SCRIPTURE: Luke 24:1-48; Genesis 3:19

One of the most common questions surrounding the Easter story is why does Jesus have to die? It can seem unnecessary as a step in his ultimate plan to restore the relationship between God and his people, and even cruel. However, Jesus’s resurrection from the dead offers us the clearest picture in history of a greater miracle: by living and breathing again, Jesus proves that nothing takes us out of the reach of God’s love...and even more, the plan behind God’s love is true wholeness for his people. Jesus’s life is evidence of God’s desire to free us from the bondage of selfishness and sin and restore us to the lives he always intended for us: lives where we are fully known, deeply loved, and wholly equipped to testify to God’s love in the ways we love one another. Easter is the day we celebrate the incredible discovery that God isn’t planning a rescue...he is building a Kingdom, and we are invited to play a part.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. The starting point for a Christian worldview is the belief that the way things are falls short of the way they were meant to be. Is that something you sense and/or believe about the world? Is it something you sense or believe about yourself?

2. In your experience, what gets in the way of things being the way they ought to be? Try to think this through with more than a one-word answer!

3. What do you think Jesus’s resurrection from death proves about him? What does it prove about God?

4. Sometimes, Christians talk about “salvation” as something that only applies to what happens after we die. How does Jesus’s resurrection challenge that idea? What does Jesus’s resurrection imply about what God wants for us?

5. Where are you hoping for wholeness in your life? What might an answered prayer for this look like?

6. Some Christians believe Jesus’s death was a necessary step of surrender before his ultimate victory over death three days later. In your own life, what “victory” are you hoping and praying for? What steps of surrender might God be calling you to on the way to that victory?

SCRIPTURE: Hebrews 13; 1 Peter 4:6

The book of Hebrews explains that the “altar” of the New Covenant isn’t in the middle of a holy Temple but outside the city walls, at the foot of Jesus’s cross and in the middle of the “mess” of this world. Likewise, Jesus’s Church isn’t meant to be safe and self-satisfied; it’s called to go where Jesus would go and live as Jesus lives. Our place is in the middle of our world’s “mess,” and our job is to love our neighbors wholly and sacrificially. This is never easy! But if we are going to commit, as a church, to embracing messiness, it’s going to require true compassion, commitment, and confidence in God’s plan to bring his Kingdom here.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. What do you think a “messy church” would look like? How might it be a good (or a bad) thing?

2. In what ways is Revolution “messy”? Where is our church meeting people where they are instead of expecting them to come to us?

3. Where aren’t we doing this, and how can we get better at it? How can you or your group help?

4. Who is God challenging you to not just feel but show more compassion towards?

5. How would we know if God’s Kingdom was coming to Annapolis? What could we expect to see changing? Do you believe this is something we should be watching out for?

SCRIPTURE: John 4:1-42; John 1:14-18; Matthew 28:20

The Gospel of John says that Jesus loves us so much that he came down from Heaven to live among us and love us in person. Once he did this, the model he established for us was one of selflessness, total compassion, love, and sacrifice. If we hope to follow the example of Jesus, we absolutely have to be willing to step into the messiest parts of the lives of the people we love. That's a key part of Jesus's whole story: he cares enough to 1) come to where we are, 2) see us and heal us, 3) trust us with work to do, and 4) walk with us as we move (slowly) forward.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. If you are a follower of Jesus, the story of the “Woman at the Well” in John 4 is probably very familiar to you: did God draw your attention to anything new in the story this week? If you are not a follower of Jesus, or if you are new to church, what was it like to hear this story for the first time? Spend some time talking through both experiences together. What do you think the “big ideas” of this story might be?

2. How can a church follow Jesus’s example by meeting people where they are? How can you do this?

3. Is there anyone in your life who you trust to see you fully? Does anyone trust you in this way? Do you think being “known” more would be healthy for you?

4. What “work” does Jesus entrust to his disciples after the Samaritan woman leaves? What work does she go on to do while they are talking?

5. In Matthew 28:20, Jesus promises to be with us “to the very end of the age.” Do you ever struggle to believe this? How can you find help for yourself or work to help others through this tension?

SCRIPTURE: 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; 2 Corinthians 7:8-12

There are no perfect people; it's a truism we can all agree on. But unfortunately, it's not one we often live out: many of us work extremely hard to seem 'put together' in our public lives and even sometimes in our intimate relationships; we strive to look our best, even if that means hiding the struggles with which we most need help. This week, we want to talk about why accepting and safely sharing our own stories is a critical part of becoming healthy, as well as a crucial function of Christian community. We need to be a church where vulnerability is encouraged, humility is cherished, repentance is lovingly welcomed, and forgiveness abounds.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Why do you think it sometimes seems easier to hide a mess instead of facing it? Do you think this is ultimately true?

2. This week, we talked about 3 ways we can respond to other people’s messes: we can be overaccomodating, denying that it’s really a mess at all (unhelpful); we can be judgmental, blaming someone for how the mess happened (unhelpful); or we can acknowledge the mess that’s there and walk alongside someone as it gets put back together. Do you have experience with any of these responses, either as the person whose mess was in the open...or the person who responded to that mess?

3. Do you ever confuse transparency about past struggles with vulnerability about current ones? How can you build relational routines into your life to help you avoid this mistake? How can you help build a culture in your friendships or your small group that can help with this?

4. Where are you fighting forgiveness in your life (either giving it or receiving it)? Who can you share this with who might be able to walk with you as you are challenged in this?

SCRIPTURE: Psalm 51:7-17; Galatians 1:13-2:21

The story of Israel is definitely a messy one, even if that mess isn’t always apparent. The touchstone moments that make up the Israelite journey describe people failing, for good reasons and bad ones, and then seeking redemption over and over again. The constant is never Israel; it is always God’s faithfulness to them. In our own churches, we also sometimes fall victim to idealizing and romanticizing the people God uses to tell His own story. But there has never been a perfect pastor or a perfect church! If we want to flourish at Revolution, we need to remember that we are all shamelessly regular people...and yet, God uses us in incredible ways! Accepting messiness, in our own lives and in the lives of others, isn’t just a matter of “accepting the bad with the good.” It’s an opportunity to be reminded that our stories all have the ability to shine a light on who God is and what He can do in even the most unlikely places.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Read the text from Galatians. The Bible is full of stories of God using the messiness of people’s lives in surprising and powerful ways. Have you ever seen good come from messy situation?

2. Of the many messy stories in the Bible, is there one in particular you relate to the most?

3. In what ways have you found yourself in the midst of personal messiness? How has this helped you to develop your relationships with others and Jesus?

4. In what ways have you avoided leaning into the messiness of others in your own life?

5. Are there relationships you need to cultivate or nurture so that “the messy” can be brought to light?

6. Is there a mess in your own life you need to let others into now?

SCRIPTURE: Acts 9:32-11:18 (11:1-18)

The persecution in Jerusalem continues to send the church further and further into the surrounding communities, ultimately having the opposite of its intended effect: as the disciples go on working miracles and sharing the story of Jesus, the reach of the church only grows! However, no aspect of the expansion of the early church is more important (or more contentious) than the growing conviction to include non-Jews or Gentiles in this “new Temple” of a covenant church family. This week, we will look at the story behind Peter’s declaration to no longer “call anything impure that God has made clean,” and how those words establish a worldwide ministry for the church that extends all the way to our own calling and mission here in Annapolis!

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Why do you think the Holy Spirit pairs Peter’s vision with the story about Cornelius? What does Cornelius’s story add to Peter’s growing conviction to include Gentiles in the church?

2. The vision of the sheet is repeated three times to Peter. Why do you think the text includes this detail? What can we learn from Peter’s behavior throughout this story?

3. Why do you think the early church was resistant to including Gentiles at first? In what ways do we demonstrate a similar resistance today, and how can we learn from this story?

4. The biggest theme in our study of the first half of Acts has been that God’s plan is bigger than anyone expects it to be...including the disciples! Have you ever been surprised by what God can do?

5. Have you ever doubted God’s choice to use the church to accomplish his mission? Do you still doubt it? If not, what carried you through those doubts?

6. What can we do, as a church family, to love and include others more boldly?

SCRIPTURE: Acts 8:4-9:31; Isaiah 53

As the church in Jerusalem is persecuted and dispersed, new opportunities for ministry arise in the neighboring regions of Judea and Samaria. These chapters focus especially on the missionary work of Philip and then culminate in the conversion of Saul, who had widely persecuted the church in Jerusalem and presided over the stoning of Stephen. The theme in the 3 stories collected here is one of misreading: Simon the Sorcerer misreads the purposes of the power of the Holy Spirit; an Ethiopian eunuch needs help reading an Old Testament prophecy about the coming of Jesus; and Saul is confronted by Jesus himself after misreading the actions of the early church. As we study each of these episodes, we can be reminded of the importance of maintaining humility in our own lives, as well as the responsibilities we have towards each other as “co-readers” of God’s story in Scripture, and in our own lives.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Has there ever been a time in your life when you suddenly realized God had been working in you in ways that you were unable to see before?

2. As the Christians of Jerusalem disperse into the surrounding regions, they seem to make sharing their new faith a priority, even in places and in relationships where they don’t plan to stay for very long. Are you ever guilty of avoiding deeper relationships if you think your time with a person or community is limited? How can you be “all in,” no matter where you are or how long you might be there? What would that look like in your own context?

3. Have you ever felt like the Ethiopian eunuch in Chapter 8: like you are holding the right answer to a question, but you just can’t understand it? How did you move past that? Who (if anyone) helped you?

4. What about times when you have felt like Philip? If it’s true that God is “telling a story others need to explain,” how do we know where or in whom God is working? How do we help others understand “the story”?

5. Saul’s conversion is an incredible moment when God makes himself unmissable to a person who isn’t even looking for him. Does your own story echo Saul’s story? Do you ever hope or pray for someone else to have a “Road to Damascus” moment? How can you find support for that prayer, and share in similar prayers for others?
   

SCRIPTURE: Acts 6-8:3 (Acts 7:51-8:3)

As the early church grows in numbers and influence, the Jewish leaders in the Sanhedrin continue looking for ways to suppress the movement. These efforts come to a head in the trial and execution of Stephen, a Hellenistic Jew and the church’s first “martyr.” Stephen is accused of proclaiming that Jesus intends to destroy the temple and change the Mosaic Law. In response, Stephen reminds his judges of the full scope of God’s story with Israel, focusing on the ways the Jewish people have repeatedly underestimated the scope of God’s plans for his creation in favor of exclusive dogma, arrogance, and pride. As we have seen in the previous chapters, Stephen implies that Jesus’s Kingdom isn’t a diversion from God’s story as revealed to the Jews but a culmination of it. This week, we want to investigate the danger that “thinking small” still presents for us and to be reminded of the unstoppable mission God has been on for millenia. How can we know what part we have to play? And how can we act in both confidence and humility?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. At the beginning of Chapter 6, a dispute arises about the pastoral care of the community, and the original disciples ask the body of the church to “choose seven from among you who are full of the Spirit and wisdom” so they can turn the issue over to them. Why do you think the disciples hand this job over to others? Why are these two criteria the ones the disciples choose? And what are the implications of this story for our own church?

2. At first, Stephen’s “begin at the beginning” approach to his defense can feel overwhelming or even excessive. But what does his decision to retell so much of Israel’s story tell us about him and how he is trying to defend himself? What does it tell us about the foundations of his faith? About his view of Jesus? About his fears for the current leaders of the Temple?

3. Why do you think Stephen tells the members of the Sanhedrin that they are a “stiff-necked people”? What is he accusing them of? Why?

4. Have you ever been “stiff-necked” in your own life? How did God challenge this behavior in you? What values can you develop in your life to resist this temptation in the future?

5. How would you define the word “martyr”? How does it apply to Stephen? What impact do you think Stephen’s death might have had on the average members of the early church?

6. What are some ways that you fall victim to “thinking small” when it comes to God’s mission? How do churches sometimes do this? What can we do about it?

SCRIPTURE: Acts 3-5 (Acts 3:17-26)

In the wake of Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, we see a cycle of events develop that will dominate the church’s story in the weeks and months ahead. Over and over again, the disciples--now filled with the Holy Spirit--perform miracles of healing, forgiveness, and generosity among the Jewish people, each followed by a proclamation of Jesus’s story and a call to repent and be baptized. And then, over and over again, the Jewish authorities have the disciples questioned (and sometimes arrested) for creating such a disruption. In the face of this, the disciples hold fast to their testimony about Jesus’s resurrection, and they even praise God for the privilege of suffering for Jesus’s sake. Underneath it all, we see real evidence accumulating behind Peter’s claim at Pentecost: the Christian church is a new Temple, filled with the Holy Spirit and called to take the overwhelming love of God’s presence out, among the nations. Our own church is a descendent of that movement, and the faithfulness, boldness, and confidence of the first apostles is available to us as well.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Before Peter and John heal the beggar in Acts 3, the text says that they “looked straight at him.” How might we be challenged by this detail? What do you think they see?

2. When the disciples are before the Sanhedrin, they say that they “cannot help speaking about what they have seen and heard.” Have you ever felt similarly driven to share something exciting in your own life? What was it? Have you ever felt this way about your faith? If so, what happened when you shared it?

3. Reread the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. What do you make of this story? Why are Ananias and Sapphira punished? What lessons do you think we can draw from this story? What in this story is hard for you to hear or accept?

4. Peter and the other disciples go to great lengths to insist to the Jewish authorities that their mission is a fulfilment of Scripture and not a heresy or deviation from it. Why do you think this is so important to them?

5. What are some of the core values and practices we see in the early church in Acts 3-5? How might we strive to imitate them in our own church community? What is the model we see here for what a healthy church might look like?

SCRIPTURE: Acts 2:1-41

At Pentecost, Jesus’s disciple Peter delivers what becomes the first sermon in the history of the church. In his message, Peter tries to connect what is currently happening among those who are repenting of sin and being baptized in the name of Jesus with the longstanding plan of God for the Jewish people. Specifically, Peter says that the body of believers now being established is, in effect, a “New Temple,” intended to finally fulfill the initial promises God made to his people. This means that the church’s first identity is actually an old identity: followers of Jesus aren’t a splinter or sect, but people who are finally under the living and active Lordship of Jesus himself. This week, we want to consider what it means for us to exist as a church still in the shadow of that sermon: what do repentance and baptism mean, really? And how can we live, as individuals and as a community, under Jesus’s Lordship?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. According to the passage Peter quotes from the prophet, Joel, what changes about the ways that God inspires or anoints people in “the last days”? How does that change connect to either Jesus’s ministry, or Peter’s point in his sermon at Pentecost?

2. What might have been frightening to the Jewish community in the early 1st century about Joel’s prophecy that, in the last days, “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved”? Are you ever uncomfortable with that Christian teaching (i.e. - that salvation is available to all, no matter what they have done or when in life they accept it)?

3. What do you think Paul means by the word “repentance”? Why do you think repentance is such a key part of the Christian view of salvation? How do you feel about repentance personally?

4. What do you think “baptism” is for? What do you think it accomplishes? Why do you think baptism is such a key part of the Christian view of salvation?

5. Do you feel like the requirements Peter lays out for salvation are either too easy or too demanding? Why?

6. Do you believe you have been “saved” in the way Peter describes? Why or why not? What questions do you have about salvation, and what can you do to seek out answers?