A New Perspective at Christianity Unpacked

I have the privilege of coordinating our work in Sandringham and Verulam and in both schools, we have lunchtime groups called ‘Christianity Unpacked’, which we run in partnership with the youth workers at Spicer Street Church. These groups are for Christians and non-Christians to come, have fun, eat nice snacks and explore the Bible to, as the name suggests, unpack Christianity.

This term, we have been working through Jesus’ parables. It has been such a good series as the young people have got stuck into the stories, asked inquisitive questions and excitedly discovered the meanings that Jesus had hidden in these literary gems.

One of the highlights for me when studying the parables is there is always more to notice - a different angle or perspective to view it from. One example of this came recently when as a team we were at the National Youth Ministry Weekend. I knew I had to prepare a session for Christianity Unpacked after getting back and hadn’t decided which parable to look at. Just before one of the main sessions at the conference, I suddenly recalled this, so prayed for God’s wisdom on which parable to teach from. The main session, delivered by Chris Curtis from Youthscape, just happened to be on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which as the talk proceeded, felt like it was God’s answer to my prayer.

Now, this was a parable I had discounted for this series, partly as we use it in our Parables lesson and partly because I (wrongly) thought everyone would know it inside out anyway. However, Chris’ talk provided a fresh new take on this parable. There were several new insights I took away from his talk but the one that sparked amazing conversations in the Christianity Unpacked groups that followed was about the Levite and why he didn’t stop. I had never considered that the Levite may well have witnessed the Priest walk by on the other side. If that was the case, it provides a brand-new way of looking at it. Was the Levite conforming to what he saw others, especially those in authority, doing?

We’ve had some great conversations about what it means to not conform to some of the World’s patterns, such as cancel culture, greed and entitlement, consumerism etc.  and instead being distinctive by going against the norm to follow Jesus’ teaching of loving our neighbours unconditionally despite the cost to ourselves.

Geoff