Biblical (Ashkar) Manuscript Found

Posted on February 26, 2010

The Associated Press is carrying an article on a recent biblical manuscript discovery. It appears to be the second half of the Ashkar manuscript, which dates to the 7th century. These 1300 year old manuscript halves have been reunited in Jerusalem. The significance of this discovery are at least two-fold.

Significance of the Find

  1. It completes an early form of the “Song of the Sea” from Exodus (13:19-16:1).
  2. It confirms a remarkable level of quality in bible translation throughout the ages.

The text includes a song of victory over the Egyptians when the Jews were liberated from slavery to make their way to Canaan, the Promised Land. Despite modern protests of the miraculous event of the Red Sea crossing, extant manuscripts continue to confirm this redemptive event, without protest from other documents from the same time period.

An excerpt: “The Lord is my strength and my song and he as become my salvation…You blew with your wind, the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods…”

What People Are Saying About It

The Song of the Sea manuscript demonstrates the tremendous fidelity with which the tremendous fidelity with which the Masoretic version of the Bible was transmitted over the centuries. – Dr. Adolfo Roitman

The reunification of the two pieces adds an important link in the chain, showing how the writing of the Hebrew Bible evolved through the so-called “silent” period — between the third and 10th centuries — from which nearly no Biblical texts survived. While in the Dead Sea Scrolls the song is arranged like prose, for example, in the newly reunited manuscript it is written like a poem, the same way it appears in the Hebrew Bible today. – AP article

GCM Collective Launches Soon!

Posted on February 25, 2010

The GCM Collective (Gospel Communities on Mission) will be launching a live, interactive resource website on March 1st! The vision of GCM is to equip churches and leaders to plant, lead, and transition churches in gospel, community and mission. The GCM site will host discussions forums on important topics such as:

  • Developing Missional Leaders
  • Everyday Mission
  • City Renewal
  • Contextualization
  • Missional Theology
  • Culture Creation

In addition, you’ll have access to the writings, resources, and interaction of the following missional leaders and their respective churches:

Sign-up for updates on the site launch and the GCM Collective National Conference, which will be held later this year!

Are City Groups Missional Communities?

Posted on February 24, 2010

The short answer is yes, with a gospel center. The long answer is the book I am writing right now. Here’s an excerpt from the book that addresses this question:

Contextualization and “City Groups”

Missional communities are also referred to as: Clusters, Gospel communities, or even Trash Groups. Missional community, however, is the term has become most common in Missional Church literature. If this is the case, why invent yet another name? The primary reason we chose to call them City Groups was due to a principle of missional community called contextualization. Contextualization is the intentional process of communicating the historic gospel and teachings of Jesus Christ in contemporary cultural forms.

In order to best communicate the gospel in our urban, post-modern, creative class context, we discerned that the term “missional community” would be a hindrance not a help to mission. The population of Austin, Texas is highly “unchurched” and, in some sectors, resistant to the gospel. Therefore, new and technical church terminology is unfamiliar at best and off-putting at worst. As a result, we decided to select a term that could preserve the meaning of missional community, but articulate it in contemporary cultural language.

The use of “city” communicates an outward, urban focus while “group” communicates the gathering of people who share this focus. In short, the particularly urban context of our mission (and the name of our church, Austin City Life) lent itself to the name City Groups. They are groups that are for the city, communities that are on an urban mission.