THE DEPARTURE
The strangest part about this season of my life is that my intimacy with God has been directly tied to my connection with the Church.
VIDEO
Share session 1 from the Letters to the Church Video Series with your group. The video should be used at the beginning of your time together to introduce some of the concepts you will be discussing and to provide spiritual direction for the session.
DISCUSSION The experience many Christians in the West have today in their churches looks very different from what we read in the New Testament. It is a scary thought that this has somehow become okay with us. God desires faith in His people, and it grieves His heart when we live in a way that shows we don’t believe His promises and power are for us in the same way they were for the early church. The journey back to faithfulness won’t be a quick one, and this book does not contain any magic formula to get us to where we are supposed to be. Change is going to require dedication and humility. We will have to lay down some things, like our desires and traditions, but it will be more than worth it. God has so much more for the Church to experience. Hopefully this vision will take root in your heart and push you to take action and pursue it.
We are not here to "fix" the Church. We are here to hear from God and choose our personal steps to make Him known in this (or your) community.
1. Consider the thought exercise presented in the first few sentences of Letters to the Church. Write down what you would understand church to be if the Bible was your only source of information. Compare that with your church experience. What are some discrepancies?
2. Reread the opening quotation: The strangest part about this season of my life is that my intimacy with God has been directly tied to my connection with the Church.
No comments:
Post a Comment