Before the Session
Facilitator: In advance of the session
- Review today’s scripture text and the session activities to help better facilitate the discussion.
- Have the Bible Background Video ready to view.
- Encourage your group to listen to the Faithelement podcast ahead of the next session (Share the link via email or social media)
Context
Ask the group to identify its members position on the following questions, explaining all choices:
- What is your favorite color?
- What’s your favorite sports team?
- If you had some free time this afternoon, what one thing would you choose to do first?
- What is your favorite type of food?
- Did Han shoot first?
Continue by asking:
- What are some issues/questions that typically divide Christians today?
- Regardless of your personal position on these issues, why do you think they are so divisive?
- On what issues do you believe there is, or should be, common ground between Christians and why?
Content
Read together Ephesians 2:1-22,watch the Bible Background Video.
Then ask questions like these:
- In what ways is the image of “death and life” in this passage an appropriate image for our redemption?
- How does the idea that God has chosen us for a purpose give shape and purpose to our community of faith?
- The passage speaks of these things as an already-finished process. Why do you think this matters?
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How does the earlier assertion about God’s work of bringing us to life change the way we look at divisions between believers?
- We might think that peace would come through compromise, but this passage holds that our true peace is Jesus himself. In what way do you think that Jesus is our peace??
- Why does it matter that this passage describes our community as an unfinished process?
- If we are to assume that the community of faith is a process, what is our part in that process and why?
Closure
Continue by asking:
- In what ways does the nature of the issues over which Christians disagree today shape our view of unity, especially in the light of scriptures such as these?
- Who might we tend to consider a lesser part of the Body of Christ and why?
- What in our relationship to Christ can help to discover our unity?
- In what ways is our need for unity among believers related to the needs of the rest of creation?
- How can we be part of making unity happen?
Close with prayer that we may all be open to each other and find unity.
Writer: Jon Parks