Community Guide
The Community Guide below is based on Sunday’s teaching from our Annual Vision Series. As your whole Community gathers (online or socially distanced), use the Community Guide below to give shape to your night together.
Begin by Practicing the Lord’s Supper Together (5 minutes)
Begin your night by partaking of the bread and the cup together. Have each person bring their own Communion elements. To facilitate your time, you can either ask a member of your Community to come ready with a short prayer, liturgy, or scripture reading, or assign someone to read the scripture passage and liturgy we’ve provided below:
As the world aches for a king and savior who will wield power and bring order to our chaos and comfort to our pain, we come together now to remember the only Just King and Good Savior, who freely gave up his life for us that we might live with him in paradise.
As different people from different places, with different beliefs and different experiences, we hold now the same symbol, this bread and cup, representing our true allegiance to the Good King, Jesus.
King Jesus, we eat, drink, and look forward to your return which alone will bring the eternal peace that we need.
Emotional Health Check-in (20 Minutes)
Take a few minutes to do an emotional health check-in with your Community, creating space for each person to answer the questions below:
- Where did you see/sense/feel/hear/experience God this last week?
Where do you need to see/sense/feel/hear/experience God in the week ahead? - Spend a few minutes praying for God’s voice to be clear in each other’s lives. Specifically pray and ask that God would allow each person to see/sense/feel/hear/experience God’s presence where they need to this week.
Scripture Reading (5 Minutes)
Assign one (or multiple) readers to read John 18v28–40 aloud for your Community. After reading, spend 30–60 seconds in silence.
Debrief this Sunday’s Teaching (15 Minutes)
Jesus does not fit neatly into any of our political parties, much like he didn’t belong with the Pharisees and Sadducees. And if he doesn’t, then neither do we as his disciples. We belong to a kingdom that isn’t America or the Democrats or Republicans; to use Paul’s language in Philippians 3v20, our highest level of citizenship is in Heaven. That said, while we may disagree on how to best care for the world around us, we don’t opt out entirely. As we press into what it means to belong to the Kingdom of God before any other kingdom around us—ideological or actual—we have to come to terms with four key ideas:
- We are not in control.
- We must follow the truth wherever it leads.
- We must banish any and all contempt from our heart.
- The highest form of maturity is enemy love.
With that in mind, work through the following discussion questions as a Community:
- Which of those four ideas do you sense God inviting you to explore more in your own life? Yielding control, following truth, banishing contempt, or loving enemies?
- Where do you sense God inviting you to give up your attempts at control?
- What does it look like for you to hold contempt in your heart for someone? How might you practice enemy love instead?
Prayer (10 Minutes)
Spend a few minutes praying for God’s grace over each other, that we might be a people who acknowledge and live into our true citizenship. Ask that this citizenship would prompt us to seek and work towards the peace of our city. Ask for God’s mercy for our city, state, country, and world.
Practice For The Week Ahead: Media Break & Silence (5 Minutes)
The Practice for this week is the same as it was in the last Community Guide: to set aside a designated time to intentionally power down your phone and practice silence. Screen time for many went way up with the election last week. That’s okay! This week we want to spend some time to reset, pulling back into silence and solitude to hear God’s voice over us. Before leaving, share as a group how long you intend to take a break from your phone and what practicing silence could look like for you in the week ahead.