Am I Normal?

The title of this post is, of course, both a rhetorical question and the title of the video we watched last Sunday during class. For those of you who did not get a chance to see it and to the extent you are interested, we can provide a copy of the video to you or the links. The title of this post is not designed to elicit comments from you about whether you think I am normal or not!

We enjoyed being back in class this week. While last week was a wonderful experience, we missed the fellowship of our class. We are excited about having you all over to our house next weekend.

Today, our class focused on following up on the BBC video, Am I Normal? We discussed the video and whether it was thought provoking or merely irritating. We all ended up somewhere in the middle of that discussion ... parts of it clearly provoked us to think about the way we are perceived in the world, but the video was not representative of Christianity as we see it today.

This should give us pause. The video itself leads us to believe it is time to discuss Christianity and how it is perceived today. Over the next few weeks, we are going to focus for a little while on Christianity -- what it means to be a Christian in the world today, how Christians are perceived, the real and semantic differences between Evangelicals, mainline denominations, the emerging church, conservatives, right-wing and liberal Christians, the Christian right, etc. We will be asking some hard questions and also will be presenting data about the way Christians are perceived, rightly or wrongly. We will also discuss our role in changing the way Christians are viewed in the world today, if that is an appropriate underaking.

We have many other topics to cover, and we will get to them. But in our view, there are few topics that are more deserving of our attention than this one. We look forward to class in the coming weeks as we work out what it means to be Christians in the 21st century. Have a wonderful week.

Bryan