An invitation
Something has been
lost in translation
For centuries, the Christian faith in the West has been taught through a particular lens — one borrowed more from Athens and Rome than from Jerusalem. It is a lens that favours the abstract over the concrete, the individual over the community, the doctrinal statement over the living story.
Many of us have grown up in that stream. We have learned to read the Bible as a system to master, salvation as a transaction to complete, and the church as a collection of private souls. And for all the good it has carried, something has been quietly missing.
The Formation Series is an invitation to recover that imagination — not to discard your tradition, but to read it with new eyes. To discover that the Gospel is larger, more embodied, and more communal than the frameworks we inherited may have allowed us to see.
This is not a course in information. It is a process of formation. You will be asked to slow down, to sit with discomfort, and to let long-held assumptions be gently examined. You will not be alone in that.
We begin where all honest learning begins: with the question of what we already carry. Before the first session, we invite you to take the short self-assessment below — not to be graded, but to become a little more curious about the lens you bring.
Two frameworks at work in Western Christianity
Read both before answering the questions below.
Discernment questions
Select the response that most closely reflects your instinct — not the ideal answer.
Your leaning profile
Strongly Greco-Roman leaning
Your formation has been shaped primarily by the Western theological tradition — abstract doctrine, systematic theology, and a tendency to treat faith as a set of propositions to affirm. You may find the Hebrew framework initially disorienting; it moves from story before system, from community before individual, from land and body before soul and spirit. This is not a flaw in you — it is the water you have been swimming in. Formation invites you to step onto different ground.
Moderate Greco-Roman leaning
You draw significantly from the Western Christian tradition but may already sense its limits. You likely appreciate systematic clarity while also feeling that something is missing — perhaps the concrete, the communal, or the bodily. Formation will help you name what that is and offer a different grammar for it.
Strong Hebrew resonance
Your instincts already lean toward the concrete and relational. You tend to read Scripture as story, feel faith in the body and community, and resist purely abstract theology. This is rich preparation for the Formation Series. The invitation will be to deepen and articulate what you already sense — and to help others find it too.
Moderate Hebrew resonance
You carry a meaningful instinct toward embodied, communal, and particular expressions of faith, though Greco-Roman patterns are still present in your formation. You stand in a generative middle — able to translate between worlds. Formation will help you move more intentionally toward the Hebrew ground.
Genuinely mixed formation
You hold tensions well — or you have not yet decided which ground to stand on. Both are valid starting points. The Formation Series will not force a choice but will clarify what is actually at stake when these two frameworks meet, and why the Hebrew one may have been marginalised in your tradition.
Questions to sit with before session one
These are not for answering quickly. Bring them to a journal, a walk, or a conversation.
- When did you first learn to read the Bible? What story were you given about what the Bible is?
- Is your faith primarily something you believe or something you belong to? What shaped that?
- How does your body feature in your spirituality — or does it?
- What does salvation mean to you? Where does community appear in that definition?
- Can you name a community or people — not just individuals — that God is at work in, including yours?
- What in the Basque culture, memory, or landscape feels sacred to you — whether or not you have Christian language for it?
- What would you lose if the Hebrew framework were entirely right?