Bobby McFerrin was right

Spend some time in your group discussing that which has us worrying and upset. None of it needs worried about, regardless of the varying levels of required concern. Worry is always a frantic lie about what's effective in solving our problems.

As well as discussing what most stuck with the members of the group from Sunday morning, Here are some texts for discussion and reflection.

Matthew 6:22-34
1 Peter 5:7

Make sure and allow people with the least amount of worry in their life to share how they see life and where they learned it. Also allow people who seem to worry the most to share, and see if the group can find patterns. Be gentle, as worriers may worry all the more for being singled out as somehow defective in relation to the rest of the "more spiritual" members of the group. We all worry about something, so it's finding out who is most incapacitated by it generally.

Deja Vu Resurrection

This conversation is sure to challenge paradigms and the best kind of cause head-scratching (this is not to say the conversation can actually cause dandruff. That issue cannot be blamed on the topic...). Many of us are so used to phrases like "died and gone to heaven" that we've stopped asking what the real trajectory of our life is, from a Biblical perspective. Both now and forever.

Use this time not necessarily to correct doctrine, but to catalyze a desire for involvement in life NOW. Not just after we die; eternal life is available to us immediately.


Read & Discuss 1 Corinthians 15.
Note that Paul calls "fools" those who ask what the resurrection will be like, going on to say that the thing sewed (a seed) is nothing like what will grow. Paul seems to be saying that there's no way on THIS side of resurrection what we will be like. It's all speculation for seeds to try and comprehend the plant they will be. It's a foolish focus on the issue of resurrection, being that it's yet a mystery. Yet, Paul continues to talk about resurrection hope, and does so through the analogy of sewing seed. Sewing a seed, you may agree, is an act of will- while literal dying (someone sewing you for you) is often involuntary. Paul is speaking of literal death and resurrection, but also intimating that a figurative death and resurrection is our duty now. To sew ourselves (unless he's advocating suicide) is a death and resurrection we take part in today. Thus Paul could say "I die daily!" So, both kinds of dying and living are present in this chapter. A fixation on the unknowable mystery of literal resurrection is in some sense the fruit of hope, but in another, cause for Paul to call you a fool. Read and apply accordingly.

Other Key Texts
John 19:38-20:18
Galatians 2:17-21
John 5:24 (Notice it's already true!)
Rev 21:1-3 (Notice ultimately it's a story of God coming down to humanity, not humanity floating up.)

Discussion and Application
Ask what it is that has the individuals, the families or the whole group stuck and afraid "in the upper room" (John 20). What might the Spirit be inviting them to do, even in the face of danger and difficulty and at great risk to comfort and the status quo, in order that they may be a part of resurrecting their own minds, hearts and their part of the world? How can the group help with whatever is discovered and shared?

Deja Vu: The One Thing More Scandalous Than Sin

After discussing the highlights from the week (discuss politics at your peril!) and from Sunday morning, read Matthew 20:1:16 and Luke 23:39-43. Guide your group to really discuss grace- not the doctrine, but the reality of it available in our lives. 
Try and be honest, if even imaginative, about how you would actually feel in these scenes from Matthew and Luke; not as mere readers of text in a living room, but as participants in what's being described. 
Then, decide what must be adjusted in our faith/life if this is truly what God (and God-loving) is like.

Deja Vu Primordial Oneness

People often say they want to "go deep" at a church. Some come and go to Crosspointe for varying views and levels of satisfaction about what this even means.

Unfortunately, far too often, deep is thought to have a strictly academic connotation. People want to know more about the stuff of words and history and theology.

For your group time, entertain the very real likelihood that deep, to the one who hung it all on love, has to do with how much we pour ourselves into another, with or without full explained theology.

There is nothing deeper than the unity Christ wants to foster between any and every two human beings.

"Imagine discovering in your church bulletin an announcement of a six-week seminar on how to genuinely bless someone who is spitting on you." (November 3rd Tweet by Dallas Willard)

Thaw

• What Thanksgiving plans do you have, and how does that affect our LifeGroup schedule?

• What most impacted you from Sunday?
• Do you plan to, or have you already, participated in the Election Day Communion event? Thoughts?

Read

• Ephesians Chapter 2

Leader note: This is easy to undervalue if you don't consider that gentiles (the nations, the "others" for thousands of years for Jewish people) were to be completely avoided. Even to touch them was forbidden for those who wanted to stay ritually pure. This is NOT to say that there was an ongoing campaign to get rid of them or to do them harm. It is to say that there was a definite boundary between the two because their view of reality, and specifically God(s), were totally incompatible. Paul had upheld this boundary by profession as a Pharisee. Now, he seems to celebrate how reversed everything is in Christ.

• In what ways do we undermine Christ's unifying work by making "Christianity" the point?
• In what ways do we work against unity, intentionally or not, in the way we stand for ideas or defend beloved traditions?
• In what ways do we pretend unity in things like spiritual matters, such as articulated in Ephesians 2 or in any church sermon, but in daily life undermine it with divisiveness?

Read

• John 17:20-23
• Galatians 5:13-15
• Ephesians 4:6
• Colossians 1:19-20
• 2 Timothy 2:22-25

• Thoughts?
• Does our unity and love for each other and all, seem like a new idea or an old idea?
• What is the value in the difference between trying to forge a connection with others, and coming to see a connection that is already there.

Leader note: reconciliation, among other words, assumes by definition that there was an original connection that is being "re" made. Help the group understand that Christ isn't asking us to make as much as identify unity!

Apply

• How can you dial back competition and dominance in your life, replacing it with the often thankless, seemingly impossible task of being at one with others?
• What in your life will oppose any efforts to be more at one with others?

Leader note: Be as specific as possible here. There are specific ways our thinking works against oneness and peace between us. Church creeds and doctrinal stances and entire denominations, prejudice, unexplored sexism, longstanding grudges, pride in ability to make snap judgments, devaluing people with less education, viewing different political views as bad or idiotic, habitual non-listening to certain perspectives, etc. All of these (and countless others) must be brought to the front of thought so that we can become aware of all the ways we fight unity in trade for something hierarchal.

Idea

• Consider, as a group, emailing (or creating a list serve or a blog, etc.) each other daily ways that you have found some success in showing oneness with others, where you got hung up in the moment, and where it seemed impossible to be united with someone even in hindsight. If they will truly "know we are Christians by our love", then that love- that creative fight for unity with all people as much as is possible- is something worth working on throughout the week. If your group does this, please share the results.