Unstuck Families

January 29, 2012

Opening 

Make sure everyone is aware of events and opportunities happening at Connections listed in the bulletin: we have construction projects, youth programs and other opportunities to move forward in your faith!  

If you didn’t get to it last week, have new registrants, or if the group has any questions, please review the “Connection Group Commitment.”  Address any questions and go over childcare needs if applicable.  This is a very vital part of the group experience.  Finally, did you send around a snack sign-up list?

Discussion

We’ve covered some BIG material so far.  Give the group time to catch up, or process.  In particular, talk about two things:

1. If you want to get unstuck in your faith, it is within your power to do something.  Perhaps the single best thing: start reading your bible!  What are you reading?  When and where?  What help do you need?  What resources?  What advice can you share?  Try to aim for 5 out of 7 days each week.
2. If you want to get unstuck in your finances, it’s going to take some work.  Review our BIG three:
1. Budget: You got to be knowing where your money is going.
2. Get out of debt.
3. Commit your first fruits to God by working toward a tithe, or to radical generosity!

Now, on to Unstuck Families: Our commitment verse is Joshua 24:15

“...as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

Discuss what it means to serve the LORD as a household.

What does this mean, or how does this look, for dads, moms, children and extended families?

The best biblical advice to get unstuck as a family, or to move forward, is to engage in serving God together.  With that in mind, the service ended with the following commitment:

Our Family will serve Jesus through...

~ Engaging faith at home;

~ Engaging faith with our church;

~ Engaging faith in our story.

How can we engage our faith at home?

Read Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and discuss this foundational passage.

Share some of your “best practices” as a family of faith at home...

How can we engage our families in faith at church?

Read Ephesians 6:1-4 and discuss the how the church can help parents in their role of building faith...

How can we engage our children in our own, and their own, story of faith?  Read Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” 

If you have kids, talk about how you are training them, and let the group share what they see in your kids.  If you don’t have kids, did your parents help to train you up in this way?  If so, how?

Close with a time of prayer for one another.  

If you have kids, consider how you can involve them in the Group.  (Remember, if children are a part of the families in your Group, they are a part of your Group.)  How can “Group night” become a time for them to see their parents serve, engage in meaningful community, and grow in love for God?  We hope that these Groups will help raise a generation that sees faith being worked out, and lived out, by parents, in homes, in the community!