A Hero's Journey

Youth Sunday School | At-home Resources
January 23 | Plot in Biblical Narrative by the Bible Project

Youth Sunday School meets the second and fourth Sunday of the month following the Sunday worship service, from around 11:10am to 12 noon.  We are continuing our discussion based on  the video series from the Bible Project called How to Read the Bible.

This week we talked about story plot and the journey of a hero through a story. Stories often begin with a call to adventure where something happens that requires the hero to take action. The hero may be full of doubt and even try to back out, but once on the journey they face the growing trials that climax with a confrontation. Stories can wrap up with a hero triumphing or being saved by someone else. Then there is the return to their lives, but they are changed by their adventure. Biblical narrative follows the same type of patterns.

This helped us look at the importance of context when we read scripture. Often we jump into the middle of the text and just read a portion. It can help us understand the text when we recognize where we are in the plot -- both the plot of the book of the Bible we are reading, and the overall plot of the entire collection of scripture.

We looked at Luke 6:1-11 and split into two groups. The first looked at the story right before this passage; the second looked at the story following it. Then we came back together an discussed how the context helped us better understand the passage we had read.

Next time, we will begin our reading of the Gospel of Mark. We will also talk about how to use Bible Handbooks, and explore our church library to see the tools we can use to help us in our reading.