The Corridor district Lay Servant Ministries team presents Sacred Tension: Dissonance and Dialogue in the Old Testament with Jesse Baker…

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All participants are expected to read the participant book, Sacred Tension: Embracing Dissonance and Dialogue in the Old Testament, by William P. Brown, before taking this course.

This study explores the sacred reality of the Bible in wide-ranging dialogue with itself and with readers of varied perspectives and life-experiences. The Bible is indeed the quintessential “talking book” because it has its own habit of talking to itself, setting a precedent that allows readers to even “talk back” to the Bible. Readers will discover that the diverse and even contending voices in the Bible, despite and even because of their tensions and disagreements, can be regarded as Scripture’s strength, rather than its weakness.

For questions about the course, please contact Allen Burden (aburden@nccumc.org) or Vicki Ambrose (vambrose@nccumc.org), Corridor district co-directors of Lay Servant Ministries.

About the Facilitator:

Jesse (pastor at First UMC Elon) is a self-proclaimed “Bible nerd” who loves to preach and teach. Wrestling with Scripture is a way of life, and he loves inviting people into the process of discovering the wisdom God has gifted us in our sacred texts. Jesse is a poet, a practice he often uses as a means of sitting with and meditating on passages in the Bible. In 2025, he published a collection of these poems in a work titled Clarity and Light: Meditations on Scripture with Resource Publications (an imprint of Wipf and Stock).