Courses

Devotional practices, or spiritual disciplines, are fundamental ways that we enter the sphere of grace and foster our love for God. The devotional actions of the first Christians with which they worshipped Jesus Christ as God were stunningly innovative in their contexts. Understanding those actions anew in those contexts provides a repertoire that moves us beyond our typical traditional and our popular devotional practices. This course combines the study of the devotional practices in the New Testament with interactive experience in which we explore the application of early Christian devotional practices together.

Knowing

• Know the spectrum of devotional practices in the New Testament and early Christianity
• Understand the social, historical, literary and religious cultural contexts in which the early church developed its devotional practices
• Acquire a generalist knowledge of devotion to Jesus in its ancient context

Being

• Be an academic and teacher who is transformed by biblical devotional practice
• Allow the text to motivate and form spiritual disciplines in practice and teaching

Doing

• Research and write an academic paper & present the research to the class
• Identify and apply a methodology to the analysis of the text
• Teach a unit on early devotional practices to the class