Our upcoming One Sixty-Seven series (Feb. 11 to March 4) will take place at the intersection of method and materials.
Method
The method for the series and its supporting LifeGroup project is something called Grab, Gather, Grow or G3. G3, which has been popularized by Jim & Jennifer Cowart of Harvest UMC in south Georgia, is a radically decentralized approach to launching and hosting LifeGroups.
I am especially excited about this method because it has the ability to unleash the leadership potential of hundreds of people in Good Shepherd Church. And that leadership potential will be harnessed to share life and faith with co-workers, neighbors, friends at school, workout buddies, and much more. We announced the series & its LifeGroup project last Sunday and between the two campuses signed up 90 hosts — 60 of whom represent brand new groups.
Materials
It’s one thing to motivate hosts and leaders to, well, host and lead. Yet you have to resource them well so that even inexperienced hosts can guide interesting conversations.
That’s why we’ve come up with our own materials for the series, a collection of sermons, videos, LifeGroup lessons, and student & children’s curricula … all around the theme of One Sixty-Seven.
What’s the significance of the number 167? Well, a given week has 168 hours. We have you in church for one. Which brings up the question: what are your sources of wisdom and information for the other 167? Is it cable news? Facebook? MTV? Oprah? Dr. Phil? And … just how wise are those sources of wisdom?
We’ll be taking a provocative look at just how it is that we develop a worldview: is it located in the Word or a product of the world? Conversation topics include how the elites of the world really feel about Jesus, what role do our devices play in our brain chemistry, and does “love is love is love” really make sense?
How do I know all this will work?
It already is. Yesterday I learned about a seventh grade student at Good Shepherd who heard Sunday’s hosting challenge, signed up and received his “Host Guide” booklet, and will be gathering some of his closest friends every week in February. They’ll watch the teaching videos, open their bibles, and talk about how it is that the wisdom of the world is foolishness in the eyes of God. A seventh grader!
I’m just hoping a few hundred more of our grownups at Good Shepherd will have that much wisdom.