Group Field Research

This Sunday!

Hi Leaders,

I hope you're enjoying Thursday, April 23rd, 2009. You better, it'll never happen again!

I wanted to give you a proverbial heads up for this coming Sunday. We will be hitting the pause button on the Color series because of some cool stuff that has landed on Crosspointe's calendar all at once. The Sunday morning message will consist of Jonathan sending off the Mangine family, as they leave for Haiti in just a few days. Wow. We will pray for them and celebrate what God has done and will do through their influence in this community, and now Jacmel. Additionally, Shane and Kara Gauthier from Kenya will be here to help us see just what it is that we have partnered with in East Africa. They come with amazing stories and a good reminder of what our commitment to them is producing in hundreds of lives the world has forgotten.

So, it will be a time of worship, send off, celebration and getting acquainted with our brother and sisters in Kenya.

If you are planning on using the Color series for your group discussion, it will pick right back up next Sunday. For this Sunday, I suggest that, even if you are not following the Color series that you consider taking next week's group time to discuss as a group what it looks like to go and do. From serving on Sunday morning to ensure the best possible experience for people visiting who are far from God, to the Durham Rescue Mission, to other local opportunities, all the way to your group beginning a plan to go to Kenya or Haiti in the future. You may find that your group just needs a push to begin planning on becoming part of the amazing story God is telling all over the world. What a great week to dive in!

If your group decides to mobilize, or at least wants to take the discussion further, then you will want to (or have someone in your group own this particular facet of your Groups' journey) contact Pam McKerring, Crosspointe's Pastor of Mobilization.

You're loved,

Steve

color, scene one

This series is designed to help foster good discussion about the Kingdom life of jesus, but also to help people understand that God's highest value is about human beings, not the rules He gave them. In this first installment, you will have a chance to discuss the authenticity of the church and how your group is aligned with the beautiful picture and invitation of Christ. It's a simple concept that has evaded the church for much of its history; Jesus invites all and all to follow and become not only transformed for themselves, but an instrument of transformation in the world. As plain as it sounds, it has so often become about earning the right to carry the name. But that right is actually a privilege handed to us by the grace, mercy and love of our Father in heaven. Rules have their place, but beyond the catalog of rules there is the value for real, raw humanity. In between black and white is not shades fo gray and loop holes and deliberation, but human life and all it's wonderful messiness. No one knows this like Humanity's Creator and Savior.

Thaw

• Have you ever made a team or been part of an organization and had no idea how you did it?
• Have you ever had a person show interest in you, and it didn't make sense; you couldn't understand what they saw. Maybe you even thought you were being tricked?

• Have you ever had a church experience where you reminded that you hadn't made the cut and were treated, as you perceived it, as an outcast? Explain.

• What stuck with you most from the message on Sunday?
• What's one thing that you feel like God is trying to get you to act on?

Read

• Matthew 4:23-5:16
• Thoughts?
• As you put yourself on that hillside, what do you imagine people were feeling? How about the poor people? Rich people? The Educated? The Illiterate? The Weak? The Mighty?

Leader note: You may want to note thatsalt has many uses: it's added to food to give it a lot more flavor, obviously. It's also added to meat in a pre-Frigidaire society to stave off rot and decomposition...catch that? Salt drives out decay! It also was added to manure for the purposes of creating hotter, brighter fire light. Again, another sermon in that use alone- salt makes waste useful!

• Where do you imagine Jesus proclaiming this today? What geographic place, and to what group of people?

Read

• 1 Corinthians 1:26-30
• Thoughts?
• Why would God recruit the seemingly unrecruitable to do the most important work on the planet?
• What about God's work is undone by reversing His method, and utilizing the upper tier of society to make His way known?

Leader note: Acts 4:13 is a great example of God using comparatively lowly people to do His work. The words "unschooled, ordinary men" in Greek are agrammatos kai idiotes....unlettered idiots.

Read

• Isaiah 53:2-3
• Hebrews 4:15
• Thoughts?

• What do you suppose changes for someone when they realize that Jesus entered into solidarity with humanity by way of real suffering, weakness, temptation and struggle?
• What do you think our view of Jesus would have been if He'd come in strength, comfort, respect and position?

Discuss

• What about your life communicates solidarity with humanity?
• What about your life communicates that you follow a jesus that descends down the mountain and into other's lives?
• What about your life would you guess others point to and and say "they've really been honest and real about where they come from, and Jesus seems to really have made an impact in them and through them"?
• 
  
• What changes of thought and living need to happen in order for you to be more connected to your own reality, and the reality of others?
• 
  
• What views do you hold about the church that are inaccurate based on their reinforcing the loftiness and perfection of it, as an inaccessible institution? What needs to shift in your mind and how does that affect your involvement with it?
• 
  
• What areas are you hoping to "clean up" before you accept Christ's invitation to descend the hillside and dive into real life; yours and other's?
• 
  
• How can this group help you take steps in surrendering yourself now, verses when you think you have it all together?
• 
  
• How can this group work together to reclaim the beauty of Jesus' open invitation to be real, and get behind Him?

Prayer

• Spend some time reflecting on the mood on that hillside, and then thinking about our modern context. Pray that God would open our eyes and help us understand that God is not asking us to get fit before we start exercising, not is he asking us to come and fill our heads with a bunch of information and then pretend like that was the whole point. Pray that God would show you that this is about messy people walking behind perfection, and in so doing, being the most sincere, humble, honest and grounded people in the world. pray that we would be, in that, just like Jesus.

2 Updates

Hey Group leaders,

I wanted to give you two bits of information.

1) For the next 10 Sundays, we will be combing through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-8. In order to help people make full use of a comparatively extended time in one train of thought, we are providing an electronic devotional and meditation guide. It will download automatically with the messages in iTunes, and be available on our website right next to the link to the teaching in PDF form. We are encouraging everyone to utilize these guides daily, and want to come along side you as LifeGroup leaders to create a double encouragement to do so. If you choose to use the Message Based curriculum to take Sunday messages further, you may want to also reference the 10 week guide to get a pulse on how people are doing and growing throughout the week. Between group time, our time together on Sundays, and a near everyday shot in the arm by way of focus, prayer and study- we can look forward to God doing some really cool things over the next couple months at Crosspointe.

2) We have changed the questionnaire a bit to help improve its usefulness for you as a decision making tool. Remember, this form is a great help in determining where your members are in various aspects of their faith so that you can choose a course of study, serving, etc. You'll note that the scale people will now use in answering questions about their own walk are constructed in a way to give you a better overview of where they are, and what kinds of topics and activities may be appropriate to move forward. Also, some of the wording has been changed to help promote good feedback for you. Once your members answer the questions and turn these into you, the hope is that you will have a good general grasp on where your people are, and can then make solid decisions on what to do next from the curriculum guide, discussions with Pam McKerring about serving, plans to make some more time relationally, etc... As we make decisions about study materials, serving and creating environments based on where our people need to go, let's never forget that any questionnaire will have its limitations- this one is no exception. So, plan for the long haul in terms of trying to "get it all in", be okay with not finding any one thing that connects 100% for all your members, and remember that sometimes a little doing together goes much farther than merely a lot of talking.

Thanks for your leadership, for your love and for your continued communal pursuit of the way of Christ.

Steve

"TAKING LIFE BACK"- EASTER

Happy Post Easter. Tomb's still empty, and so is my head.

So sorry about the delay for curriculum this week. The intentions were to to refer you leaders to the general discussion makers along the right-hand side of the site for your group time this week, which didn't happen. They are copied below. Be sure and make space for people to decide to begin living "on the other side of the line", and accepting the mutual responsibility to help each other across that line into the Life God has carved out for us!

What were the key points for you?

What was the "one thing" you took away?

What did God use to inspire you?

What surprised you?

Have you ever heard or come across a similar teaching or idea? Have you ever been taught something that was contradictory?

What did you learn that was new to you?

*About God?

*About yourself?

*About others?

What changes of thought are necessary in light of what you learned?

What changes of action are needed?

How would life be different if you/we applied this teaching fully?

What are the hindrances, and what do we do about those?

What role can the group play to help you take steps this week and beyond?

Key passages:

John 11

John 20

1 Peter 1:3

1 Corinthians 15

Only Human Part Three

Palm Sunday!

It may be appropriate to grab some Matzas and Grape juice and celebrate the resurrection a week early. Enjoy your Savior as a group, and recognize going in that the people in your group may not actually get time to focus on Christ any other moment. Easter dresses, baskets of eggs, church, family gatherings, brunch; they'll blink twice and will have missed the center of our faith. Help them not.

Meditate

• As a group, get comfy and read the following passages for the next few moments, reflecting on each word. Feel free to jot down notes if you want. Ask God to illuminate the text and help you discover how it's applicable to your life today and for the days and weeks to come.

• Isaiah 12
• Colossians 3

Leader note: 1. Give your group 7-10 minutes to do this. This may seem long to them, but the idea is to build a discipline of camping out and wrestling with some text. They'll not only survive it...but many will really enjoy it. 2. Help your readers understand that these passages were written 750 years apart, and though have a much different feel to them, carry the a similar thrust of having been transformed by trust in our savior God and thankfully live a life of transformation. 3. You may want to point out that in the Isaiah passage, the word "salvation" in Hebrew is "Yeshua", Jesus' actual name. Certainly gives the text some depth, as well as helps us see the conversation between jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4 for more of its intended value!

Discuss

• What popped out at you about the passages you just spent time reading?
• Do you feel like God spoke to you through any particular part? What was it?

• What most resonated with you from the message on Sunday?
• What decisions do you feel like you needed to make?

Leader note: Some may have decisions that are embarrassing to discuss, as they may be vices and hang ups that he or she have been hung up on and distracted by for years. Push gently here- help the group to understand that their group context is likely the precise context God wants to use to help them all grow. That growth will come with a spirit of authenticity and fearlessly "knowing" each other.

• Respond as a group to this quote:

"We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

• Thoughts?
• How does Jesus coming here validate humanity?
• How does much of religion invalidate humanity?
• What changes for you with regard to the thought that Jesus came here to bring us salvation now, versus an escape plan to be saved and given life later?

• Respond as a group to this quote:

“Making of career of nothing — wandering through malls, killing time, making small talk, watching television programs until we know their characters better than we know our own children — [not only] robs the community of our gifts and energies [but] shapes life into a yawn at the God and Savior of the world. The person who will not bestir [himself], the person who hands herself over to nothing, in effect says to God: you have made nothing of interest and redeemed no one of consequence, including me.”Cornelius Plantinga Jr. Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be, A Breviary of Sin

• Thoughts?
• What does it means to rob the community of gifts and energies?

Leader note: Don't let this part become a guilt trip. it's about evaluating what life is about, versus the nothings that we hand ourselves over to.

Read

• John 4:4-18
• Thoughts

• What are some examples of cisterns that we return to over and over?
• How do we get fooled into thinking that the shallow and non-life-giving decisions, behaviors and habits are the peak of human experience?
• How does our culture reinforce well-drinking?

Apply

• How does this concept play out in your life?
• How can this group come along side you and help you discover the "roaring Springs just beneath your feet"?
• What patterns and practices do you sense you may need to employ to begin retraining your life after the God, the source of life, rather than the tiny but cumulative rejects of His way?

Leader note: Things such as meeting with others for Bible study on Saturday morning, Sabbathing, having fixed hour prayer each day, having fixed time where he or she gets home to protect family time, getting professionals involved where eating, drinking or other additions are concerned, etc. are but a sample of the kinds of things people may need to begin to get them pointed back to the God of life.

Prayer/Communion

• Celebrate He who comes in the name, reputation and will of the Lord, who wants for us to have life, and have it to the full. Eat the bread and juice thankful for our forgiving God who wants us to discover His salvation here and now and forever.