Church Events
-
Feb 23
Plymouth Projects
Craft Room -
Feb 23
Plymouth Prayer Circle
Room 306 -
Feb 26
Adult S.S.
TR -
Feb 26
Worship Service
Sanctuary
Word & Note 2012
 | |||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||
Tickets on Sale | Spong, a scholar, pastor, priest, and bishop, has made a life’s study of the Bible. “I have wrestled with the Bible for more than sixty years,” he says. “I have broken open my own fundamentalism, walked through valleys of meaninglessness in which I was certain that God had died and then found my way to an understanding that goes through the Bible in order to transcend it.” “I have never believed that the Bible needs to be protected either from critical biblical scholarship or from the insights that come from astrophysics, biology, psychology or any other source,” Spong says. He is convinced that teaching the Bible to laypeople in the same way that it is taught in academic centers—“with no attempt to protect the fairly juvenile Sunday school knowledge to which so many otherwise learned people still cling”—the response will be significant. “It’s crystal clear that anyone who thinks of the Bible as an unchanging book has never read it,” Spong says. In Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, he explores the origins of the Bible and the essential message of each of its books, showing how the sense of God developed over the centuries. “I want to help people to develop a faith that goes so deeply into the essence of Christianity that they can walk beyond it into...what Paul has called ‘the glorious liberty of the children of God.’”
— William Randall Beard, Minneapolis Star Tribune "I kept asking: How can singers do this?" — Ken Keuffel, Winson-Salem Journal "They're throwing themselves into the music, and audiences are richer for it." "The members of this innovative vocal ensemble don't just make gorgeous music together, they stretch and play with their repertoire to the point that the old and new have merged into a seemingly new canon.... Cantus's commitment to exploration stretches the repertoire at every turn, while their heavenly skills make all of that exploration worthwhile." — Minneapolis City Pages | ||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, February 17 | |||||||||||||||||||
| 7-8 PM-- John Shelby Spong Lecture in the Sanctuary followed by a book signing and reception in the Fellowship Hall ($25.00) | |||||||||||||||||||
Saturday, February 18 10-11:30 AM-- John Shelby Spong Lecture, Q&A in the Sanctuary 11:30-12:30 PM-- Lunch 12:30- 2:00 PM-- John Shelby Spong Lecture, Q&A in the Sanctuary 7:00 PM Concert-- Cantus in the Sanctuary followed by a reception in the Fellowship Hall. | |||||||||||||||||||
Sunday, February 18 10:30 AM Worship in the Sanctuary 12:30 Luncheon with John Shelby Spong at the Airport Hilton for sponsors and guest artists. | |||||||||||||||||||
Tickets may be purchased at our church office or by calling | |||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||
Drury Plaza Hotel Broadview King room $89.95 per night Parking 8.00 Online reservations Or, call 1-800-378-7946 and a ask for the Plymouth Word & Note rate. Reservations must be made by January 27 to receive the special rate. Hotel at Old Town $109 queen rooms available. Wireless Internet and parking included. Please ask for the Word & Note pricing plan. Discounted reservations must be made by Friday, February 3, 2011. For more information about the Hotel at Old Town visit www.hotelatoldtown.com | |||||||||||||||||||
Word & Note Posters in PDF format. |  | ||||||||||||||||||
 |  | ||||||||||||||||||
Spong, a pioneer of progressive Christianity whose books have sold more than a million copies, brings a deep love of the Bible to his efforts to guide people beyond a Sunday school-level understanding of the texts. He reveals what is common knowledge in the academies of Christian learning: the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses; miracles do not enter the Jesus story until the eighth decade; the virgin birth is a ninth-decade addition; and many biblical characters may be literary creations, including even Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, Lazarus, and the Samaritan woman at the well. 
