LIFE TOGETHER
Gather & Eat
In your first week this is such an important time! It could be helpful to formalize this time a little more than a normal week. As you eat, maybe go round and share your name, where you’re from, and what you do for work. If you already all know each other than you can probably skip that part.
Pray
Gather together in a comfortable setting (around a table, on the couch, the floor of a living room, etc.). Have somebody pray; asking the Holy Spirit to lead and guide your time together. Don’t be afraid to leave some space in the quiet to just listen and rest.
Discuss
Everybody hopefully had a chance to listen to the message for this week. The message was from John Mark Comer introducing us to the topic of Life Together as a deeply connected Community.
Use these questions to help guide your discussion as a large group:
Did you listen to the teaching? What did you think?
What role has Community played in your life as a follower of Jesus over the years?
Learn
As the saying goes, “no man is an island.” This means all of us ache for connection, for intimacy, and for community. In Genesis chapter 2 we learn that it is not good for man to be alone and so Adam is placed into community rather than isolation - apparently even before the Fall, when sin entered into and corrupted the world, it wasn’t a good idea for people to try to do life by themselves.
Yet due to our broken nature we often resist deep forms of community. In the Genesis story we see that after the Fall Adam and Eve hide themselves from each other and from God - relational disunity and insecurity has reared its ugly head, and isolation is the rotten fruit that results.
It is God’s design that we be connected, and it is our sin nature that disconnects us.
This is why one of the essential parts of God’s Kingdom is that through the Community of the church we find a place of belonging, relational connection, and family. Adam and Eve are often used as an example to show God’s heart for marriage but they also show God’s heart for human connection on a universal level. To be seen and known, and cared for, and helped, and encouraged - this is something that is available to all of us whether we are single or married - we all get access to the vibrant beautiful expression of family that God’s church is supposed to embody.
However, it is easy to shy away from community through fear of it being awkward, painful, and messy. And if you’ve been around the modern western church for any amount of time you’ve probably also been part of communities that felt dull, boring, and nowhere near resembling the life-changing radical idea of Community that Jesus seems to want for us.
For this Community that you are in right now to actually become the kind of community Jesus teaches about we will have to push past some obstacles and lean in toward each other beyond the formality of gathering in a room to learn more about Jesus. Every group will find they are at a different level depending on how long they’ve been meeting, how much time they’ve spent together, and what they do when they get together - and even within a group some people might feel they are more connected than others. The goal here is not for us to be a perfect community, or to manufacture connection and a feeling of family artificially or too fast - but rather that we acknowledge the goal of deep relational connection and move towards it together, one step at a time.
Share
Split into triads (groups of three, ideally of the same gender) to share at a deeper level. The goal of sharing in triads is to keep those groups consistent so that you can build trust and a deeper connection with whom you can be more vulnerable and share at a deeper level that you might not do with the whole group.
Check in with each other and get to know each other a little if you don’t already know everyone in your triad. Then work through these questions, engaging your heart as much as your mind.
Then work through these questions, engaging your heart as much as your mind.
How do we go deeper as a community together?
Is there anything about this that is scary or gives you reasons to be concerned?
What obstacles are in the way of growing deeper as a community?
How can we start, in small ways, to deepen our friendships, trust, and love of each other?
Pray
Staying in your triads, pray for each other. There may be practical needs or prayer requests, or there may be things to pray for regarding the topic of submitting our lives to the way of Jesus. When praying for someone you can ask them if you can appropriately place a hand on their shoulder, and it’s ok to keep your eyes open when you pray so that you stay aware of what is happening to them as you pray. Make sure to invite the Holy Spirit and leave space for Him to speak.
Practice
Here’s some things to practice this week to delve deeper into this topic.
Listen
Listen to this sermon before next week! It will form the basis for our discussion
Connect
Grab coffee with someone from your Community. Take the time to develop a deeper friendship.
How can you be praying for this person?
Do they have practical needs you can meet?
How can you bless them?
Stretch Goal
Beautiful Resistance, Jon Tyson
This book goes into detail about what it looks like when the church lives as an alternate society that impacts the world by being different. A must read!