Dear friend,

In December or January you signed up to be part of the 
"Intro to Jesus for the Undecided" Discussion List. We are 
now activating the list over the next six or seven weeks.

As outlined at

         http://www.joyfulheart.com/jesus/

this is designed to help those undecided about faith in 
Jesus to explore Jesus' life, teachings, way of treating 
people, etc., so as to come to a more accurate conclusion 
about Jesus.

We have deliberately excluded enthusiastic Christians who 
might try to bombard you. Rather this group is made up of 
about a dozen people who are exploring the Christian faith 
together to see if it will work for them. You come from the 
US and Europe, from the Pacific Rim and Australia, and all 
in between. 

I will be moderating the group by offering questions for 
study. I see my role as helping to point you in the right 
direction and getting you to explore some helpful questions.

In addition, Joanne Gucwa will serve as our assistant 
moderator. While she is a Christian, she is not trained 
theologically as I am. So she may be helpful in 
understanding and relating to some of your struggles from a 
different perspective than my own. Together, we will try to 
make this discussion group a healthy and safe place to 
inquire and learn and grow.

Don't expect this discussion group to be argumentative about 
the existence of God, etc. Our narrow focus is to discuss 
what the Bible tells us about Jesus, and to explore the 
implications of Jesus as he is revealed there. So the tenor 
will not be a debate, but an exploration of data, data in 
this case found in the Bible. (Maybe I am giving away some 
of my scientific research background ;-)   )

You need to realize that we don't consider our mission to 
"save your soul" -- though we'll be praying that God will 
reveal himself to you during this study. Rather than trying 
to persuade you, we'll try to help you encounter face-to-
face and close up the Jesus of the Bible. If we succeed in 
doing that, we believe you *will* be persuaded.

Our method is to take one brief Bible passage each week to 
examine. We'll scrutinize it at three levels:

  Level 1: Observation. What does it say?
  Level 2: Interpretation. What does it mean?
  Level 3: Application. What does it mean to me?

We'll do this by means of questions which I'll distribute 
prior to that week, which we'll examine via e-mail 
discussion during the week. In other groups we have found 
this approach really lends itself to learning and 
reflection. You'll see what I mean when I send out the first 
questions.

But please stay on topic. With religious topics it is easy 
to get very far afield, and not get anywhere at all.

If you have some friends who are willing to abide by the 
rules of this group, as you agreed when you signed up, 
please point them to

    http://www.joyfulheart.com/jesus

so they can apply, too.

I look forward to getting to know you better during this 
study.

God bless you,

Ralph

P.S. Over the next day or two I'll be sending several things 
as preparation for this study. If you don't currently have a 
Bible, please see if you can lay your hands on one. You'll 
be needing one for this study. ;-)