wife got home, he asked her, “What\u2019s this? It\u2019s pretty good.” We had increased attendance and people starting buying extra copies to give to their friends.<\/p>\n

Where do you go from here? Have you considered doing Immerse: Beginnings?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Immerse:<\/a>Actually we\u2019ve already started. Immerse recommends a cycle of two modules a year, but we had people asking “What\u2019s next?” so we started Beginnings<\/em><\/a> right away.
\nI can\u2019t believe it, but we\u2019ve just finished reading Leviticus. And we\u2019ve had great discussions! One of my favorite observations came from a lady who said, “It\u2019s interesting to me with everything that became unclean, there was always a way to get clean again, to get back into the family.”<\/p>\n

Honestly for the first time in our church\u2019s history, the Scriptures don\u2019t feel like a burden.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What made you decide to do Immerse? Like most African American churches, we have a weekly Bible class that I lead. But I knew intuitively that our study of the Bible just wasn\u2019t where it should be. Its strange, new Christians were pretty engaged, but veteran Christians rarely participated. When I would ask questions, they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1247,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions\/1247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tyndale.com\/immersebible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}