Dear Small Group Leaders,
Today’s sermon videos on Micah 6:1-8, Mercy Me, are available on the church website at www.christchurchsl.org/sermons. The discussion guide is available in the link below or in the weekly email attachment. Please send your group members a friendly email reminder of your upcoming meeting this week, and include the sermon videos link and Discussion Guide pdf file too. You may wish to include some items from the Leadership Tips in your email as well- such as upcoming church events like the Ash Wednesday services. The Leader’s Tips are available below in all three formats, video, audio and text.
Sermon Discussion Guide- 2-4-18 Sermon Discussion Guide Mercy Me Micah 6 1-8
New Person Survey form – pre-participation survey v1
Leader’s Tips- video format
Leader’s Tips- audio format-
Leader’s Tips- text format
Leader’s Tip #1- Schedules and Upcoming Events
While the Small Group Leaders Equipping Track is cancelled for today because of the Superbowl, the audio recording and document files for the hand outs from the previous session (session 2) is available on this site under the Small Group Leader’s Equipping Track page. Next Sunday, Feb 11th, Pastor Temple will be leading the session on The Uniqueness of the United Methodist Tradition- From Grace to Grace which you will not want to miss if you can help it. It is starting at 5:30pm in the Bride’s Room (30 minutes later because of a previous meeting that afternoon), and all are welcome.
Also, please share with your group members that Ash Wednesday services are at 7am and 7pm on February 14th (Valentine’s Day). It is a great way to begin the season of Lent which carries through to Easter Sunday on April 1 (April Fool’s day). During Lent, our Small Groups will be discussing the series “Spring Training: Disciplines for a Strong Spiritual Life” which focuses on such basic spiritual disciplines as community, fasting, communion, prayer, and scripture for the first 5 weeks and then we will celebrate Holy Week together with worship services on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Leadership Tip #2- Small Groups and Short-Term Commitments in the Semester system
After Easter, there are about 6 weeks to fit in a short Spring semester for Small Groups before some start to travel in early summer. I call this our Spring mini-mester at Christ Church! For existing small groups, this beginning of a new semester is a time when members can choose to re-up their commitment to the next semester or choose to take a break from the group for a season if they need to. We may also have an end of the winter semester feedback form for the group members to fill out for the purposes of improving the experience in the weeks to come, and to give people the opportunity to voice their intent for the following semester. It is also a great time to invite new people into the group with the short-term commitment of just 6 weeks!
Leadership Tip #3- New Small Groups
Please be in prayer for the new small groups that are in the process of forming. Some are starting out with invitations to a no-commitment “come and see” first meeting, just to meet the people and see what the experience is like. Then if they are open to it, they are invited to join the small group as a short-term series small group through Easter in the Spring Training series. If you know of others in the Sugar Mill, Sienna, Riverstone, Sugar Creek or Quail Valley areas who would like to be in a new small group, please let me know soon so that I can get them connected.
Leadership Tip #4- Discussion Guide formatting changes
It is likely that during the season of lent, I will be making some changes in our discussion guides for two reasons. Reason one- some of our groups would like to begin their meeting time with a shared meal which would mean that the life-sharing/prayer requests section would be placed first rather than last in the discussion guide order. You would still be praying at the end to close your time together, but the time for life updates and writing down prayer requests would be done at the beginning of the meeting. Reason two- I have been doing research on small groups as part of my Doctoral program and would like to try some different suggestions that I have been reading about. For example, one of the suggestions is to include additional scriptures that are complementary to the sermon message, but not referred to in the sermon. We will try some of these discussion guide formatting changes during lent, and then get some feedback about it in the end of the semester survey forms mentioned earlier in the post.
Thank you again for being a leader in the small group ministries of Christ Church.
Your Partner In Ministry,
Dan Conway
Pastor of Discipleship & Small Groups
Christ Church