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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Message to the Original Church Community

Dear friends - Please take 10 minutes to watch this personal update from me:

00:11:14
Sneak Peek into my NEW OFFICE!

I'm back, up and running, and ready to go - I should have a new JOURNEY episode within the next week or so - and because you are my loyal peeps, here is an exclusive, just-for-you, behind the scenes SNEAK PEEK into my new office:

00:02:17
In case you missed it, here's my Gospel Reflection

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

00:02:57
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
Here's the latest from the Way of the Fathers Podcast

St. Albert the Great - teacher and mentor of St. Thomas Aquinas

Unboxing of the NEW BOOK!

The Original Church

And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you haven't already...

Thought for the day

The problem with us men is that often we don't have the wisdom to be a father until we're a grandfather.

This may sounds like some ironic statement that makes you nod your head in agreement but shrug your shoulders in resignation, thinking, well there's nothing we can do about that. But the practical application of that is that it demonstrates how important it is for kids to grow up around their grandparents. But as in our culture the family becomes ever more fractured and spread out, that is harder and harder to do.

Lately I've been thinking that part of the problem is the whole concept of college. It used to be that everyone thought a person had to go to college to make a good living. Not only is that not the case (truck drivers make more money than I do) but now college has gone from useless to actually ruining our kids. But when I went to college, what you were supposed to do is figure out what career you wanted (as if anyone knows that at age 18) and then go away to the college ...

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