Foreword by Leonard Sweet …[This] book is an invitation to the party of your life.

Afterword by Brian McLaren …a solid and inspiring presentation of the Biblical storyline.

Book Summary

You sit down to read the text of Scripture. When you look at it on the page, it looks like some kind of a strange technical manual with all those large and small numbers that break up the text. Because Scripture is presented this way, readers have learned to read and memorize those small fragments and that has led to fragmented lives amongst the flock of the followers of Jesus. We have become versified mutts, suffering from what Dr. Winn Griffin calls versitis. What is the antidote to this serious, potentially deadly problem? Learning to Read and Live in God’s Story.

God’s EPIC Adventure provides the reader with a basic background of how we find ourselves in our present position of reading Scripture in such a fragmentized way. In God’s EPIC Adventure, Dr. Griffin uses Bishop Tom Wright’s five-act-play model as a way of presenting Scripture as a full-length Story in order to assist the reader in a better reading experience of Scripture’s text. Thinking and reading Scripture as Story can result in a follower of Jesus learning the art of living in the Story that Scripture presents, rather than applying fragmented parts of it and becoming a theological quilt. Dr. Griffin presents the gluing themes of Covenant in the Old Testament and Kingdom of God in the New Testament as two ways of saying the same thing, namely that God has invaded this present evil age with his rule.

In the Prologue, he helps the reader discover how we ended up in this theological fix of reading Scripture in such a fragmented way. Then, he presents the Story in a chronological storyline from Genesis to Revelation. In the last section of this book, he presents a way of thinking about how we as actors in God’s Story can use our imagination and improvise our part in God’s EPIC Adventure. Dr. Griffin keys God’s EPIC Adventure to the New Bible Dictionary and The Books of The Bible so that the reader can get more information about the text and can read the text without all the human additives that have been placed in the text that hinder its reading. Readers will find ways to use this book that they have never thought of before!

God’s EPIC Adventure
ISBN: 0979907608
412 Pages
$29.99
Discount Price $26.99
Presently US SHIPPING ONLY

Winn Griffin is President of Seeing the Bible Live Ministries, Woodinville, WA. He received a B.A., a M.A., a D.Min., and a second D.Min. from George Fox University. The first three degrees are in Biblical Studies, the latter one is in Leadership in the Emerging Culture. He teaches at Bakke Graduate University, Seattle, WA, and is Academic Dean of Missio Dei Learning Community, Monroe, WA. He and his wife, Donna Faith, live in Woodinville, WA, and have two adult children, Jason and Jeramie Joy. They participate with Vineyard Community Church, Shoreline, WA.

The sun was setting and leaving an array of colors in the western sky. A cool breeze was beginning to take over from the heat of the sun. Jedaiah was stoking the fire to keep it alive for the gathering outside the tent of his father Shimri. Jedaiah was seventeen years old, a sturdy lad with deep brown eyes.

All day Jedaiah daydreamed about what story Moses might share with his family during the cool of the evening. Would it be the story of Abraham and his journey to Egypt? Maybe it would be about Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt. Egypt had been a hard life for him and his family. The events over the last few months that had brought them to the foot of Sinai had been breathtaking.

Later after the evening meal, Moses arrived with two of his children. He greeted all who were gathered around the fire and found a comfortable place to sit and enjoy its warmth. The evenings in the desert could get a little chilly. Moses shared a couple of events from his busy day. One was particularly interesting to Jedaiah. Moses spoke of an interaction with a family who had a young son, Boaz, who was awestruck with the daughter of the family just two tents away from his family’s tent. Mariah was “drop dead gorgeous,” a dazzlingly beautiful magnificent woman of eighteen years. As Moses relayed the story Jedaiah fixed his eyes on Hannah with a wry grin on his face.

From the corner of his eye Moses caught his longing look and said, “Maybe soon, I can return here to the tent of Shimri and have a similar conversation concerning Jedaiah and Hannah. If it had not have been so dark with only the light from the flickering fire, everyone would have seen the flush on the face of Jedaiah.

“Moses,” Shimri inquired, “what story did you share with the families of Boaz and Mariah?”

“The same story I am going to share with you tonight,” replied Moses.

A solemn hush readied everyone for the story that would fall from the lips of Moses.

“Out of a chaotic time the voice of Yahweh thundered, ‘Light, come into existence,’ and in the blink of an eye there was light in the midst of all the chaos.”

“You know how dark it is here in the desert just before dawn when most of the family fires have long been extinguished and over the horizon light appears, a new day dawns. This daily event should always remind us of the creative majesty of Yahweh.”

“Remember also that in Egypt we were asked to worship the god of the Sun. Our Egyptian friends would bow each morning and give praise and thanks for the rising of the light globe in the east and many of our people entered into this worship with their Egyptian friends.”

“However, the story of Yahweh’s creation of all that we see tells us that he is the only God that we are to worship as he has said to us in the first of the stipulations he gave us from the mountain.”

Moses paused for a moment and asked, “What are some of the other things that Yahweh created?”

Shimri spoke up and said, “Animals like the sheep that Jedaiah tends.”

“Remember, when we were in Egypt how our friends wanted us to worship at the foot of an idol that looked like a sheep, asking this god to protect our flocks from the harm of the jackals.”

Those around the fire gave an affirmative shake of their heads to this recollection.

“Well, the story of creation tells us that there is no sheep god, only the God who created sheep, and when we worship we should worship him and not what he created.”

Shimri was chagrin and his face dropped so that his chin was touching his chest.

“Why the long face, Shimri?” Moses inquired.

“I was one that gave into the pressure of my Egyptian friends and often bowed to worship the sheep god. I had not heard this story of our Creator God. I only knew the story of the sheep god and the people who worshipped him.”

Shimri continued, “How can I change my ways to reflect a life ordered by the worship of Yahweh, the Creator of all the animals?”

Moses continued telling the story of God’s creative power ending with the creation of humankind. Here again Moses paused to comment on how in Egypt they were expected to worship the Pharaoh, who was human, as a god, but that God’s stipulation in the covenant he had made with them was that there couldn’t be any other gods, including human ones.

“The story of creation,” said Moses, “demonstrated that God created humans and gave them authority to be his agents in the world he had created, but humans themselves were not meant to be worshipped as a god.”

The chatter went on for almost two hours, but who was counting as long as Jedaiah could see Hannah. Soon the meeting broke up and Moses left with his two sons to return to his tent. Shimri commented on how inspiring it was to hear the creation story.

Jedaiah went to bed that night thinking of how living in the story of creation that Moses told would be when he and Hannah were wed. Being alive in his community and being the light to the world in which he lived truly excited him.

The stories around the campfires of Israel were as much “Bible” for them as the “written” word is a “Bible” for us.

The Bible was designed by God to be heard and read. In the “Welcome” section to the Contemporary English Version mission is described as being a translation that can be read, heard, and listened to with enjoyment. The Promise Bible God’s Words in Your Words. We must remember that the Bible was first meant to be heard The Five Books of Moses as its stories were told and read later after they were written down. Of course, we in the Western world have a difficult time wrapping our minds around the idea of an oral Bible. We think that literacy comes from being able to read written works, so if one only had an oral work the person presenting and the people listening would thereby be illiterate. Susan Niditch argues the opposite point of view in her book, Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature. Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature

Most, if not all, of our reading of Scripture only reinforces a belief that the Bible is just a collection of little nuggets that one can choose from when a small portion is thought to be helpful. It’s like using the Bible as an encyclopedia of God’s knowledge. When you have a problem just look up a reference and quote away. Readers of Scripture need to stop memorizing verses of Scripture and then quoting them as proof texts, brutally tearing them from their God-given context and ordering them in a human fashion, as if a reader could do a better job than the Spirit in putting the text together. If followers of Jesus are going to memorize, then they need to memorize the overarching Story and the myriad of stories therein, according to Len Sweet, a current postmodern author (Out of the Question…Into the Mystery: Getting Lost in the GodLife Relationship, 77 ). The church and individual readers need to recover the whole Story of Scripture. It is my argument, therefore, that we will never reside in the biblical narrative and make it our way of life if we keep pulling single verses from their context and use them as proof texts to argue our own theological agenda.

In addition to versitis readers have also developed topicalitis (a contagious and deadly Bible teaching disorder), and systematitis (the art of propositional gathering). Topicalitis is best seen in the form of topical preaching and teaching while systematitis is extended topicalitis in the form of Systematic Theologies. Westerners have developed a penchant for minutia. Is it possible that fragmented teaching produces a fragmented believer who is anemic, listless, and weak with no sense of vocation as a follower and experiencer of God?

These three epidemics are caused by foundationalism, which among Evangelicals has caused too “low” a view of Scripture (N. T. Wright, “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?,” Vox Evangelica, no. 21 (1991): 7-32). Why? Evangelicals have come to believe in the authority of the book that we have made Scripture to be. Evangelicals believe that God somehow has given us the wrong sort of book and it is our job to turn it into the right sort of book by engaging in the fissiparous (tending to break up into parts or break away from a main body) use of Scripture. How did this happen? To provide a beginning answer we will look at several authors and their discussion about the rise of foundationalism.

My argument is that the church’s understanding of the Story of God in Scripture is, for the most part, seriously fragmented. Understanding the whole Story is not a concept that is celebrated in the church at the beginning of the twenty-first-century.

I have deep concerns for the church moving across a cultural divide, that members on each side of the divide (Modern and Postmodern) have ample opportunity to have a holistic look at the overarching Story of God as it is presented in Scripture. These blogs are intended to be a challenge to the church to understand what her story is and how to become the people of God living as his recreated humanity, as a light to this present evil age. Knowing the story will help in answering the question: How are the people of God to advance the gospel as they improvise the Story of God for the sake of the world?

Over the next few posts we are going to cover three areas:

1. The Western world’s penchant for minutia and the breaking of the Story into fragments.
2. How Story is an antidote for this fragmentation.
3. The concept of the Kingdom of God as a prism through which we can understand the Story of God.

Houston, “We Have a Problem…”
One of America’s finest hours in space flight came when an oxygen tank exploded on Apollo 13. The quote “Houston, We have a problem,” is actually a misquote. The actual quote is “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” This was a major problem for those on board the Odyssey. The crew in space and the crew in Houston had to put their minds together to solve this problem and bring the three astronauts back to earth safely.

It is natural when a problem occurs to find a solution. However, sometimes a bigger problem occurs: we don’t know we have a problem. This is the situation with millions of readers of Scripture. We have a problem when we read Scripture and we may not even know it.

A Little Known Problem
The little known problem in Scripture reading is the fragmentized way in which we have come to read it. A little snippet here and a little snippet there, a Bible bit here and a Bible bit there. So if it is a problem, what do we do about it?

We will continue this thought in the next post!

We all start somewhere. The starting point will determine the ending point. As an example, on the West Coast there is a main Interstate highway with the number 5 (I-5 for short). It runs from Blaine, WA in the North to the Mexican border below Chula Vista, CA in the South. Let’s say you were in Portland, OR and you wanted to go to San Francisco, CA. You can’t get there on I-5 South. You can go part way, but I-5 doesn’t go to San Francisco. Driving South on I-5 from Portland predetermines where you are going. You can’t get anywhere else except where I-5 delivers you.

The same is true with our presuppositions. They predetermine before we start where we will end. Assume that you believe that Jesus is returning to rapture the Church before the Tribulation. That is your presupposition and as you read the text of Scripture you find all sorts of verses that support that presupposition.

So what, you may be saying. “I’m perfectly happy reading Scripture that way because it is the truth that Jesus is coming back before the Tribulation.” What if you put on a different color of shades through which you read the text of Scripture? What if instead of verses to collect to prove a point, Scripture is a Story to be lived in for the sake of the world. How would that change your way of reading the text?

As you read this blog, I am going to offer you a different way of reading and thinking about Scripture. I am going to offer you a different set of shades, a different set of presuppositions. My hope is that you will give time and attention to the way in which you presently read Scripture and if any of the thoughts presented herein find lodging with you and you decide to change some of your presuppositions, well, let’s just say that I would be pleased with your transition even though it might be very painful to move.

It was bitter cold outside. The temperature was dipping into the low teens as Justin prepared the living room for the weekly meeting of the church’s Bible study. He stoked the fire to get it roaring so that the hot ambers would keep the room fuzzy warm as the group studied that evening. He could hardly wait for the evening session.

After the evening meal that all the small group shared together they gathered in the front room around the cozy fireplace and began to sing some choruses that truly bored Justin and were what his friend Jason called “Jesus is my girlfriend” songs. The melodic line almost caused him to gag and he would often put his finger down his throat while the group was singing mimicking a gagging action. Of course, no one would see him do such a thing because they all had their eyes closed and looked like they were in some kind of trance.

Soon the musical interlude was over and Mason pulled out his Bible and told everyone to turn to Genesis chapter 1. Justin almost split a gut when someone couldn’t find the passage in their Bible and of course Trudy had only brought a New Testament to the evening fray.

Mason began by telling everyone that in his considered studies that he was convinced that the earth was no older then 4004 years and that all that Science had discovered had to fit into that time frame, including the dinosaurs.

He began by telling this little eager group that God created the universe and by that rendering he meant that creation was recorded in one verse therefore, creation was a “uni-verse.” He challenged others to go look up universe in the dictionary to understand what he was talking about. He then took the group on a long expedition through quantum physics.

Next he told the group about a new generation of Christian scholars and scientists, armed with earned doctorates and a literal view of the Genesis Creation narrative. This group hoped to breathe new life into the theory that the Earth is thousands, not billions, of years old with a hope that they could finally overcome Darwinism.

“I found a new product while surfing the net,” he told them with great enthusiasm, “it’s called the ‘Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter.’ I’ll give you the web site URL later.”

Without skipping a beat Mason took the group quickly through “seven evidences against evolution.” His monotone voice was about to lull Justin to sleep.

Without visiting any of the content in Genesis 1 where the group had been taken, Mason asked them to turn to Genesis 14.10 which reads, “Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits.”

“Even the tar pits were created in full bloom by God,” Mason postulated with some glee in his voice. “This was to spoof modern science and trick them into believing that the earth was really older than it really is.”

Now turn to Proverbs 16.4a which says, “The Lord hath made all things for himself.”

Mason continued, “In the years that man has been on earth he has come to believe that the earth is for his own enjoyment, but this verse teaches us that God made the earth for himself.”

“And in Habakkuk 3.11, God demonstrates his power to do anything he wants to with what he has created, the Bible tells us that the “sun and the moon stood still,” Mason barked out as his voice grew to a fevered pitch.

Justin was thinking, the Bible says what, as he raised his hand. His gag reflex was about to turn to a fluid eruption.
Mason responded, “Yes, Justin, do you have a comment?”

“More like a question,” Justin replied wondering if he should really ask it.

“Go for it,” said Mason.

“Well, do you think it is wise for us to be trippin’ around through all these verses in such a disjunctive fashion to try and understand what God is saying and why is it so important to prove the theory you have suggested that God created everything 4004 years ago? Would not your supposed theory be better to add the 2000 years or so since the birth of Christ, so wouldn’t you really be saying about 6,000 years ago? Even then, what you are doing really makes no sense to me,” Justin concluded.

“In fact this reminds me of a story I heard recently about a young minister who was asked to give a Bible Study. Here is what he said:

“There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus who went down to Jericho by night, and fell on stony ground, and the thorns choked him half to death. He said, ‘What shall I do? I shall arise and go to my father’s house.’ And he arose and climbed into a sycamore tree. The next day, Solomon and his wife Gomorrah came by, and they carried him down to the ark for Moses to take care of. As he was going through the Eastern gate of the ark, he caught his hair on a limb, and he hung there for 40 days and 40 nights. And afterwards he was hungered and the ravens came and fed him. The next day the three wise men came and carried him down to Nineveh, and when he got there, he found Delilah sitting on the wall, and he said, ‘Chunk her down, boys,’ and they said, ‘How many times shall we chunk her down, till seven times?’ And he said, ‘Nay, but until 70 times 7.’ And they chunked her down 490 times, and she burst asunder in their midst, and they picked up 12 baskets of the fragments that remained, and they debated whose wife she would be in the resurrection?”

The group took a collective sigh as Mason opened his mouth to respond…

Been there and done that, huh? I have. It is true that as readers of Scripture we read, meditate, and study it in such a fragmentized way. I think there is a solution to this problem. It’s story. God has given us a Story to live in and this seminar was created to give you an overview of that big story of God so that you can discover where you, in the present scene of his story, can become the actor and play the role he has called you to play, focused on being his partner in the redemption of his creation.

Been there and done that, huh? I have. It is true that as readers of Scripture we read, meditate, and study it in such a fragmentized way. I think there is a solution to this problem. It’s story. God has given us a Story to live in and God’s EPIC Adventure seminar was created to give you an overview of that big story of God so that you can discover where you, in the present scene of his story, can become the actor and play the role he has called you to play, focused on being his partner in the redemption of his creation.

The Bible is one of the most exciting books in the world to read. However, sometimes it is difficult to read and understand. There are several reasons for this. First, the Bible was written to a different culture in a different time frame. People spoke, thought, and lived differently. Second, because of the way it is printed in chapters and verses we tend to read incomplete portions of Scripture instead of whole stories. (Story capitalized is a reference to the metanarrative of Scripture while story not capitalized means other stories.) Third, we don’t know where it came from or how it developed. Fourth, we overlook the part that man played in God’s plan to share his words with us.

Second, the story of humanity in Scripture is told in terms of one race, Israel, and one person within that race, Jesus, the true humanity of God. God’s story is told from his point of view through the lives of those who he called to be his light bearers. The storoes in the Bible are not about how to get to heaven when you die. They are about how God is recreating his world and where the church fits into that picture.

Third, becoming the people of God means to find our lives in the continuing story of God. It means that there will be struggles like our forefathers had. It means there will be conflict just as our kinfolks who went before us had. It means that we will face agony just like our chief ancestor faced as he gave himself for the world. However, it does not mean doing with exactness what was written on the pages of Scripture. If that were true, then, if one needed to make a trip from Jerusalem to Rome, one should take a ship and expect to be shipwrecked and viper bitten on the way.