The Book of Acts
Small Group Study
Update - 9/29/04
Week of -
October 3rd - Acts 1 and Acts 2
October 10th - Acts 3 and Acts 4
October 17th - Acts 5 and Acts 6
October 25th - Acts 7 and Acts 8
November 1st - Acts 9 and Acts 10
November 8th - Acts 11 and Acts 12
November 15th - Acts 13 and Acts 14
November 22nd - Acts 15 and Acts 16
November 29nd - Acts 17 and Acts 18
December 6th - Acts 19 and Acts 20
December 13th - Acts 21 and Acts 22
December 20th - Acts 23 and Acts 24
December 27th - Acts 25 and Acts 26
January 3rd - Acts 27 and Acts 28
SMALL GROUP STUDY GUIDE
FALL 2004
Decide as a group when and where to meet. This can be anytime and anyplace, in home at a restaurant, at church, in the park. When you meet divide your time into three sections.
Section one: 10 minutes. Check in time. Relationship building. Some questions to ask include how's it been with you this past week? What's going on in your life? How is your family?
Section two: 20 minutes. Conversation about the text from the Book of Acts...assigned in two chapter increments for each week and to be read before arriving for the study. Questions to be asked can include:
What is God doing in this text?
What are people doing? (sometimes at odds with God).
What is the Holy Spirit doing?
What is this telling us about a vision for mission? Where does the activity take place?
What was old in this text?
What was new?
What kind of impact did reading this and praying about it have on you?
Any other questions you might have.
Don’t make this a complicated exercise at all. It’s intended to be a conversation about the text, not a Sunday school class.
Section three: 15 minutes of prayer, at least. Pray for each other remembering what was raised during the “check in time”. Pray for the gift of the Word they have just encountered. Pray For our ministry as a congregation. Pray for the vision for mission that God is raising up in us through this process. Pray for your ministry to be connected to real life in the real world. You can pray longer if you wish, but it is very important that you to pray together for at least 15 minutes.
Add up the numbers: 10 + 20 + 15 = 45 minutes. Longer than an hour is WAY TOO MUCH!!
If you have any questions, please give me a call.
Blessings to you as you engage in this very important, life giving process!
Yours in Christ,
Pastor
Dear Ascension Members,
The beginning of our congregational study of the Book of Acts is fast
approaching.
Let's try to begin our small group meetings next week, the week of October
3rd.
Groups of 2-3 individuals are encouraged to meet for between 45-60 minutes
per week at a mutually agreed upon time and location, preferably men with
men and women with women.
Plan to spend about ten minutes in conversation “checking in” with one
another, about 25 minutes discussing the reading for the week. (2
chapters/week. Please complete the reading prior to the meeting).
Questions to think about include: What is God doing in this text? What are
people doing (or not doing) in the text? What surprised you about what you
read? By all means, keep it simple! Then, to wrap things up, spend about
15 minutes in prayer focusing on what has been discussed during the “check
in” time and the reading.
If you have any questions or concerns, or would still like to participate
but haven’t signed up yet, please give me a call. I look forward to the
surprising ways in which the Spirit will be leading us in the coming weeks.
Peace,
Pastor
September 29, 2004
While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers…amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. Acts 10: 44-45
The Book of Acts is an amazing statement of the Holy Spirit’s at work in the early church, from the stirring winds of Pentecost to the blinding light that transformed Saul soon to be Paul to the earth shattering force that set free Paul and Silas from prison and led others to believe. From beginning to end, what we have is the story of the Spirit stirring up people in surprising and unexpected ways.
Far more than a nostalgic look at yesteryear, Acts stands as a testimony to the transforming power of God at work in every age. Then and now what we have is as good a “case study” of what it means to be the church as we can find anywhere.
Like the early Church, the Church of today is faced with many challenges. As a congregation, we understand these challenges as well as anyone—declining membership in an established community, the growing gulf between Sunday and Monday worlds, the sense that what used to work doesn’t seem relevant anymore. What are we to do?
It seems to me that the Book of Acts offers us guidance, not quick fixes and easy solutions, but a blueprint of how we can come to see God’s vision for us as the Church.
As your Pastor, I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking and praying about where God is leading us as a congregation. One thing I’ve realized is that try as I might, I simply don’t have all the answers. But, what I do know is that God is good and as God has provided for His people throughout history, so I am convinced that God has given us everything that we need to be about His mission and ministry today at Ascension Lutheran Church.
So, I propose that we spend time together in prayer and discernment about our mission and ministry. To that end, I invite you to join with others in conversation and prayer around the book of Acts. Starting the first of October I would like to see groups of two and three people gather together for forty five to sixty minutes once a week to talk with each other, to look carefully and discuss two chapters from Acts and to pray, pray for each other as well as for our mission as a congregation.
Gary Cowles, Don Bergstrom and I will comprise one group and we invite others to join us. (I think it will work best if men meet together with men and women with women.) I understand that this represents a significant commitment on those who choose to participate. Twenty-eight chapters at two per week translates into fourteen weeks. With breaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas, that will put us well into January. But when we finish I feel that we will be ready to come together to see what God has done, to open ourselves to the exciting ways in which the Spirit is leading us together in our ministry.
We will be sharing more in the weeks to come, so please stay tuned. Definitely look for some sort of orientation session the last Sunday of September following the worship service. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.
In the meantime, may our prayer be ever constant, “Come Holy Spirit, inspire and lead us as your people, to the glory of God.”
Peace,
Pastor Brian Peterson
September 14, 2004
Discussion Board
Ascension Lutheran Church offers an online discussion board opportunity for sharing your thoughts and experiences about your studies of the Acts of the Apostles. Just go to the Book of Acts Study Discussion Group*, register, then post and read messages.
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