Discipleship happens in relationships, and we want to help! We’ve put together a discussion guide for you to facilitate conversations just like this one with the biblical community in your life!

Family Member Identity Conversation Guide #7—Living as Brothers and Sisters

In this episode, Christy sits down with Sara Henderson and Jason Douglas to discuss what it looks like to live as brothers and sisters in the local church. They describe symptoms for when something has gone wrong in brother-sister relationships and what it looks like when we’re living in God’s design. And along the way, they share snippets from their personal friendships and next steps each of us can take to live with members of the opposite sex as brothers or sisters.

In the end, the final and eternal relationship men and women will have with each other is brother and sister. Because we’re all children of God—with him as Father, through his Son—that makes us siblings to each other. The gospel, and belief in it, creates a family that consists of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Because we are truly brothers and sisters in Christ, men and women in the church ought to:

1. Love each other

2. Labor with one another for gospel and mission

3. Recognize that we need each other

Resources:

One in Christ

Discipleship happens in relationships, and we want to help! We’ve put together a discussion guide for you to facilitate conversations just like this one with the biblical community in your life!

Family Member Identity Conversation Guide #6—Being Family as Single and Married

In this episode, Christy sits down with Elizabeth Hughes and Dave and Lauren Turner. They open up their lives to share their story and how they became family with one another. They share silly anecdotes and meaningful dialogue concerning how their lives are better by sharing them together.

Both marriage and singleness are good and about the gospel—just differently.

From Genesis 2 onward, marriage is a normal expectation in human existence—because it is God’s plan to create for himself a great big family, and without marriage, there would have been no way for the earth to be filled with God’s family. And marriage was always about Jesus and the church. Marriage is a God-ordained picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ on display for the world to see.

Marriage is God’s idea. It’s good, and it’s about the gospel. And so is singleness.

In the new creation, all bad, sad, and temporary things are cast off, and in that mix, Christian singleness perseveres. Singleness is eternal and things that last forever are good. Single people live out the sufficiency of Christ through our undivided devotion to him. Through undivided devotion to Jesus Christ as Christian singles, we can be fulfilled and content with the church as family, even if we never marry or have children.

Resources:

Single Ever After by Dani Treweek

Discipleship happens in relationships, and we want to help! We’ve put together a discussion guide for you to facilitate conversations just like this one with the biblical community in your life!

Family Member Identity Conversation Guide #5—Being a Multiethnic Family

In this episode, Christy sits down with John Messiah (Arabic mobilization director), Eddy Gil (associate campus director at Alamance), and Ricky Phillips (ethnic unity associate) to talk about the joys and challenges of living as a multiethnic church family. We also discuss practical next steps that each of us can take to grow in developing multicultural, multiethnic relationships in the church.

Resources:

Ethnic Unity Resources

It is God’s plan from the beginning to the very end for his family to be a beautiful array of cultures and ethnicities, with people from all nations. In Revelation 7, we see God’s final vision for his family is to be a great multitude from “all tribes and peoples and languages.”

But how did we get there? Through thousands of years of God’s commitment to bring people from all nations, tribes, and tongues into his family. From the very beginning, God has been committed to his family being multicultural and multiethnic—from God’s covenant with Abraham fulfilled by Jesus, bringing God’s blessing to all nations and lived out in the experience of the church from the book of Acts until today.

So now we go and tell whoever we come across about Jesus, and we intentionally take steps to seek out the people who we wouldn’t naturally interact with, in order to share the gospel. Then, we watch God gather people into our church from across all cultures and walks of life. When they come, we welcome them with open arms, and just like the apostles in Acts 6, we do our best to make sure nobody gets overlooked and nobody gets left out in our family’s fellowship.

Resources:

The Summit Church Ethnic Unity sermon series

Discipleship happens in relationships, and we want to help! We’ve put together a discussion guide for you to facilitate conversations just like this one with the biblical community in your life!

Family Member Identity Conversation Guide #4—Being Family with Multigenerational Adults

In this episode, Christy sits down with Bryan Galloway (shepherding pastor at North Durham) and Dustin Wells (pastor for young adults) to discuss what it looks like to live as family with multiple generations of adults. They talk through the unique challenges for Gen Z and baby boomers at the Summit and churches like it, and how we can move forward in unity, grace, and intentionality.

Discipleship happens in relationships, and we want to help! We’ve put together a discussion guide for you to facilitate conversations just like this one with the biblical community in your life!

Family Member Identity Conversation Guide #3—Being Family with Kids and Students

In this episode, Christy sits down with Toiya Williams (director of Summit Kids) and Jeremy Berger (NextGen pastor) to talk about what it looks like to live as family as adults, students, and kids. They cast a vision for living as family with the church, where everyone of every age has a place, and give practical advice for parents and other adults in the church living as aunts and uncles for kids and students.

God’s family is a real family—with grandparents and parents and aunts and uncles and teenagers and kids—and when we live with the local church as family, we live out our discipleship across generational lines, both giving and receiving from those older and younger than us, as well as those who are our age, in a complex web of relationships that overlap and interweave.Christy explores this through Paul’s second letter to Timothy with four main points: 1. The church is God’s family. 2. When we believe the gospel, it creates new family bonds. 3. Biological/adoptive parents have a unique responsibility for the children in their homes. 4. Every generation is responsible for guarding the good deposit of the gospel and passing it down to the next generation.

Discipleship happens in relationships, and we want to help! We’ve put together a discussion guide for you to facilitate conversations just like this one with the biblical community in your life!

Family Member Identity Conversation Guide #2—Being a Member of a Local Church

In this episode, Christy sits down with Summit Church Campus Pastors Eric Gravelle and Warren Neverson for a chat about church membership. They talk about the challenges people face when considering church membership, give clear encouragement for those who are hesitant about joining a church, and cheer on church members who serve faithfully!