ecclesiastes

Launching The Good Life | A Photo Essay

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This Sunday we began our series on Ecclesiastes called 

The Good Life

We welcomed over 800 church family and guests as we unpacked our new series.

Below are some photos from the Gathering:

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And as a bonus, here's an animated .gif of our 9:00am Gathering:

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Pray With Us for The Good Life

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We are very excited about looking at some of the major themes that Solomon touches on throughout The Good Life. Ecclesiastes, when understood properly, contains an ocean’s worth of wisdom to protect us like a moat from the siren calls of materialism, secularism, individualism, idealism, and performancism. These perspectives are the air we breathe in our culture. We are praying that Jesus will use this study to grow our family in loving Him, living in light of eternity with Him and learning to help our neighbors, friends and family see the vanity of living life without Jesus in view.

Please join us in praying for our church family throughout this study:

  • Pray that Jesus will give us deep, honest insight into the underlying emptiness of many of the things we are chasing after to give us the good life.
  • Pray that Jesus will give us more of His perspective from beyond the sun.
  • Pray that we will grow as missionaries who can help discern and help to explain the deep down broken emptiness of life that many of our neighbors and friends are experiencing.
  • Pray that Jesus will help our city see our need for Him in order to live the good life.
  • Pray that Jesus will rescue us from the trap of individualism and help us live heavily intertwined, mutually encouraging lives as a church family.
  • Pray that Jesus will protect us from the temptation of materialism and performancism and help us find our identity is perfectly given to us as a gift in Him.
  • Pray that we will grow in contentment, enjoyment, and experiencing of the good life that is found in Jesus.

A Guide to The Good Life

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This Sunday, we'll begin our new series on the book of Ecclesiastes, The Good Life. To find out more about the series, visit our series page.

To help equip you to study the series with us, we've published a book called A Guide to The Good Life. Included in the book are weekly study guides to accompany each week of the series, LifeGroup guides with discussion questions, 40 daily devotionals, and a family activity guide to help teach your children about Ecclesiastes.

We're making a physical copy of the book available at our Gatherings beginning this Sunday, but we wanted to go ahead and release digital copies for anyone wanting to get a head start on the series.

Below are PDF and EPUB versions of A Guide to the Good Life. Not familiar with EPUBs? Find out more here.

[button label="Get the PDF" link="http://midtowncolumbia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/The-Good-Life_PDF.pdf" shape="default"]

[button label="Get the EPUB" link="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/935194/The%20Good%20Life_EPUB2.epub" shape="default"]

Live out of town and want a physical copy of the book? Buy one for $6.99 on Amazon.

Some Help Reading Ecclesiastes

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To many Christians, Ecclesiastes is a very strange read. Throughout the book, Solomon often sounds depressed, incredibly cynical and at times he seems to say blatantly untrue things or Biblically false ideas. On top of all of that, there are times when he seems to contradict himself.

But hiding behind these initial frustrations and confusions lies a wealth of wisdom, insight and truth waiting for us. When we understand the literary genre and the nature of the task Solomon is accomplishing throughout Ecclesiastes, the light bulbs start to turn on with otherwise very dark passages. Wisdom literature graces us with some of the most helpful, beautiful passages in all of Scripture and simultaneously befuddles us with some of the most confusing passages in all of Scripture.

The reason for Solomon’s apparent pessimism throughout the book of Ecclesiastes originates from the nature of the task that he is accomplishing for us. Throughout the book, Solomon walks in a tension of two views of life:

  1. Life with no view of God.
  2. Life with God in view.

Solomon spends a majority of Ecclesiastes considering view number 1 which is why it tends to be so pessimistic, cynical and strange sounding. In brief moments throughout the book he expands his view to include God and we get breaths of fresh air. Whenever you find yourself stumped by a verse or a passage in Ecclesiastes, immediately ask yourself the question “Is he describing life with no view of God right now?” This is the case almost every time he is depressed sounding or seemingly wrong.

For example in Ecclesiastes 10:19, Solomon writes:

“Money answers everything.”

At first glance that is blatantly wrong. But here he is describing life with no view of God and saying at a practical level, money is an answer to an incredible amount of problems under the sun. It won’t fix the underlying brokenness but it can certain solve a lot of symptomatic issues. It’s a truism presented in a very specific context of life considered with no view of God.

Practical steps to interpreting Ecclesiastes:

  1. Spend time praying and meditating on the tough passages asking the Holy Spirit to illuminate them to you.
  2. Ask yourself the question, “Is he describing life with no view of God right now?”
  3. If you are still stuck, talk to your LifeGroup and see if you can figure it out together.
  4. In a pinch, consult commentaries, your LifeGroup coach or someone you know with more biblical knowledge.

Don’t let a confusing statement here or there and a seemingly pessimistic tone limit you from enjoying all that Jesus has to offer us in this book. When it’s the hardest to understand, rely on Jesus’ strength the most. When it seems too murky to press on, pray for Jesus’ light to illuminate it. And together as a family, let’s learn from Jesus through Solomon how to live The Good Life.

Why Ecclesiastes?

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In some ways, the quality of life in America has never been better. A surprising amount of research is beginning to show that over the last fifty years almost every factor in quality of life has improved. And at the same time, no one seems to be getting happier. We are all chasing the good life and in some ways we are achieving circumstantially the good life at higher rates than ever before. And at the same time, depression and anxiety are up (find out more here and here and here. Happiness is down (even on Twitter).

Enter Ecclesiastes.

No one in human history has lived an affluent, glamorous lifestyle more fully than Solomon. No one has had more cumulative wealth, wisdom, success, power, and rampant access to anything he wanted whenever he wanted it. And somehow his conclusion was that even massive increases in wealth, success and overall quality of life do not translate to actual deep down soul level satisfaction and joy.

Which means Solomon’s got some insight for our culture.

Solomon was chasing everything that we chase thousands of years before us.

And he’s already finished the race so that he can now look back and bless us with his conclusions in hindsight. The entire book of Ecclesiastes is Solomon saying, “Let me tell you what I have already learned is the inevitable end of everything you are chasing right now.”

So as an entire church family, we are going to allow Solomon’s ancient insight and wisdom – wisdom that has stood the test of time – to enlighten us in our modern pursuits of the good life. Throughout the next eight weeks we will sync up our Sunday gatherings, Kidtown lessons, and LifeGroups to study through some of the major themes of the book of Ecclesiastes.

Find out more about the series.