Early in his sermon, Tim described the disconnection we experience from ourselves, from God, from each other, and from creation as part of the human reality.

He described Christian spirituality as “learning a set of stories and practices that cultivate a new imagination and way of being that can, rhythmically and over time, reconnect those fractured relationships.”

How much does this idea of essential disconnection resonate for you? Does it feel or seem true to you in your mind and/or experience of life?

When you consider yourself In relationship to yourself, to God, to each other, and to creation, does one of these stand out as feeling more or less connected than any of the others? Why do you think that might be?

Alongside your sense of disconnection (whatever it may be), do you have a parallel sense of reconciliation, recreation, and redemption as a part of your experience of living? Share about how you do, have, or might hope to experience this type of active re-connection in your life. What feelings surface as you imagine and sit with this vision of active reconnection as a part of your self and your life?

2. Tim taught that “loneliness is inner emptiness” that is sad and afraid. Solitude, by contrast, he described as an “inner fullness” that is “calm and brave…and, honestly, powerful.”

He also talked about the need most of us have to be witnessed and companioned in community so that we can feel safe enough to move into practices of true solitude.

What is the state of your relationship to solitude? What feelings surface for you as you consider and imagine the practice of solitude?

What is the state of your relationship to community? To what extent do you feel that your needs for community are or are not being met at this present time in your life?

What do you make of the causal link Tim described between community and solitude? Does it tally with your own experiences in any way? Share about how it does or does not.

If you feel that you would  benefit from more time in solitude and or more authentic community, what things stand as barriers between you & those aims? Are there actions you are considering that might help to shift some of those things out of your path? 

3. Over the last 4 weeks, we’ve learned about some core Christian practices:

Sabbath & tithing
Peacemaking & solidarity with outcasts
Weekly worship & daily prayer
Community & solitude

1. As Tim talked about the “prayer merry go round” that many experience as the basic cycle of their prayer practice (Try —> Fail —> Avoid —> Guilt), he observed that most people fall into one of two camps: those who don’t pray, and those who don’t feel good about how they pray. He also said there are a rare few who fall into a third camp: those with a rich & meaningful prayer life.

Which of these descriptors do you identify with most? What has your own journey and experience with prayer  been like through your life? Do you relate to the “prayer-y go round?”

As you consider your relationship to and with prayer, what factors and influences stand out as significant in your own story and experience?

2. In looking at the meaning of the word “liturgy,” Tim explained that - quite literally - the words of weekly worship & daily prayer are “the work of the people [of God].”

Spend a few moments considering this idea. If you’d been asked (w/o this knowledge) to describe the work of God’s people, what might you have said?

Etymology aside, what - at least prior to this week - have you thought of as liturgy? What has the working definition been in your own life? How does liturgy show up for you, and do you easily identify it as such? Or is that a new framework for you?

How much does the idea of “working the words” resonate with your experience of liturgy so far in your life (whether those liturgies are intentional or recognized in retrospect)?

3. Tim gave us all an assignment for this week: set an alarm for noon each day &, at that time, join with the many others praying in a time-zone driven wave from East to West across the globe. He also suggested some resources for easy access to long-standing liturgies and prayers available for all to share in.

What was your initial response or reaction to this homework? Did you set the alarm on your phone? If so, why? If not, why not? Have you or will you participate?

Have you had experience with using the Common Book of Prayer, the Psalms, or other pre-written liturgies and prayers in your own personal prayer practice before this week? If so, how did that come about? How has it been for you?

What’s your general attitude toward pre-written prayer? Is it more counter-to or in-line with the way your first learned to pray? What feelings and expectations arise in you in response to being assigned habitual prayer, even if just for a week? How do you feel about incorporating pre-written prayer into your own personal practice - whether it is new or old habit for you?

1. In Mandy’s sermon today, she talked about messages she received in her early life in churches, but shared that - among all the teachings she remembers, there are none focused on peace-making and resisting the temptation to violence.

What is your experience in this area? Did you receive early messages about the Christian practices of peacemaking and non-violence? If so, what were they like and how did you internalize and incorporate them into your life as a Christian?

If these ideas weren’t a part of your early Christian experience, when and where did you first start encountering these ideas? How much space have you given to these practices in your own Christian life practices and priorities? How much space do they occupy now?

2. Mandy preached about the difference between “fake peace” that’s rooted in dishonesty, denial, or accommodation. In contrast, she challenged us with questions about peace-making that is willing to break some things in the process, pursuing a peace that might be called more authentic or more true.

What experiences do you have of peacemaking (either your own or that of others) that, in its practice, disrupted and discomforted others? That “broke some things?” As Mandy asked, when was the last time you rocked the boat and created and/or allowed discomfort in your own life in pursuit of authentic peace?

If you’ve had experience with that kind of effort, what has it been like for you? How has it been received by those around you and those impacted?

If you haven’t participated in that type of intentional peacemaking action, how are you feeling as you’re being challenged to do so? What things present themselves as barriers to you engaging in practices intending to create “real peace [that] is worth the struggle?”

3. If a Christian friend or family member who doesn’t embrace the ideas of resisting violence or proactive peace-making asked you to explain why they should pursue these practices, how might you respond? What parts of the practice and creation of true peace are most compelling for you? Why do you think that is?

If your discussion continued, how might you explain the embrace of marginalized people and outcasts as part of this approach to peacemaking? How do you conceive of this radical inclusion within yourself?

1. Tim talked about the mainstream pursuit of “bigger, better, higher, stronger, faster.” He connected these pursuits to the “Empire of More.” 

Take some time to think of ways in which you pursue the achievement, consumption, and conquest of more. What things do you find yourself constantly trying to have more of? What type of things gets you motivated to pursue bigger, better, higher, faster, or stronger? Include not only material things, but other more subtle/sophisticated ways you might be driven for a success that’s rooted in an empire-building mindset. As you consider your answers, reflect, too, on the why behind these drives.. Below are some ideas to help you brainstorm. Though not all of these examples are “success"-driven by definition, some may be for you.  

a bigger bank balance

a more impressive garden

a better golf handicap

a better dressed family

a fancier phone

more public recognition from people in authority at work

more people seeing things your way 

more popularity in any given setting

better grades

a nicer car

more compliments from your children’s teachers

more friends and followers online 

a fancier menu next time you host a meal 

a greener lawn 

2. Tim said that, “the way of the kingdom is always subversive…it doesn’t want to destroy its enemies, it wants to win them as friends.” 

When you consider relationships in your life where you would like to prompt change or transformation in other people or your relationships with them, to what extent do you embrace and embody this subversive approach? When are you more likely to default to means of power, control, and conquest? Where are you more likely to engage methods of loving kindness, surrender, and love? 

Now consider your internal self. Are there places and ways in which you would like to prompt change or transformation within? Consider your approaches to encouraging these changes in yourself. 

In your relationship with you, do you lean more toward forcefulness and power or gentleness and surrender? What else surfaces for you as you consider this question?

3. Tim talked about DELIGHT as a good equivalent for the idea of Sabbath. 

What practices and activities bring you pure delight? How easy or difficult is it for you to come up with responses to that question? Why do you think that is? 

How much space in your life and sabbath is there for actively and intentionally delighting? What barriers get in the way of sabbath practice for you? What things are catalysts for sabbath practice?

4. When talking about the practice of tithing, Tim said that it’s about losing financial control.

How does the idea of losing financial control sit for you - both generally and specifically related to tithing? Why do you think your responses are what they are? 

What feelings come up or you when you think, specifically, about your own personal practice of tithing (whether you do it faithfully, have never done it, or just learned what that word means today)? How has your relationship to tithing (either in practice or the idea of it) changed over time? 

1. In Colossians 3, we get a list of virtues Paul is encouraging his Christian audience to pursue:

Compassion 

Kindness

Humility

Gentleness 

Patience

Bearing w/each other (forbearance)

Forgiveness

Love

Peacefulness

Gratitude 

Tim framed these virtues as the ideal “habitus” of a Christian community, defining habitus as “embodied dispositions that determine how we perceive & interact with the world.” He also emphasized the fact that our habitus are embodied in our actions, not simply a minister or a worldview.

When you consider the list above, which virtues catch your attention? Why? Do you have a sense for what each of these virtues might look like embodied & in action? 

Which are those that are already more a part of your lived way of being? Which would like to be more prominent in your automatic reflexes?

2. Tim taught that “there’s always - almost always - a community behind any virtue.” He also said that all communities shape the habitus of their individuals, although we often participate in that process without doing so intentionally or consciously. 

Think about the different communities and groups of which you are a part or have ever been a part. Be sure to include informal, small, or otherwise nontraditional communities too. 

Where do you see connections between some of your more strongly embodied virtues (or vices) and these communities in which you have participated? To what extent have you been aware of these formational influences? 

What else surfaces as you consider this often-under-the-radar connection between the ways we learn to exist in the world and the communities in which we participate?

3.  Tim primed us for the coming conversations we’ll be having about ten of the Christian practices that have been and are important in the life of Redemption Church:

Baptism

Communion

Sabbath

Tithing

Weekly worship 

Daily prayer

Community

Solitude

Peacemaking

& Pairing with the outcast

He shared that these practices are aimed directly at subverting powerful cultural influences to which we are all exposed.

In looking at this list, which practices have been important in your Christian journey to this point? Are there some that you’d like to practice more or in a different way? Why? 

Are there any practices on this list to which you feel resistance? Why do you think that might be?

1. As Tim taught in this week’s sermon, “Numbers is about failure and lessons learned and character being forged not through success, but in the crucible of pain and struggle and wilderness.”

What’s been memorable for you from this time spent studying Numbers? What ideas, lessons, insights, questions, or challenges have stood out for you and/or remained with you?

What has spending this time in the book of the wilderness taught you about seasons or experiences is wilderness?  What has it taught you about the formation processes that can come with these spaces?

2. A crucial feature  of Israel’s formative experience in the wildness is its complete dependence on the Spirit of God which exists at the literal center of their communal life. The 2nd generation, that which is poised to enter the promised land, has spent their lives looking to God for all they need and learning from His spirit how to show up and do the business of living and being. Tim pointed out that they’ve had a radically different experience than that of their parents, whose lives centered around the ways of empire.

In which ways does your life seem more like the 2nd Generation of Israelites in the wilderness, centering and depending on God’s Spirit? In which ways does your life center more around ways of empire? Do you find certain areas of your life more “stuck” in ways of empire? Why do you think that is? What wisdom have you gained as you’ve thought about these types of ideas?

3. Toward the end of his sermon, Tim placed some challenging questions be for us all:

How do we steward our energies of commitment? As people and as a community?
How do we steward our time? Our attention? Our devotion & our allegiance?
And finally, what’s  gets your best energies & allegiance?

Take a few moments to consider these questions. What surfaces for you as you ponder? Which question challenges you the most?

1. As you listened to the story of Redemption Church’s first 20 years, what caught your attention or imagination? What details stuck out for you? What were some “takeaways” for you as you listened?

2. As you reflect on your own life, are there mirrors or parallels to the story of RC? Places of disorientation, places of unmooring, places of finding new life in accidental journeys? In what ways might parts of your own story harmonize with the story of RC so far?

3. Tim talked about some of the lessons and big ideas that have been cultivated through RC’s collective experiences and history.

One big idea was that of God who meets us in places of weakness.

What do you think about this truth? Where have you seen it in your own history? How do you feel about a God who meets us in weakness?

What’s it like to leave behind the idea of a God who rescues in power & might in favor of this different, shifted conception of God? How does that sit with you?

1. In his sermon, Cole taught about Giorgio Agamben’s understanding of sacredness. He described it, in part, as something that can make us recoil in uneasiness because of its set-apartness. He gave the example of pastors telling people at parties what they do for work - only to have people respond with less than enthusiastic interest.

What is conjured up in your mind as you consider this understanding of sacredness? Does it ring true for you in some ways? Or not as much? What examples can you identify in the world in which you operate?

2. Even if we haven’t experienced it ourselves, most of us know stories of people who’ve gone from lives with some measure of status, access, prominence, and reputation to lives where subsistence is the primary hallmark.

What thoughts & feelings come to mind when you contemplate this type of personal story? What types of futures do you envision for people with that type of reversal of fortune in their lives? What unconscious assumptions or ideas might be lurking around the edges of your mind as you consider?

(2b) Now zoom out to consider cultures, subcultures, and people groups that have, through long (or short) arcs of history moved collectively from places of rights and privilege to positions in which they’re seen more as things than people by those with power.

What examples come to mind? How similar or dissimilar are your internal responses when considering people groups rather than individuals?

What observations might you make about how these two different types of examples can impact our perceptions of and expectations for these people? What else do you notice?

3. Toward the close of his sermon, Cole talked about his wish that we can continue to form Redemption Church into a place to which others turn when seeking refuge.

When & how have you experienced RC as a place of refuge - for yourself and/or for others? If RC as a place of refuge doesn’t resonate for you, what would it look like for a church to be a place that feels like refuge from your personal vantage point?

How prominent is this idea in your own conception of RC and/or churches in general? Why do you think that is?

In what ways do you see yourself as a part of creating safety and refuge in the Redemption community? To what degree does that translate to other spaces in your life? Why do you think that is?

1. Tim shared this quote from Rick Mullins:

“God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and He had been speaking through asses ever since. So, if God should choose to speak through you, you need not think too highly of yourself. And, if on meeting someone, right away you recognize what they are, listen to them anyway.”

Reflect on and share about a time when you heard God speak to you through someone you once sized up to be roughly on par with Balaam’s donkey.

2. Tim taught about the practical reality that at the point at which they were viewed from Balaak & Balaam as the two men stood high on a hill looking down at the twelve tribes, Israel was probably pretty bedraggled, rough, and worn. Yet, Balaam speaks words of God’s blessing and bounty as he gazes upon them and sees a miracle flourishing in the dessert wilderness.

Consider the idea that,  in your past or present wildernesses, you might you see yourself as bedraggled and ratty while someone looking from a far, reflecting God’s own vision and with an eye toward the future, might see you as a miracle flourishing in the wilderness.

What does that idea bring up for you? Does it shift anything for you in regards to your current struggles? How easy or difficult is it to look at your struggling self through that lens?

 How easy or difficult is it to see the people close to you through that lens? And what about the people you encounter to more distantly?

3. Tim taught that “we have a tendency to feel threatened by the success & flourishing of those with whom we share significant social space.” He highlighted three themes often wrapped up in this dynamic: comparison, scarcity, & fear.

In closing the service, Tim invited us all to share on the wall what our triggers for comparison / scarcity mentality and/or fear  are. How do you answer that question? (Don’t forget to jot it on the wall next time you’re at church!)