A small group's love for two skeptics leads them to Christ.
by Life Together
Two years ago our teaching pastor, Ted, began to meet with a couple with considerable intellectual reservations about Christianity. They agreed to read some Christian apologetics if Ted agreed to read their books. While they read Letters from a Skeptic, Ted read Stephen Hawking's latest, A Brief History of Time.
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Then this past fall we launched a new six-week small group study: "A Taste of Community." ...
Follow these principles to help people fulfill their longing for true community.
by Brett Eastman
Don't we all long to be a part of something fun, exciting, and life-giving?
The sitcom Friends captured this desire. Every week 50 million people watched six actors pretending to have relationships with one another. Its popularity was fueled by the deep longing we all have to be connected in community.
The advertising world has caught on to this yearning as well. Ads like MCI's promise to connect ...
A few changes in the approach to small-group ministry can make a big difference.
by Life Together
Often small groups become a place in the church, where "every person (or small group) does what is right in his own eyes." Too often small groups operate independently like nation states, where the individual groups choose curriculum, choose frequency of meeting, and refuse any governing or leadership structure but their own. Everything tends to move toward chaos.
Living life in relationship with others is God's pathway for living a life of purpose.
by Brett Eastman
In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren writes, "God intends for us to experience life together. The Bible calls this fellowship … real fellowship is so much more than just showing up at services … It includes unselfish loving, honest sharing, practical serving, sacrificial giving, sympathetic comforting, and all the other 'one another' commands found in the New Testament."
Use this 13-session marriage course to discuss how to express grace and love to one another.
This 13-session course on marriage will be ideal for your Sunday school quarterly curriculum or to use in your small group. It covers such topics as learning to appreciate your spouse, money matters, faith, handling conflict, sex, communication, and compromise. Most of all it will help couples know how to express grace and love to one another.
Week 1
Learning to Appreciate Our SpouseHow can we train ...
This three-session course points out that true fulfillment lies not in individualism but in sharing life with others.
Nothing is more important than the relationships in our lives. This three-session course points out that true fulfillment lies not in individualism but in sharing life with others. Being part of the community called "church" is not about being more religious; it's about being fully relational and helping others find the love they're longing for.
This six-session course looks at how a passion for social change can change the world in which we live in, as God’s power works through our availability.
William Wilberforce took on the entire British Empire to fight the slave trade. Although it took most of his life, cost him great wealth, and nearly destroyed his health, he persisted until he saw success. This six-session course looks at how a passion for social change can change the world in which we live in, as God's power works through our availability. Through looking at Wilberforce's example, ...
This five-session course challenges people like you and me to join Jesus’ revolutionary mission.
A revolution invites a complete change in life. In the opening section of the letter to the Romans, Paul writes about having a transformed mind, which yields a transformed life. A transformed life is a radically different life, driven by different forces, motives, and hopes. Christ lives inside the believer and causes a fundamentally noticeable inner and outer transformation. Christ followers have ...
This 13-session course was designed to help you discover God through listening, worship and prayer.
There is nothing more important in our relationship with God than prayer and worship. Through prayer we establish a relationship with God, and through worship we recognize who he is. This 13-session course will help you sort through what it really means to speak to and honor God. Use it as a quarterly Sunday school curriculum for adults, in your small group, or for personal study.
How to learn the deep "one another" community described in Scripture
Howard A. Snyder
Community in the New Testament sense of koinonia assumes and requires face-to-face communication, whether in a horse-and-buggy age or an Internet age. Three things marked New Testament Christian community: It was centered in Jesus Christ (believers met together as Jesus' followers, constituting his body); this fellowship was a gift of the Holy Spirit; and the community was missional. That is, the ...
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