The Original Church
Spirituality/Belief
The Original Church, with Dr. James L. Papandrea, is an ecumenical Christian community exploring our common roots in the early Church for the purposes of spiritual growth and practicing the Christian faith. No politics, debates, or proselytizing, just "faith seeking understanding" from the perspective of the early (and medieval) Church and the Church fathers. Jim Papandrea is an author and Professor of Church History and Historical Theology.
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What do we mean by Chronological?

In The Journey, we will be going through the four gospels concurrently - all four at the same time, reading parallel passages side by side. But here's the tricky part: No gospel writer ever claimed to be putting down the story in a strictly chronological order. The gospels are not, for the most part, chronological narratives, but they are anecdotal compilations of the things Jesus said and did. In other words, it's like the way you might tell people about your vacation - you don't start at the beginning and tell the whole story at once, beginning to end. You tell individual stories about things that happened, and one story reminds you of the next, even if they didn't happen one right after the other. For the gospels, the thread through them is theological and thematic, not strictly chronological. Of course there are things that happen at the beginning (Jesus' birth, baptism, temptation) and there are things that happen at the end (his passion, resurrection, post-resurrection appearances). But in between that, it's more thematic. Having said that, the closest thing we get to a chronological narrative is the Gospel of John, with a ministry that covers what appears to be 3 years, or going through 3 Passovers (the other gospels present the story in a kind of compressed form as if the whole story is Jesus on the way to Jerusalem for his passion).

So we are going to follow the rough chronology in the Gospel of John, putting the other gospel sections into the chronology where they would go in a "beginning-to-end" story, which means the stuff from Matthew, Mark, and Luke will often not come to us in the order they give it to us. But trust me, it will all make sense as a historical narrative. So a high level outline for the gospels will look something like this, and these are the sections we will follow through:

1) Prologue to Jesus' ministry (up through his temptation)
2) Year 1A: Galilee
3) Year 1A: Judea (ends with the arrest of John baptizer - Jesus leaves Judea)
4) Year 1B: Galilee
5) Year 1B: Judea (ends with the execution of John - Jesus leaves Judea)
6) Year 2: Galilee
7) Year 2: Judea (ends with Jesus finding out there's a price on his head, and - you guessed it - Jesus leaves Judea - it's not time for his passion yet)
8) Year 3: Jerusalem (including the passion, resurrection, etc.)

Down the road, when we finish the gospels, we will go through the book of Acts, interspersing the New Testament letters into the story chronologically, so we'll go through the rest of the NT (and beyond) chronologically by year, based on what we know about the early Church. And that's the plan!

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In case you missed it, here's my Gospel Reflection

This was for March 24th, recorded for the Ascension App

00:02:57
The Journey is BACK!

Thanks for your patience - here is our next installment of The Journey - it's session # 96, but I'm also calling it PART 1 of a "miniseries" on John chapter 6.

Whoever watches it first, please let me know if it looks good or if there are any problems with it - I get through the first two sections of the text on the feeding of the 5,000.

Enjoy!

00:36:42
Name this movie...
00:00:08
Here's another song... Come Let Us Climb the Lord's Mountain

I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:

In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

I hope you like the song!

Here's another song... Come Let Us Climb the Lord's Mountain
Had a Great Conversation with Dustin Quick Last Night

It was pre-recorded - here it is:

Would you like some of my music on CD?

As I'm going through all my belongings as part of our move, I have come across some audio CDs of my old music, from when I had my band, Remember Rome - if any of you still have a CD player, and you would like me to send you some of what I have, send me the address to send them to at this email address: [email protected]

Some of these CDs are in their original cases, and some were demo samples, but either way, it's all original music written by me, and performed by me and my band back in the late 90s and early 2000s.

I'll be happy to find a good home for these CDs in case you might enjoy them, and because you all have been supporting me (and I haven't produced much content in the last month or so) I'll send you one or more CDs for free. Just give me an address.

Thanks!

In case you know someone going on pilgrimate this year...

Here's the link to the new edition of my Rome book on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Rome-Second-Pilgrims-Guide-Eternal/dp/B0F8TGTWZX

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