3/16/2010 @ 6:00

3/16/2010

Postal code 62269, US
284 North Seven Hills Road
O Fallon, IL 62269

This is a course offering of the New Creation School. Part 1 of 8 modules. Meetings: TUES Mar 2, 16, 30 For a course to be offered, it needs 5 participants. Syllabus/schedule will be sent to participants after registration closes. Locations and leader subject to change based on enrollment and leadership availability. Courses are free. Participants are responsible for purchasing any required texts. Courses are open to all adult learners (high school and on) and need not be Presbyterian to participate. Time commitment is typically 1 or 1.5 hours. Required Texts: Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: Volume 1 ÂÂ- The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (HarperOne, 1984). Additional Info: Assigned readings with discussion as a group. The Story of Christianity is an informative, interesting, and consistently readable narrative history. It brings alive the people, dramatic events, and ideas that shaped the first fifteen centuries of Europe, such as the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the New World. Historian Justo Gonzalez shows how various social, political, and economic movements affected Christianity's internal growth. Gonzalez skillfully weaves in relevant details from the lives of prominent figures from the apostles to John Wycliffe, tracing out core theological issues and developments as reflected in the lives and struggles of leading thinkers within the various traditions of the church. "The history of the church, while showing all the characteristics fo human history, is much more than the history of an institution or movement," Gonzalez stresses. "It is a history of the deeds of the spirit in and through the men and women who have gone before in the faith." The Story of Christianity demonstrates at each point what new challenges and opportunities faced the church, and how Christians struggled with the various options open to them, thereby shaping the future direction of the church.