How can we recognise and fall in love with the big, underlying narratives of the God Story? How do we learn to study the Bible on its own terms?
Co-founder of the BibleProject pastor, scholar and ‘life-long learner’ – Tim Mackie, is credited as one of the best Bible teachers in North America. As a multiple PhD-holder in theology, Hebrew Bible and Jewish studies, Tim first encountered Jesus in a skatepark in the middle of Portland, Oregon. Now he works with his team at the BibleProject; creating resources to help make the God Story accessible to so many.
Join Jo and Peter in our first interview episode of this season. In this fascinating conversation Tim shares how he gave his life to Jesus and how unravelling some of the big picture stories that we see woven throughout scripture can transform our view of who we are and who we have been created to be.
You can learn more about Tim Mackie and the BibleProject, including a rich library of videos, podcasts and more by visiting bibleproject.com.
00:00 (Part 1)
01:00 – Discovering a compelling and unavoidable Jesus: Tim’s journey from skateboarder and sceptic to Bible scholar and teacher.
12:14 – How do you take big ideas and boil them down to their essence? Introducing the BibleProject – connecting beautiful, visual explanations with the core ideas of scripture.
15:06 (Part 2)
15:25 – Learning to study the Bible the way it was originally constructed – as a unified story – and how the opening chapters of Genesis are like the opening minute of a symphony (where all the key ideas are introduced in the beginning).
21:38 – Transcendence, goodness, and images – some of the key melodies of the symphony introduced in Genesis 1 and 2.
24:51 – Our identity as image bearers isn’t often explicitly written about in the Bible, and yet is everywhere. Why is that and how – as readers – can we recognise the biblical hints?
27:34 – The Eden story paints Adam and Eve as our representative characters – capable of seeing what is good and helping goodness flourish, but sadly those moments are fleeting and fragile.
30:50 (Part 3)
31:01 – Jesus arrives on the scene as the first real human – a new Adam and Eve. How does the climax of the God Story retell the story of Eden and Israel, and what does this mean for us today?
35:46 – When different Christian traditions vary in theology, how do we reconcile the fact that we might get it wrong? Can we choose pathways of humility and life-long learning to hear scripture on its own terms?
38:56 – The Lord’s Prayer: the invitation to encounter the Imago Dei and Missio Dei as two sides of the same coin.