Infusion Bible eStudies are downloadable small group studies that can be read online, printed, or emailed. Each study includes a leader guide and a study guide and is suitable for a one-hour group Bible study.
Listen...to the words of the Scripture, and in them discover God's message for you today.
Look...at a brief verbal snapshot from the scrapbook of contemporary life and discover its connection both to you and to the Scripture passage.
Live...inside the Scripture to discover its context and message; then allow the Scripture to come alive in you and cause you to live out your faith in new and more-effective ways.
Read an excerpt from this study below.
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Many people tend to behave differently around clergy. As a character in a novel I recently read lamented, “You can’t talk bawdy around the parson.” We have different expectations of clergy. They are supposed to have nobler things on their minds than other people have. Catholic priests are not even allowed to marry.
Of course, there are pastors who try to belie the expectations. “We’re just ordinary folks,” they say. “We have many of the same concerns as everyone else. Why, we can tell a dirty joke as well as anyone or drink as much beer as the next person.”
That may be true, but something is lost when clergy are “just like everyone else.” When clergy are what they are supposed to be, they represent God. They remind us that God matters in our lives, that ethical and religious concerns are important. Pastors and priests are supposed to be different, and we rightly resent it when they are not.
However, it may surprise you to hear that you are a priest, too! The writer of First Peter said to his Christian audience, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). All Christians are called to be priests. We may think sometimes that pastors or priests are weird, but all of us are called to a similar kind of weirdness that the church calls holiness.
