The Messianic Musings blog has been quiet since October.
There’s a reason for that. First, I haven’t been doing any sermons or commentaries lately. That’s because our rabbi has been handling all the teaching duties of late with an exciting new series on discovering the Messiah in the Torah, going through all five books of the Torah. It’s shaping up into a great series that you can find here.
Still, that means I’ve been teaching less, at least in public.
But what have I been doing with my time otherwise, from a theological perspective? Well, I’ve been working on a few books that I plan to eventually publish in eBook form on the Kindle and perhaps other formats as well. Some of these books will be based on the very sermons and commentaries you’ll find right here on MessianicMusings, but researched more deeply and greatly expanded.
Other books will be original concepts. For example, one cannot really begin to teach the Messianic perspective without first laying the groundwork of a common understanding of terms, culture, context and the like.
Easy example. If I say, “Sabbath,” most of my Christian readers will automatically think, “Sunday.” However, most of my Jewish and Messianic readers will automatically think, “sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.” Which do I mean? To those who know me, they would immediately understand I mean the latter.
However, to someone picking up a book I’ve written for the first time, who has never attended a Messianic congregation, they might not share that definition.
So, before I delve into the other books I’m planning, I want to compose a “Messianic Basics” sort of book that I can then use as a frame of reference for many of these things.
After all, if you read through my sermons on here, you’ll notice that they were written for an audience that was already part of our faith community. I refer to teachings by Rabbi Stan that we all had heard in previous weeks, so it was a context we all shared.
One cannot do that in a book, because one is speaking to an entirely different audience, many of whom do not share that context. So, that’s probably what my first Messianic-centric book will be… a working definition of the Messianic movement, and the terms, context and understandings that I’d like people to understand when reading my later theological works.
I have no idea, at this point, when the first Messianic theological work will be published and available. Right now, I’m working on a fictional entertainment novel, which has little (if anything) to do with my spiritual views, other than it’s within the realm of what I would consider “clean, family-safe entertainment,” although that terms means different things to different people.
But I do hope to put the Messianic Basics book on the front burner later this year, with an eye toward ePublication before the year is out, or very early in 2012. Once they start rolling out, I hope to ePublish a couple Messianic books per year, as well as a couple fiction novels per year.
But on this blog, the focus of my posts will be on the Messianic titles.
This entry was posted
on Monday, February 14th, 2011 at 12:04 am and is filed under sermons and commentaries.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
What I’ve Been Doing Lately
February 14th, 2011 by Craig Hansen
The Messianic Musings blog has been quiet since October.
There’s a reason for that. First, I haven’t been doing any sermons or commentaries lately. That’s because our rabbi has been handling all the teaching duties of late with an exciting new series on discovering the Messiah in the Torah, going through all five books of the Torah. It’s shaping up into a great series that you can find here.
Still, that means I’ve been teaching less, at least in public.
But what have I been doing with my time otherwise, from a theological perspective? Well, I’ve been working on a few books that I plan to eventually publish in eBook form on the Kindle and perhaps other formats as well. Some of these books will be based on the very sermons and commentaries you’ll find right here on MessianicMusings, but researched more deeply and greatly expanded.
Other books will be original concepts. For example, one cannot really begin to teach the Messianic perspective without first laying the groundwork of a common understanding of terms, culture, context and the like.
Easy example. If I say, “Sabbath,” most of my Christian readers will automatically think, “Sunday.” However, most of my Jewish and Messianic readers will automatically think, “sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.” Which do I mean? To those who know me, they would immediately understand I mean the latter.
However, to someone picking up a book I’ve written for the first time, who has never attended a Messianic congregation, they might not share that definition.
So, before I delve into the other books I’m planning, I want to compose a “Messianic Basics” sort of book that I can then use as a frame of reference for many of these things.
After all, if you read through my sermons on here, you’ll notice that they were written for an audience that was already part of our faith community. I refer to teachings by Rabbi Stan that we all had heard in previous weeks, so it was a context we all shared.
One cannot do that in a book, because one is speaking to an entirely different audience, many of whom do not share that context. So, that’s probably what my first Messianic-centric book will be… a working definition of the Messianic movement, and the terms, context and understandings that I’d like people to understand when reading my later theological works.
I have no idea, at this point, when the first Messianic theological work will be published and available. Right now, I’m working on a fictional entertainment novel, which has little (if anything) to do with my spiritual views, other than it’s within the realm of what I would consider “clean, family-safe entertainment,” although that terms means different things to different people.
But I do hope to put the Messianic Basics book on the front burner later this year, with an eye toward ePublication before the year is out, or very early in 2012. Once they start rolling out, I hope to ePublish a couple Messianic books per year, as well as a couple fiction novels per year.
But on this blog, the focus of my posts will be on the Messianic titles.
This entry was posted on Monday, February 14th, 2011 at 12:04 am and is filed under sermons and commentaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.