Deja Vu -Remember and reconcile

This week we do some communal remembering.
Crosspointe celebrates 15 years, and so we're going to take some to thank God for this journey, young as it is, God has us on.

Interestingly, most of us weren't here at the beginning, and so remembering doesn't seem like the right term. How can you remember something you never participated in? This is the beauty of communal remembering. Like the Israelites remembering the Passover for hundreds, even thousands of years (a tough feat for beings that only live 80 years if they're lucky), we remember all of our journey together. Our story is not our own.

Additionally, we will be taking communion. As always, feel free to do that in the context of your group as well. If you have concerns that it's too much to take communion on sunday and then again in your group, keep in mind frequency is not dictated in the scriptures. Many did/do it daily.

The message also ties these elements in. Discuss them as a group from a historical perspective, but also try and find a way or ways that it matters for us today in a non ethereal, truly down-to-earth sort of way.


Thaw

• How long have you been going to Crosspointe? How did you come to find out about it?
• What was your first experience like?

• What most stuck with you from this Sunday?

Read

• Exodus 12:8-11, 12-13
• Thoughts?
• What metaphoric significance might this part of the story have when you consider the firstborn is the primary inheritor of name, property, dynasty, etc.?

Leader note: Some in the group may be hung up on a gruesome, literal rendering of the story. This is fair, although it paralyzes the text as a historical document. If you have members that seem most focused on what this seems to reveal about God should it be literal, here are a few tips to move the group along. 1) Affirm the person's compassion on the children and animals. This compassion, ironically, comes from God. Without the God we are judging as unconcerned with the mass murder he is portrayed as doling out on Egypt, how else can we care for people across millennia so deeply? Our care for these people, and our judgment of God as ruthless, are actually great evidence that God is good and made us the same. 2) Entertain that this story was gruesome then too. This is why it was written down. If it were a non-issue, then it wouldn't have been the key shocker of the story. 3) Remind the group that we interpret God through the life of Christ (Heb 1:3, John 14:7, etc) who was neither a murderer, nor a hater of his enemies. Additionally, he told parables. Perhaps he's always told parables, even before the New Testament ones!

• From an underdog perspective, which the Hebrews certainly had, what would the story of an Egyptian Empire being cut off and handicapped for your sake mean to you?

Leader note: It may be worth pointing out that God routinely sides with those without power. As we think about aligning ourselves with God to be sure and be on the right side of things, we must also consider what that means to our sense of empowerment, as well as what that means to others without it.

Read

• Colossians 1:19-20
• Thoughts?

Discuss

• The english word "reconcile" breaks down as "re" (again) and "concilare" (make friendly). Christ makes animosity, a break in created friendliness between all things, come together again. This, Paul calls "making peace".  How does this fit or not fit with your experience of Christian faith?
• How is reconciliation possible when not everyone/thing wants to "make friendly again"?

Read

• Romans 12:18
• Thoughts?

Apply

• What role do we play in reconciliation, and what might that have to do with our continued taking of communion?
• What role can we not play in reconciliation?
• What reasons might there be for intermingling the words "Body of Christ" for both the church and the bread and cup in the New Testament?
• Where does reconciliation need to play out more in your life?

Leader note: It may seem obscure, but the thread of these questions has everything to do with enslaved people becoming free. The path way is forgiveness and reconciliation, initiated by one who didn't sin.

This Sunday...

Hello my group-leading superheroes

There will be no specific outline for  group discussion this Sunday. As such, I wanted to give you a heads up so that you can:
A. Listen to the message this sunday with one ear tuned to how you'd like to take any thoughts further in your unique group.
B. Look up these passages (which will be referenced in the message) ahead of time to see what springs forth in you to discuss with your group. (Luke 7:18-23, Isaiah 35:5-6, Isaiah 42:7, Isaiah 61:1, Jon 5:1-8, Matt 23:26)
C. Think about how you'd like to use and tweak the generic discussion template:

• What most stuck out for you about Sunday morning?
• What were the key points for you in the message?
• What was the "one thing" you took away that seems applicable in your own, personal life?
• What did you learn:
• *About God?
• *About yourself?
• *About others?
• What changes in thought and in style-of-relating might be necessary in light of what you've learned?
• What are the hindrances to transformation, and what do we do about those?
• What role can this group play to help you take steps this week and beyond?

May God bless your leadership, commitment and the time you and your groups spends together. Peace

Steve

Deja Vu Part 4

As always, our hope is that LifeGroup is a place where brothers and sisters come together and realize they ARE the church, and aren't merely a meeting that talks ABOUT church.

As such, consider strongly this particular message on the temple of God and how it pertains to our view of what it means to participate in God's life. In your group time, as the leader, look for ways to help your members step more into what it means to be part of what God is up to, to cease from an observational role in the church, and to stop discounting themselves because of the seemingly natural inclination to rate themselves up against what they assume to be super-christians.

Additionally, this would be a great week to take communion as a group. The paradox of the Body of Christ is that it celebrates membership by consumption of the Body of Christ. Many of us have grown up in Christian contexts where this is a foreign concept. Communion, or the Eucharist, can only be headed by someone with the clearance for such a job. However, in the scriptures and in the truest tradition of the early church, communion is the eating of bread and drinking of juice/wine and celebrating what Christ, the head of the Body, has been doing in our lives. We need to celebrate every time LifeGroups take on the function of the church where study, prayer, service, growing mindfulness, baptism and communion are concerned. Enjoy! (It is not recommended that you drink wine, or any other alcohol for that matter, until you are 100% confident that none of the members of your group struggle with addiction or have loved ones that do and feel negatively about it. Grape juice is equal to fine for communion.)


Thaw

• Where is your childhood home? What is special about it?
• Did you have friends that had houses that were known by other kids as "the go to" house? What made it special?
• Why are living spaces so important to human beings?
• When you think about how much of human history has to do with buildings to dwell and live in (from castles to holes in the ground), what might the absence of any mention of Jesus' house in the scriptures be teaching us?

Read

• Gen 1:2 (God's Spirit is immediately present over creation from the beginning.)
• Gen 3:8 (In the midst of the Fall, we see God's dwelling is with people directly)
• Exodus 25:8-9
• John 1:14
• Rev 21:1-3 (a return to what was originally intended)
• Thoughts?

Leader note: The New Testament word translated "dwell" or dwelt" is actually the verb form of tent. "Tabernacled" is the idea.

Read

• 1 Corinthians 6:19
• Thoughts?

Discuss

• A progression of understanding seems to take us from the idea that God lives in a tent, to God lives in us even as we make tents. Do you consciously live as though God lives in and through you, or do you hold to the older idea that God lives somewhere else?
• What are the implications of your answer to the previous question?
• What are the implications for members of your group, or a church, or a faith tradition, having different answers to this question?

Read

• Acts 17:22-28
• Thoughts?
• Many of us want to hold to the idea that God only lives in or near good people, or forgiven people. But Paul taught people seemingly "far from God" that they aren't as far as they thought. Discuss the idea that Christian people are aware (where other people are less so) of the God that is always in our midst and what that means for our real, day-to-day, outside the tent and temple lives.

Apply

• What happens to our faith and our real life as we begin to believe that we actually harbor God's Spirit, whether we were previously awake to it or not?
• How can we help each other wake up to this?
• How does our unity play into our discovery that Alight God wants to be known in our collective midst?

Leader note: This may be a good time to talk about forgiveness between us, a lack of gossip, the removal of cynicism and divisiveness, etc. All of these things separate us and block our awareness that a united Humanity was always God's goal.