2010 Theme: Different eyes
The theme for Spring Harvest 2010 can be summed up in a word – ethics.
The Learning Guide (available when you arrive) gives you background information to the teaching you will experience in the Zones each day. This year's Learning Guide will help you think more about developing Christ-like ethics, both whilst you're at Spring Harvest and when you go home.
What are ethics?
Most people regard ethics as thinking about difficult and ambiguous moral quandaries – "Should I lie to protect a friend?""Must we always tell a dying person they are dying?""‘Do we have to tell the whole truth all the time, however brutal?""‘Can I ever compromise my values to achieve a good goal?"
Ethical frameworks go unnoticed, but they surround us
In fact, ethics are bigger and broader than these questions. Our ethics provide a cultural framework – an under-pinning value system – in which we live our whole lives. Ethics are like the air we breathe. Although for the most part they go unnoticed, our lives and communities depend on them.
Whether we like it or not, we’re all doing ethics all the time with questions such as, “Was it right to grass someone up over the murder of Archie Mitchell?” “Is it right to be so explicit about
cancer sufferers in Corrie?” The internet is full of sites where people debate soap opera story lines – and we do the same in real life.
Christian ethics are distinctive
But Christian ethics are distinctive ethics. They are not just anyone’s ethics. They are ‘uncommon’ rather than ‘common’ sense. Indeed, if Christian ethics are not distinctive, then Jesus is relegated to nothing more than a ‘personal’ and ‘private’ motivator, encouraging us to ideals that are shared by all. We do not follow a set of universal moral or ethical principals – we follow Jesus. And in following Jesus we live distinctively, and therefore beautifully.
Daily themes
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Daily Themes for Spring Harvest 2010 |
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DAY 2 |
The God we worship
Exploring and discovering the character of Yahweh Morning Bible Teaching is on: God's Generosity - Genesis 12: 1-9 Today's debate: War and Peace and Us » Coming to SH? You can raise an opinion/question for the debate here |
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DAY 3 |
The Example we followCreating a framework for developing moral skills and habits based on the character of God
Morning Bible Teaching is on: God's Justice - Exodus 3: 1-15 Today's debate: Homosexuality and the Christian » Coming to SH? You can raise an opinion/question for the debate here |
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DAY 4 |
The Community we belong toUnderstanding we can only develop a mature Christian ethic within the context of a community
Morning Bible Teaching is on: God's Faithfulness - 1 Samuel 12 » Coming to SH? You can raise an opinion/question for the debate here Today's debate: The money issue |
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Day 5 |
The World we want to seeLearning how : Life as we know it (Abortion and euthanasia ) Morning Bible Teaching is on: God's Wisdom - John 1: 1-18 |
Miracles can be tough to live with.
A thirty-year-old man, blind since birth, had an operation that gave him new eyes and normal vision. The never-blind cannot imagine the impact this had on him. Initially he was euphoric. He could see, for the first time ever.Then the excitement faded. He became disorientated and depressed. The cause of his descent was a collision with reality. The world he could now see bore little resemblance to the world he had seen in his imagination during 30 years of darkness. He was suffering a deep grief and confusion.
Sometimes the reality we see, contradicts our assumptions.
Looking at the world through his new eyes he saw a reality that often contradicted his assumptions. Sight required him to relinquish his fondly held, but often extraordinarily misguided, ideas about what things actually looked like. Not seeking to return to the past, he began praying very hard for another even greater miracle; that God would show him how to live in this strange world.Our prayer is that at Spring Harvest 2010 Different Eyes we will together enjoy the miracle of new and clearer sight. Through God’s revelation, we want to see the world differently; with his eyes. To see from a God’s eye view. As we struggle to make sense out of what is happening in our world, in our communities, workplaces, homes and churches, we pray that new clarity and vision will bring new possibilities and opportunities.
