Breaking Ground
What was your favorite animated movie or show as a kid? Why?
The Dig
This Sunday, we continued The Next Generations, our series on parenting, mentoring, & engaging new generations with the story of Christ.
For the next two weeks of Sunday panels, lead your growth group in a dialogue over the questions addressed during the gathering. Do so with humility & open-mindedness, while understanding that you, nor your members, need to speak as experts on any given subject.
Question 1: What do you wish would’ve been done in your own walk with spirituality & faith when you were a child? How can that impact how you pass along faith to younger people (be that your own children or others in the church)?
Question 2: Mental health & self-harm issues are finally gaining serious attention & care in this new generation. How were these issues discussed & responded to when you were a kid? How has that shifted & how has that impacted how you’d respond to such issues now?
Question 3: It’s so hard not to raise our voices at children who seemingly aren’t paying attention, even when we know that this is neither effective nor healthy for the child. What other tools can we use to get the attention of young children & how could we use similar tools in the other relationships in our lives?
Question 4: How do we explain to this next generation why different groups of people who profess to be followers of Jesus interpret parts of the Bible & respond to the world so differently?
Question 5: The Old Testament is amazing, but also profoundly alien to us culturally, historically, & socially. Often, it seems like it’s so outside of our context that teaching it to children raises more issues than good (for example, stories like the Flood, Joshua’s conquest of the Promised Land, or even the story of Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac). Do you think there’s a developmental stage/age that kids should reach before being engaged with such complicated, culturally contextualized stories? If so, what is it? How should we go about engaging younger generations with complex stories like these in a way that doesn’t accidentally convey broken or horrifying ideas about God?
Getting Out of the Hole
Take time this week to reflect on the panel & how each participant brought their own unique perspective to these hard questions. Journal about what you agreed & disagreed with, as well as how you might apply the insights you garnered from it to your daily life.
Journal, reflect, & pray on how God might be speaking to you through each week’s teaching. Share your experience with your growth group next week!
Additional Resources*
How People Grow by Henry Cloud & John Townsend
Canoeing the Mountains by Tod Bolsinger
Common Sense Parenting
TheBibleProject.com
Coming Up This Week:*
Saturday, March 12th: Join us next Sunday for week 3 of our series The Next Generations!
* Please see mye3.org for details.