Before the Session
Facilitator: In advance of the session
- Have the Bible Background Video ready to view.
- Review today’s scripture text and the session activities to help better facilitate the discussion.
- Encourage your group to listen to the Faithelement podcast ahead of the next session (Share the link via email or social media)
Context (From the Media Session Page)
Play the Loyalty movie clip and ask questions like:
- Why do you think Maria Hill says Captain America inspires loyalty?
- How do you define loyalty and how does someone earn it?
- When have you been loyal to something and then found out your loyalty was misplaced?
- What causes you to realize that your loyalty was misplaced?
- In what ways is such a discovery driven by internal feelings versus a voice/force from outside your normal sphere of influence?
Content (From the Mind Session Page)
Read Amos 7:7-17, then watch the Bible Background Video
Then ask questions like these:
- What does a plumb line show, and how does it compare to this situation?
- What effect does an off-level wall have on a building and what do you have to do in order to fix it?
- God could have simply said, “Amos, tell my people they have messed up and that I’m going to set them right.” Why are images and visions so much more effective than a simple statement?
- Amos was merely repeating what God had told him to say, so why is it sometimes dangerous to speak on God’s behalf?
- What does Amaziah tell Amos to do, and why?
- Why would a person of God reject a message from God like this?
- When have you heard something from God you didn’t want to hear?
- In what way did you respond to God – or to the source of the message?
- Imagine a farmer, who has no seminary training, stands up in a church today and delivers a message he claims God gave him – a message warning of destruction and judgment. How would he likely be received and why?
- What is God’s judgment on Amaziah through Amos and how do you feel about that?
Closure (from the Current Session page)
Ask the group what they know about the recent “Brexit” vote in England and how they feel about it, then share this article on “Brexit” and/or this article with the group and ask questions like:
- Since the British people narrowly voted to leave the European Union, there seem to be a number of stories like these, expressing remorse and/or outrage and otherwise questioning the collective reasoning in making this choice. Why do you think such questions are arising after the fact?
- What are some other decisions that may have been made by a county or a people, but later proved to be regretful?
- By what means do people lead entire countries into making what eventually come to be seen as poor decisions?
- What have people done that might have led you into some regrettable decisions?
- When have you had to redefine words that you once used to identify or align yourself?
- What was it like to discover that those words are no longer adequate?
- What can we do to ensure that we, or those people over whom we have some influence, can take Amos’ lesson of the plumb bob to heart and work to remain “upright” in God’s eyes?
- How might God correct us when we have allowed ourself to, over time, go “off-plumb?”
Pray together to end the session. Spend some time in prayer for leaders in your community.