The following will orient you to this hybrid book group and what you will find in this online course space:

Group Summary

This is an eight-week hybrid Book Group + reading and discussing For Such A Time As This: An Emergency Devotional by Hanna Reichel. We meet on Thursday nights at 6:30 PM Pacific, both in person at Bridge City Community Church and via Zoom. Each week, we will be reflecting on 3-4 assigned chapters from this book. The readings are short, so this should be manageable for folks. Our time together will include reflection, discussion, as well as additional pastoral content that I provide. (That's the Plus part of the Book Group +) There will always be space and time for questions and discussion.

Participating with a good-faith desire to learn and grow.

The times we find ourselves in are overwhelming for most of us. Because of polarization and disagreements about how best to respond politically, there is enormous tension as people experience conflict. We will be addressing topics that carry a lot of emotional weight for people and have real implications, sometimes life-and-death. For this group to be of benefit, it needs to be a place where we all come with a good-faith desire to learn and grow. That means being willing to listen to one another, even when we disagree, and to treat each other with dignity. This is not a space designed for debate. There are plenty of places on the internet where you can do that. We may not all agree with the book's author or with how others in the group respond. I will do my best to moderate our discussion in a way that is respectful to all. I expect participants to conduct themselves similarly. If we can approach these hard conversations from that place, all of us have the best possibility of hearing the Spirit and growing.

Homework (The Reading)

For Such A Time As This: An Emergency Devotional is a little book, about 135 pages of reading. Rather than rushing through the material, I'm inviting us to go slowly so we have time to reflect and think about how these ideas apply to our lives. The reading for each week will be about 4000 words, which, for the average reader, is 20 minutes of reading or less. You will find the reading list in the next entry in the Orientation, as well as in each Weekly module of this online course space.

The Archive Videos.

Because this is a hybrid class with Zoom attendance, the sessions will be recorded. If you are not able to attend a session, you will be able to review the archived video later. I will post both the video and audio for your use. You will find those in the weekly modules for each session.