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 Current Session Page)
Start by sharing the “Shawnee tears down buildings” video and ask:
- How do you feel about this story and why
- When have you seen something torn down, for some reason?
- What are some good and bad reasons for demolishing a structure of some sort?
- Besides buildings and property, when has something about your life had to be torn down and why?
- How do you know when something about a person needs to undergo such a process?
Content (From the Mind Session Page)
Read Jeremiah 18:1-11), then watch the Bible Background Video.
Then ask questions like these:
- Take a few moments to discuss the vision relayed in this passage. To what does God draw Jeremiah’s, or the reader’s, attention and why?
- Why does understanding that this passage is written concerning a nation and not someone’s personal life make a difference, and how might it change the way we understand this passage?
- If all you had to go on was this passage, what would you say has happened to God’s people, the nation of Israel, and why?
- Why is there both hope and warning in this vision?
- What is the nature of the final warning God gives in verse 11, and in what ways might such a warning affect the ways in which the hearers view both God and the prophet who shared it?
Closure (from the Media Session page)
Tell the group that you want to revisit this passage, then play the “Shaped” video and ask:
- If God is the “potter,” for our lives in what ways does this passage suggest we should respond to the potter?
- In what ways does this image of God affect the way we view change, either internally or externally, and why?
- Given this view of “shaping” and “change,” what sorts of changes can or should we expect God to make and why?
- What is the difference between our understanding of this sort of change for persons, versus nations and groups of people and why?
- What is the most constructive way to engage someone who has taken this view of shaping and change to the extreme of fostering resentment toward God for something that has or has not happened?
Close by playing the “Prayer to the Potter “video, followed by your own prayers.