1. Think of some places where you have some authority or power. Some examples might be your family, your home, your workplace, a friend group, or an organized or informal community. In whatever way possible, try to conceive of yourself as standing in Moses’ role in that context, at least at times. If you can’t come up with any external situation, allow yourself to see yourself in Moses’ role as a leader to your, helping represent God’s voice to your own heart and mind.

What’s it like for you to think of yourself in the role of mediator and leader in these spaces? How comfortable is it? How does it feel to compare yourself to Moses, on whatever scale you’re imagining? How familiar or foreign does that position feel?How natural or awkward is it? Do you see yourself as someone standing in that role in spaces in your life? What about for yourself?

2. Let yourself imagine some type of threat- akin to the lack of water experienced by the Israelites - that would  invite you into active mediation and action on God’s behalf in one of the contexts you’ve imagined. Can you come up with examples - big or small - that have had a similar feeling for you? Share about how those times have been or what you’ve seen and learned in similar situations.

3. When challenges or conflicts arise, what type of leadership do you tend to fall back on? The approach symbolized by Moses & his staff in Numbers 20, an approach that ultimately relies on force and might? or the approach embodied by Jesus, embracing humility and speech as a pathway to peace?

What factors in the situation or in your own role/position in the situation influence whether you’re more inclined to engage the force of the staff or more inclined to travel down a path of peaceful resolution and speech? Share about what comes up for you as you consider this question.

1. Tim taught about the psychoanalytic concept of repetitions: “little compulsive speech habits that reveal some disavowed aspect of the self.” Most of us have little words or phrases we often say (or think). What are some of yours? What things or themes do you think some of them might point to? What’s your response to the idea that some of those little sayings might communicate something to others that you are unaware you’re sharing?

2. Tim taught about Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s reading of Numbers, a framework that suggests that Israel’s repeated desire to return to Egypt reflects the collective widespread traumas they’ve endured during the process of their emancipation from slavery and their fear of freedom. What do you think about these ideas? How do they impact what you’ve thought and felt about the Israelites, their story, and their repetitive groaning? What shifts for you? Does it bring up compassion, as Zornberg (and Tim) suggest it maybe should? Why or why not?

3. Consider your responses to the previous question. Do you see any parallels between the way you view the Israelites and their struggles in and against the formation of the wilderness and the way you see yourself as you experiences spaces of wilderness and struggle? If you found yourself considering the Israelites in a new light, how might those shifts be re-applied in how you view your own rebellion against God? The ways you begrudge the process of formation? And your doubt in the eventual goodness of God’s plans for you?  What surfaces as you sit with this idea? Do you find doorways to more compassion looking at yourself in this way? Why or why not?

Listen to Cole talk about the book of Numbers.

1. Early in his sermon, Cole talked about family as an institution that is contentious, tumultuous, and fraught with complexity. He paired that fact with the reality that - at the same time - it’s also a unit that is rooted together and helps shape and form who each of us are for the rest of our lives - independently and together.

For better or for worse, what are some ways in which your experience of family has shaped and formed you? As you look at your uniqueness and your you-ness, what has family meant for you and who you are today? How has your experience shaped what you understand family to be?

How does what you shared intersect and interact with Cole’s reminder that this message was delivered on Family Sunday - a Sunday that isn’t about elevating families within the church, but is instead about acknowledging and being together as the family that is the church?

2. Cole taught about Moses, Aaron, and Miriam as a sibling triad of important prophets and leaders for the Hebrew people. He also talked about the differences between the way Jewish Rabbinical texts remember and emphasize the the three as a triad and the way it contrasts with both the accounts in the Torah, and Christianity’s remembrance of these three individuals.

What are your thoughts and feelings about the fact that there is a difference in the way these legacies are recounted? How comfortable are you with the idea that there may be people you know of from scripture that aren’t fully or holistically represented in the surviving scriptural texts? What assumptions or beliefs do you have about the people in scripture? Does anything shift, change, or expand as you consider that we may only know small slivers about who they were and what they did? 

3. Cole closed his sermon by reminding us that we all have a part to play in this church. When it comes to deciphering what that part might be, he said “God will speak to you through the events of your life.”

What are your thoughts at this point in your journey about you and your part in the church? What have the events of your life, so far, spikeb to you? You can share about what your understanding is (or isn’t) of what your part may be, or you can share about what surfaces for you when you think about the truth that you do, indeed, have a specific and personal part to play.

Join us as we listen to Christina talk about the book of Numbers.

1. In her sermon, Christina shared  about Hiroo Onada, the Japanese soldier who, after WWII did not surrender and, instead, fought a war long over on his own for decades. She used this story to talk about the ways in which we are not necessarily loyal to facts, but instead to stories, and that it is the stories to which we are loyal that build our identities.

Share about one or some of the stories you’ve been faithful to in your life. What is a story that used to hold your allegiance, from which you’ve now turned? What’s a newer story that you are embracing? How do you see the impacts of your own stories in the elements of your identity? What surfaces for you as you consider these questions?

2. Christina taught us about the reality that a people learning to become a community and learning to have a relationship with Yahweh means that they were also learning how to live in a world with new boundaries and expectations. Where in your life do you see examples of this truth? In what ways have your  relationships - with God, with community, and otherwise - taught you to navigate new boundaries and expectations?

To what extent does your journey of that learning mirror that of the Israelites? In what ways do you, like the Israelites “fight formation?” What does your own wrestling with the boundaries and expectations of faithfulness to God look like? How has that changed over time? How have your feelings and ideas about the process changed?

3. Toward the close of her sermon, Christina pointed out that it is their loyalty to the story of Egypt, and the identities it’s formed, that draws and tempts the Israelites away from the Presence of God. To this idea, she added that our cravings and obsessions, just as it was for the Israelites, aren’t our problems; they’re what we use to cope with the truer underlying struggles with have. 

Reflecting back on our conversation earlier related to loyalties to our own stories, and whatever the cravings are that help pull you away from the Presence, what surfaces in you? What is resonating as we’ve reflected in the sermon? What’s stood out as challenging?

Join us as Tim walks us through the book of Numbers.

1. In the pursuit of wisdom, Tim provided a list of human capacities and cultural gifts that can lead us toward it in our journeys. That list is below. What jumps out at you from this list? Which things challenge you or surprise you? What experiences have you had that bear witness to these different things in action as you’ve grown in wisdom in your life?

2. Tim taught that “most of the time, the path of wisdom will feel a bit like wandering.” Take a moment to let that thought sink into your soul. Consider places or times in your own life that have felt thick and heavy with wilderness and wandering, maybe some that do presently.

Separate from the struggles and subject matter that may be the catalysts for new seasons of wandering, what is it like for you to encounter the wandering itself? What’s your response to the reality of the need for struggle and failure in your own personal evolution and maturation? When it comes to encountering places or times of wandering, what in your own experience and self have you found to be helpful? What has been less supportive and useful in the process? With that reflection in mind, what advice might you give to others or to your future self as new places or times of wandering show themselves on the horizon?

3. As he talked about our human inclination toward “fast, fun, and easy,” Tim reminded us that “Almost everything [we] want in life is born of failure.” He also said, “Every good thing we want is born of struggle.”

How does this set of ideas strike you? To what degree do you find yourself inclined toward fast, fun, and easy? Share about places in your own past where you can now see or appreciate the good things birthed through difficulty and wandering? To what extent did you see those births in process as they happened?

Then, take a moment to truly consider the idea that the good things you hope for and want in your life from this point forward might require repetitive, slow movement through failure and struggle. What feelings and thoughts surface for you as you ponder?

Come join us as Tim walks us through the book of Numbers.

1. Some of the things communicated about blessing in Tim’s sermon:

* Blessing is an act - by speech or gesture - of great power.

* Blessing transmits power for life.

* Blessing is intentional and deliberate.

* Blessing proposes to enhance the receivers life in its material dimensions.

* Blessing takes on sacramental qualities, in which more happens than can be explained.

* Blessing conveys the energy and vitality of the of the souls to the recipient

(These are all paraphrased from the Brueggeman & Buechner quotes Tim shared)

What stirs you as you consider these ideas? What feels resonant? What feels off? Where in these ideas do you find something more to learn?

2. Tim shared the following comparisons from Cathleen Falsani:

Justice is getting what you deserve.

Mercy is not getting what you deserve.

Grace is getting what absolutely don’t deserve.

He also suggested the idea that, in this paradigm, justice and grace might be thought of as opposites.

What thoughts are stirred for you in considering and responding to these ideas? How does this compare to your own understanding of grace? What about your understanding of justice & mercy? What in this paradigm do you find encouraging? Challenging?

3. As he closed his sermon, Tim said “You’re created to bless, to pronounce your blessing on the whole wide world,” and, “you might think you’re not worthy to pronounce a blessing, but the world desperately needs you to reconsider.”

What do these ideas prompt inside you? What does being “creates to bless” mean for you? How does it impact the way you think of yourself? Related to God? Related to the world around you?

What barriers rise up in you when it comes to blessing? Do you feel unworthy of the act? What else surfaces in resistance? What do your immediate responses have to show you about how you see yourself and how you see God?

Come join us, as we discuss the book of Numbers.

Come and join us through the book of Numbers.

1. Using the passage from Numbers 2 as a foundation, Tim taught that who we count, how we count each other, and how we arrange our communities matters. As he used Kansas City’s history of redlining, and the explicit racial exclusionary zones in Johnson county as  examples, what came up for you? Did you notice your own neighborhood on the maps? How do you see the historical decisions about arrangement & counting showing up today in your present life and the people in your circles if exposure?

2. Tim stated that, “following Jesus has made [him] less certain of [his] truths.” How true or not true does this statement feel for you? Share about why, and what thoughts this idea prompts for you.

3. In teaching, Tim said that our wrongness and our mistakes are not our wilderness; they are not our problem. The problem is the separation that we enforce between those we consider “our people” and everyone / anyone else. How does this idea strike you?

Have you used or do you use some form of the “wilderness” metaphor applied to your own life? If you use the framework Tim suggests, what are the times and places of wilderness in your own life and world? What do these reflections prompt in you?