WEEK 5 SERMON DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR GROUPS

Be family around a table

Introduction:

Despite the unprecedented connectivity of the modern era, genuine community is vanishing. Isolation, transience, and superficiality can sabotage our formation into people of mature love. But through Jesus, we enter a new kind of family that offers intimacy, joy, healing, and commitment.

Something To Talk About:

To apprentice under Jesus is to join a new kind of family – a highly relational, joyfully-connected kinship group that follows Jesus together, not just around a stage, but around a table.

1. We need relationships in all four circles. The summary of Dunbar’s Four Circles of Community begins with intimates, the innermost circle, representing your closest and most intimate relationships. These are the people with whom you share deep trust and rely on for significant emotional support. The second group is friends, which goes up to 15 people. This circle encompasses close friends and individuals with whom you have strong bonds, although not as intimate as those in the inner circle. These are the people you’d readily turn to for support and who are also likely to offer it without hesitation. The third group is the law of 150: This represents the maximum number of stable and meaningful relationships a person can comfortably maintain. It encompasses a broader range of acquaintances and individuals with whom you interact on a more regular basis, such as colleagues, neighbors, or members of a club or group. The final group is our tribe: People you recognize but don’t interact with frequently. Individuals you know of, perhaps through social connections or reputation, but have no direct relationship with. 
2. Our deepest formation, growth, healing, and change all happen in the smaller circles. Significant life changes sometimes appear to require grand gestures or large-scale involvement. However, profound transformation often occurs in the quieter, smaller circles of life. Consider where safety and vulnerability are most present. Where can one be authentic without fear? Where is encouragement and support most genuine? Often, these are within intimate connections, such as family, close friends, a small church group, or a mentor. Small circles provide a safe space to be honest about struggles, fears, and doubts. Realness can be achieved. Shared experiences and genuine connection within a small circle foster empathy and understanding, which can lead to healing and growth. Smaller, intimate circles reflect the love and connection found in relationships with God and with one another.
3. It will require us to live intentionally through the practice of community: The Bible often compares life to a walk, because life is a journey. We’re told to walk as Jesus walked. We’re also told to walk alongside other people through life. Life is not a 50-yard dash. It’s a marathon. Walking with different people gives you the energy and encouragement you need to keep going until the end. You learn more by walking with others than by walking alone. If you’re walking alone in the wrong direction, you may never realize it. But if you have a friend beside you, one of you is likely to recognize that you’ve veered off the path and need to find the right direction. Everybody has a longing for belonging because God made us for relationships. When you walk alongside other Christians in community, you see that longing satisfied.

Discussion Questions:

1. What are the benefits of being in a community?
2. What are some ways you have experienced the joy of community in the past? Reflect on positive experiences that highlight the benefits of fellowship. 
3. Who in the inner circle contributes to your growth and healing? Are you actively cultivating these relationships?
4. Are you being honest and vulnerable within your small circles?
5. How can you be a source of support and encouragement within your smaller circles?
6. How does community contribute to your spiritual growth?
7. How can we actively cultivate a spirit of community within our faith community?
8. Consider ways to build connections, offer support, and cultivate a sense of belonging. 
9. How does the sermon’s message about community connect to your personal life?
10. How can community help you understand the Bible’s call to love and serve others?
11. What steps can you take to find a sense of belonging and community? Reflect on ways to seek out connections and build relationships actively. 
12. What is one thing that stood out to you from this week’s message? What challenged you?

Take one thing home with you:

Central to life in the kingdom of God is eating and drinking together with other apprentices of Jesus, as family. It sounds like a straightforward idea because it is, and it’s something that we tragically have stopped doing over the millennia. Eating and drinking with other followers of Jesus is not just an idea, but a practice, that we need to recapture as the people of God, because meals catalyze community and bind us together around Jesus.

In Acts 2, we read that the church gathering itself was a meal. It doesn’t say that they ate a meal before or after the main event; it says that the meal itself was the main event. A sign that the Holy Spirit is at work in a church isn’t just thousands of people coming to faith, or prophecy, or healing, or even miracles; it’s this: people eat together like family. And when that happens, you know you’re onto a move of God.