Changing Your Mind
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Mark Moore is a man who has changed his mind about a lot of things which is somewhat extraordinary these days. Change can be costly and painful and this was certainly true for Mark. He previously pastored Providence Community Church in Plano, TX, where he pastored for eleven years based upon a set of theological assumptions he no longer holds. This is so rare, to be open to a new way of thinking, especially when there’s so much at stake.
Mark wrote a two part blog for Missio Alliance on how he changed his mind about women in ministry, but it’s really about how he changed his way of interacting with and understanding the Bible. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Here’s a snippet to get you started:
The result of reading the Bible as story, as opposed to systematic theology, was that the background of the story—people, places, circumstances, etc.—became absolutely essential to understanding what was actually taking place in the text. One day I realized that I had very little understanding of the world of the 1st century; instead I had a whole lot of understanding of the world of the 16th century. I began studying 1st century Judaism and the Roman Empire and when I did the New Testament began to come alive. It sounds cliché, but it was literally like going from black and white to color television, which makes you want to go back and re-watch your favorite shows in order to see what color their clothes actually were—I was re-reading the Bible and picking up on colors I’d never seen before.