WNA Classes – Spring, Session 2

Event details

  • Thursday | March 28, 2024
  • All Day

We hope to see you for this next session of Wednesday classes! This session is four weeks long – Feb 29, Mar 7, 21, & 28 (no class during Spring Break.)  WNA is about fellowship, not fundraising.  If you would like to attend but are unable to pay the full amount, please talk with Sid or Amy.

New Testament for Skeptics Sid Hall CLOSED

Have you ever been curious about what the core themes of the New Testament looks like when you read it through the lenses of history, literary criticism, and cultural myth?  Is it possible to read the New Testament without leaving science at the door?  Who was Jesus the man in relation to the Jesus of faith?  After exploring the Old Testament in the fall in a study co-sponsored by Trinity UMC and Austin Center for Inquiry, we are doing it again with the New Testament.  Sid will be leading this four-week course in biblical understanding from the perspective that the bible is a work of people rooted in the culture, prejudices, political pressures, and hopeful yearnings of their own time.  Needed for class: a Bible.

Class meetings:

  • Feb 29 – The Gospels as history;
  • Mar 7  – The core philosophy of Paul;
  • Mar 21- Other contributions by Paul and pseudo-Paul;
  • Mar 28 –The Book of Revelation in its proper context and overview of the course.

The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem – Russ Harper

Top Jesus scholars Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan join together to reveal a radical and little-known Jesus. As both authors reacted to and responded to questions about Mel Gibson’s blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, they discovered that many Christians are unclear on the details of events during the week leading up to Jesus’s crucifixion.

In this four week class, our teacher, Russ Harper will be delving into the Last Week to explore a day-by-day account of Jesus’s final week of life. With the gospel of Mark as a guide,  the class will explore this story which culminates on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem. The first entry, that of Roman governor Pontius Pilate leading Roman soldiers into the city, symbolized military strength. The second heralded a new kind of moral hero who was praised by the people as he rode in on a humble donkey. The Jesus introduced by Borg and Crossan is this new moral hero, a more dangerous Jesus than the one enshrined in the church’s traditional teachings.

Needed for course: a Bible (the book The Last Week is also available through Amazon.com but is not necessary for the class).

If You Don’t Go Within, You Simply Go Without – Cheryl Broome

Some people believe that the world is simply a mirror, reflecting back to us our own inner state. If we are inwardly in turmoil then we are certain to see a tumultuous world. A seemingly joyful world is only returning to us our own inward joy.  Exploring our reflection means moving past the external reflection and looking deeply within.  Are you ready to explore the circumstances of your life to see how it relates to your current internal world?  According to Victor Frankl, “Each person is questioned by life and can only answer to life by answering for his/her own life.”

In four sessions we will begin our work to explore our current external circumstances as they relate to our current internal world.  Going within we will explore ourselves in light of our thoughts, deeply held beliefs, and desires.  Each week we will do meditations, exercises and hold class discussions that seek to give insight to who we are right now and who we want to become.  Class members will be asked to keep a journal and do their best to look at their life as a mirror to discover and reflect their true worth and beauty through the eyes of Creator.