This August, we started a process in the
congregation Vida Nueva (New Life) Lutheran Church in Bogota, about economically
studying the Bible. The community has expressed great interest in the theme, including
last year when we held a workshop to look into Solidarity Economy: a grassroots
and bottom-up method of creating the economy wanted for and by the community,
grounded in principles of solidarity, mutualism, cooperation and equity.
It was after that workshop that the
congregation began looking for ways to delve deeper and work on figuring out
its opportunities and possibilities. For
the next two months, every Sunday the congregation will be studying the economy
from the Bible. We started the first study with a general defining of the term economy and an overview of economic
themes found in the Bible, starting with the formative event of liberation from
slavery in Egypt, the economy of manna
in the desert, the jubilee laws of forgiving debts, redistributing land,
releasing the captives, and more. In the weeks ahead, we will go deeper into
these stories, and many others, looking at the opportunities for the
congregation to involve itself locally in creating the economy according to those
principles being identified in these studies.
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| Here I am going over the definition of 'economy'. |
