Author Sean Gladding - 9/9 @8pm "The Story of God, the Story of Us"

Join us Sept 9th @8pm - "The Story of God, the Story of Us" -
with author Sean Gladding.
RSVP via facebook or reply email
St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wheaton, IL
Doors open at 7:30, free refreshments and Q&A to follow event

Before the Bible was a book it was flesh and blood. Join author and storyteller, Sean Gladding, as he presents the story of creation, helping us hear it as Israelite exiles would have as they gathered around a fire by the rivers of Babylon in the sixth century B.C.E. The story of creation is chapter one of Sean's new book, The Story of God, the Story of Us: Getting Lost and Found in the Bible (IVP 2010), which has grown out of years of telling the overarching Story of Scripture to large groups and small gatherings throughout the United States and internationally as well.

How did we get here? That question has haunted all kinds of people ever since, well, we got here. Sometimes they're wringing their hands over the origins of the universe: how did we (the human race) get here (on a planet with a breathable atmosphere)? But just as often they're asking a more urgent, more desperate question: How did I wind up in this particular place, with this particular pain? And more important: where do I go from here?

Sean Gladding wrestles with those questions--and others--in all their cosmic and existential dimensions in his book The Story of God, the Story of Us. Thursday, September 9, he'll lead us through the biblical story of creation--not from the vantage point of an ivory tower or a bully pulpit, but from a campfire outside the walls of Babylon, where faithful Jews, to whom God had promised land and all its benefits, wondered where God had gone -wondered how they had gotten to this place of despair. Their story is more like our story than we often think; and God's story speaks to us as profoundly as it spoke to them.

Says the author: "What I always hope people walk away with is a desire to go read the text again, with others, and for people to hear the Story that is healing, invitational and that leads to life, rather than one that creates division, wounding and isolation."

About Sean: Sean Gladding spent several years in Houston, Texas, where he was co-pastor of Mercy Street, an initiative by Chapelwood United Methodist Church for "church wounded" people, as well as people in drug and alcohol recovery. He now resides in Lexington, Kentucky, at Communality, a missional community that serves as one of the host "schools for conversion" for the New Monasticism.

“Sean Gladding invites us to hear God’s story anew—to hear it as our own story—and to let it direct us toward the beloved community we’re made to be. Listen to him. Commit this story to memory. Tell it to your kids. Let it direct your life.”
--Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, author and new monastic