Lay Evangelist

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Six Weeks, 42 Days, of Community Groups

This year I'm trying to get ahead of the curve and have been writing my parish's Community Group curriculum for the past week or so, and should start filming next week. The goal is to create six weeks worth of small group materials and have them for free for the parish in both English and Spanish.

We ran our first Community Group sessions during Lent and kicked off with 42 groups, which was 22 more groups than I thought we would have launched with. They are greatly successful.

Now we are planning for the Fall launch of an entirely new curriculum, Connection. The purpose of this six week program is to connect parishioners to the living God. Here's the content breakdown.

  • Week One: The God Who Is: To connect the life of the Trinity to heart of Christian Community
  • Week Two: The Image of God: To connect the Trinity to Humanity through the Imago Dei
  • Week Three: No Other gods: To connect our need to worship God to how we settle for counterfeits that cannot satisfy
  • Week Four: Son of God: To connect the God of the Universe to Jesus of Nazareth
  • Week Five: Christ’s Faithful Ones: To connect my personal commitment to Christ with the worship of the Body of Christ
  • Week Six: Radiation of Glory: To connect personal faith to becoming God’s worldwide blessing

We are going to build something new this year. Each day will have reading material that coincides with the weekly theme. This is going to take a lot of work, and I will probably reproduce a bunch of that on this blog (two birds, one post). Plus, I have to get it done quickly in order to get it translated into Spanish. Here's what my initial sketches look like for the daily reading.

Week One: The God Who Is
    Day One: A Reasonable Faith
    Day Two: Infinite and Eternal
    Day Three: God on the Mountain Top
    Day Four: God the Creator
    Day Five: Personal God
    Day Six: God Who Reveals
    Day Seven: Nicean Faith

Week Two: The Image of God
    Day Eight: Personhood
    Day Nine: Purpose
    Day Ten: Passion
    Day Eleven: Happiness
    Day Twelve: Holiness
    Day Thirteen: Heaven
    Day Fourteen: God Alone Satisfies 

Week Three: No Other Gods
    Day Fifteen: We All Worship Something
    Day Sixteen: Definitions and Dignity
    Day Seventeen: Idols of the Human Heart
    Day Eighteen: The Four Idolatries
    Day Nineteen: The Sacrifices We Make
    Day Twenty: How to Repent
    Day Twenty-one: Cast Down Your Idols

Week Four: The Son of God
    Day Twenty-two: Who do you say that I am?
    Day Twenty-three: Fully Human, Fully Divine
    Day Twenty-four: The Incarnation as Invasion
    Day Twenty-five: Of Whom Prophets Speak
    Day Twenty-six: The Seven “I Am” Sayings
    Day Twenty-seven: God is Dead
    Day Twenty-eight: The Risen Lord

Week Five: Christ’s Faithful Ones
    Day Twenty-nine: Faith as Following
    Day Thirty: The Cost of Discipleship
    Day Thirty-one: Come and die with me
    Day Thirty-two: Faith, Hope, and Charity
    Day Thirty-three: Communion of Faith
    Day Thirty-four: Poverty Church
    Day Thirty-five: Sacraments of Faith

Week Six: Radiation of Glory
    Day Thirty-six: A Blessing, Not a Curse
    Day Thirty-seven: Starts at Home
    Day Thirty-eight: Journey with, not dictate at
    Day Thirty-nine: God in the City
    Day Forty: My Comfort or His Kingdom?
    Day Forty-one: Simple and Connected
    Day Forty-two: To the ends of the earth