The Resolute

Gus is an MTS apprentice. And Gus wrote some studies about Christian dating (and some other stuff). But is there more of a link between the two than Gus? Well, I think what links them is that Christians are in danger of undertaking them wrongly in the same way.

Christians do dating differently to the world. Sometimes it’s called ‘courting’ to help make the distinction. One of the differences (there are several) is that a large part of what you are doing is explicitly assessing whether or not someone is wise to marry.

MTS is a brilliant movement committed to raising up gospel workers to go out into the harvest. During a 2 year program focussed on front line ministry and training, apprentices are given the opportunity to assess whether or not they should go into full time word ministry.

How do we do either poorly? By missing two words:

‘Or not’.

If you date you don’t have to get married. If you do MTS you don’t have to go into full time ministry. If it’s a Godly and wise course of action to take then go ahead and get married/go into full time word ministry but we need to protect the other two options from the stigma of failure.

If these undertakings are about whether or not to make a commitment to a longer, more permanent version of themselves then the option ‘or not’ should be viewed as a positive outcome. If you were trying to figure out which way to go and were able to make a decision then you’ve achieved the goal. Neither should be about getting on a metaphorical conveyor belt, but gathering information to make a decision.

In January I ran a 4 part “Summer Bible Studies” series on relationships. It was to compliment a mini sermon series on 1 Corinthians 7 that Scott preached.

We looked at  4 topics over 4 weeks:

• The Bible on Marriage
• The Bible on Singleness
• The Bible on Courtship (going from single to engaged/married)
• The Bible on Divorce and Remarriage

In case it might be of help to anyone, I’ve made them available right here.

PDF’s of each study:

The Bible on Marriage¹
The Bible on Singleness
The Bible on Courtship
The Bible on Divorce and Remarriage

Or a zip file of the 4 studies:

The Bible on Relationships 4 Part Series

I’d appreciate your comments and feedback.

I should add that they are based on a set of studies that Scott Tarrant originally produced², as well as a lot of input from a few friends and colleges, especially Kev Chan³.

I also have a set of leaders notes which I’d be happy to add, however they’d need to be updated a little since they were only meant for my reference as I run the discussions, and lets just say they might not be entirely… coherent for anyone else… but let me know if you’d like them and I’ll see what I can do.

1. This study refers to An Australian Prayer Book. These studies were run in an Anglican context, if you’re not Anglican, hmm… guess you won’t have access to one of these… still worth looking at how your denomination defines marriage. [↩]
2. Scott’s the Assistant minister at St Andrew’s Anglican Church Wahroonga, and he ran a 3 part series of studies on similar topics a few years ago. [↩]
3. Kev’s the other MTSer/Ministry Apprentice/Trainee Minister at St Andy’s where I’m a MTSer/Ministry Apprentice/Trainee Minister. We spent many a lunch break talking through the planning of these studies. [↩]