Just Launched — The Big Class: Getting More Out of the Bible with Archbishop Justin Welby

While January 1 gets all the fireworks, in the Church, the first Sunday of Advent starts the New Year. We’ll pause to let you enjoy a moment of celebration. Happy New Year!

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Take The Big Class: Getting More Out of the Bible with Justin Welby  for free throughout the Advent season. In this class, Archbishop Justin Welby, the 105th leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, discusses ways to approach and study scripture. He suggests programs that help us read scripture and gives us many reasons to do so. In the final lesson, Stephen Lyon, leader of  the Bible in the Life of the Church project, offers guidance for where and how we might encounter scripture in the world.

The course also includes resource suggestions, including a resource guide to studying and experiencing scripture that you can download at the end of the course and take with you.

Want change in this new year? Read scripture. That’s a big part of Archbishop Welby’s message. We don’t read the Bible because we have to. We don’t slouch resignedly through a bunch of pages that we don’t really understand because that’s what Christians do. We come in armed with information, ideas, excitement, looking for what scripture can show us this time. What will happen? The Bible is a library of books that alter lives and communities. These books have moved through the world making changes for thousands of years. What will it do to your life, your community?

This course is designed to give you inspiration and resources to make reading scripture part of your daily life. We hope that it helps you experience the Bible in new and exciting ways in the coming year. To learn more about the class, please click below.

God bless you, and have a happy new year!

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Announcing Our Advent Big Class: Getting More Out of the Bible with Archbishop Justin Welby

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We are pleased to announce our newest Big Class: Getting More Out of the Bible with Justin Welby. The Most Rev. Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, is an author, teacher, and the spiritual leader of 80 million Anglicans worldwide. Taking this course and using it to launch a renewed approach to scripture is an excellent way to start a new Church year.

In this course, Archbishop Welby invites Christians to deepen and improve their reading of the Bible and offers guidance on ways to do so. We will offer the course for free to anyone who wants to take it across the world from November 27 through December 25.

The course includes, among other materials, video lectures with Archbishop Welby, resources for further Biblical study according to his suggestions, and the opportunity to discuss the Archbishop’s lectures with Christians across the world. It requires no special software and should take the average student less than an hour to complete. To learn more about taking the Big Class yourself or about using it in your congregation, click here.

We are able to offer this course free of charge during Advent thanks to the generosity of the Office of the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church and The Bible In the Life of the Church initiative. We hope that you will make the course a part of your Advent discipline. For a preview of one of Archbishop Welby’s lectures, please click below.

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Just Launched — Martin Luther: Here I Stand with Alec Ryrie

We have just launched Martin Luther: Here I Stand with Alec Ryrie For Individuals and For Groups.

This class is most productively experienced in conjunction with another class by Alec Ryrie, Martin Luther: Seeds of Reformation, which we published a couple of weeks ago. Martin Luther: Here I Stand picks up discussing Martin Luther’s life and work where the first class leaves off.

This class begins with the church’s reaction to Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses, which was not what Luther had hoped. Luther had desired open discussion and debate about the nature of salvation, but the church didn’t want discussion; it wanted obedience. Alec discusses the confrontations that Luther engaged with church authorities, including the most important one at Leipzig, in which Johann Eck succeeded in pushing Luther to make what both men knew the church would regard as heretical statements.

Alec examines Luther’s unique status as the central figure of the early Reformation and ways in which Luther disseminated his message through Germany. Finally, Alec offers in-depth discussion of Luther’s determined refusal at the Diet of Worms to admit any authority in interpreting scripture as necessary besides his own conscience. He examines that choice and its repercussions for the final two lessons of the course.

Dr. Alec Ryrie is a professor of history at Durham University. He specializes in Reformation history and particularly in the way Protestant beliefs and ideas manifested themselves in England and Scotland during the Early Modern period. He has published five books, the most recent of which, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (2013) won The Society for Renaissance Studies book prize in 2014.

This course is designed for people who want to know more about Martin Luther, his concept of justification by faith alone, and his role in the Protestant Reformation.For a video preview, please click below.

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