CUS In Real Time points teachers to current events and offers ideas for relating Scripture to what’s happening in their own communities and around the world. This teaching tool gets its inspiration from Karl Barth, a German preacher and theologian, who believed a faithful reading and application of Scripture requires that we “hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.”
Perhaps you found your way to this site serendipitously or perhaps you intended to visit the site because you are using Christian education materials built on the Uniform Lessons Series. In any case, we hope you find CUS In Real Time useful for facilitating discussion and awareness of contemporary issues and world events in connection to your individual or community study of Scripture.
Did you know that a multi-denominational partnership (CUS) works in six-year cycles to create the Guide to Lesson Development? The value of this long-term task is the wide representation of brothers and sisters in Christ who share the conviction that God’s timeless Word is foundational to all Christian teaching, learning, and faith formation. Another benefit of the CUS Guide to Lesson Development is the Christian unity that is built in knowing that while “my church” is meeting to study and learn from the Scripture, you and I are joining with Christians represented by denominational and non-denominational affiliations alike; Christians who speak English, or Spanish, or Korean, or one of any number of other languages; Christians with whom we share much in common and those with whom we differ; Christians who live right next door and Christians who live on the other side of the world. Yet, no matter how we express our faith in Christ we are bound together by a “uniform” study of God’s precious Word!
The small trade-off that CUS experiences from working so far into the future is the challenge of applying Scripture In Real Time. The almost universal access to the Internet, however, creates an opportunity for eliminating this disconnect from today’s news and current events. To paraphrase Barth, we can now keep the CUS Guide to Lesson Development in one hand and the news—however it’s transmitted and received— in the other!
We hope you will find our weekly site updates a useful resource for reading and teaching Scripture with an informed and sensitive reflection on the previous week’s news from Washington, D.C. to Beijing, China, from your hometown to ours!
