Theology of the Church, Mentor's Guide, MG03

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T H E O L O G Y O F T H E C H U R C H

In helping your students think through their own situations, you might want to design some questions or use those provided below as water to “prime the pump” of their interests, so to speak. What is significant here is not the questions written below, but for you, in conversation with your students, to settle on a cadre of issues, concerns, questions, and ideas that flow directly from their experience, and relate to their lives and ministries. Do not hesitate to spend the majority of time on some question that arose from the video, or some special concern that is especially relevant in their ministry context right now. The goal of this section is for you to enable them to think critically and theologically in regards to their own lives and ministry contexts. Again, the questions below are provided as guides and primers, and ought not to be seen as absolute necessities. Pick and choose among them, or come up with your own. This part of the lesson demands that you as mentor concentrate directly on the relevance of these concepts to the experience and challenges of the students in general. In other words, how do the issues of God’s election of the Church and its foreshadowing in the Israel, of salvation as participation in the Church relate specifically to their context and to their questions. Without question, links can be made between these ideas and their experience, and your task is to explore ways in which these links can be identified and pursued in conversation together for understanding and edification. The case studies in this section are directly correlated with some of the concepts covered in the teaching portion of this lesson. These studies emphasize the need for discernment to be exercised regarding the nature of the true people of God, especially who is to be included or left out, and how we are to know what constitutes the people of God considering what has been covered in this lesson. Emphasize in your discussion with the students the need for them to be critically aware of God’s radical inclusiveness when it comes to those who accept and believe in Christ for their personal salvation. Again, the tendency of even the most righteous men and women (e.g., Peter) is to limit God’s lovingkindness to those who are like us, who believe in every particular thing that we do, who practice and worship as we like, and who emphasize doctrinal ideas and issues that we have found

16 Page 35 Student Application and Implications

17 Page 37 Case Studies