Searching for the Pattern: My Journey in Interpreting the Bible

MOVING FROM A “BLUEPRINT HERMENEUTIC” TO A THEOLOGICAL ONE

In this book, John Mark Hicks tells the story of his own hermeneutical journey in reading the Bible. Lovingly and graciously, he describes his transition from a “blueprint hermeneutic” to a theological one. Some suggest that moving away from a patternistic command-example-and-necessary-inference approach for understanding what God requires leaves no other alternative, or at least none that both respects biblical authority and seeks to obey the gospel of Jesus the Messiah.

In Searching for the Pattern, John Mark offers just such an alternative. His theological hermeneutic is deeply rooted in the way the Bible presents itself as a dramatic history of God’s plan to redeem the world as well as his own experience of growing up among Churches of Christ. Seeing the gospel of Jesus as the center of the biblical drama reorients us to what provides our Christian identity and unites us as disciples of Jesus.

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I pray this book is received with open hearts and open minds because I believe this work could go a long way in helping to bring unity to our fractured fellowship. 

—Wes McAdams, Preaching Minister for the church of Christ on McDermott Road, Plano, Texas

This excellent book helps us understand the inner workings of Bible interpretation among Churches of Christ and provides a persuasive proposal for Bible interpretation that is built on the story of God we find in Scripture—a story into which God calls us.

—James L. Gorman, Associate Professor of History, Johnson University
Knoxville, Tennessee

Finally, a trellis across the chasm! Throughout this book, Hicks does not compromise his high regard for both the church and the Scriptures; and through the grace found therein, he composes this urgent invitation back to the Table, where obedience cooperates with mystery, and we—estranged or conflicted—can find our place as one within God’s magnificent story.

—Tiffany Mangan Dahlman, Minister at Courtyard Church of Christ,
Fayetteville, North Carolina

John Mark Hicks is Professor of Theology at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. He has taught for thirty-eight years in schools associated with the Churches of Christ. He has published fifteen books and lectured in twenty countries and forty states and is married to Jennifer. They share six children and six grandchildren.