Discussion Guide

Jan. 2 & 3, 2010

Market Place Ministry

By Rick Roberts

Guide by Loren Collins

Connect

• Many groups will be meeting for the first time since the Holidays this week.  I know this is simple but discuss cool stories, new prayer needs, and the events of the last few weeks.

• Have you ever been affected positively in your faith by someone somewhere other than a church?  At school, at work, in your family, etc…

Discuss

• How have you viewed ministry, is it just in churches and their leadership or is it something else, more basic and universal?  Did the message this week challenge you?

• Think about Paul and his use of tent manufacturing to support himself; do you think his choice to not rely solely on gifts allowed him to protect his message or his methods from anything he might have seen as substandard or a perversion of his/God’s intent?

• Where does everyone in your group work, play, or have relationships?  Discuss the reach of our faith in this context.  If each person is a link to our faith and they are spread out throughout jobs, school, families, and clubs, how far does our Faith already reach out?

Challenge

• Journey Together: What kind of influence does everyone feel like they are in their “non-churched” spheres of influence?  Discuss this and challenge each other on ways to make it better, if its already awesome then share that too! 
  

• Live Different: Do you separate your life into church/non-church areas, home/work, ministry/normal life?  If so how can you change it to have your faith integrated throughout all areas of your life?

• Provoke Change:  How can each individual in your group point out truth and beauty to the world outside of our church enclave?  How can this life group become a support for this aim?

Readings, Quotes, and Scriptures:

 “It is an error [to think] that those who flee worldly affairs and engage in contemplation are leading an angelic life.... We know that men were created to busy themselves with labor and that no sacrifice is more pleasing to God than when each one attends to his calling and studies well to live for the common good.”

By: John Calvin,   Source: Commentary on Luke 10:38

"If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo carved marble. Sweep streets as Shakespeare wrote pictures. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven will have to say, "Here lives the street sweeper who did his job well.""

 By: Martin Luther King

"If you are a baptized Christian, if you have faith in Jesus Christ and try to love and serve him and the people around you, whatever you do is church work. If you drive nails or a big truck, if you fill prescriptions or diagnose diseases, if you program computers or act on stage, if you report news or work in a government office, if you are a chef in a restaurant or a homemaker cooking family meals - you are doing 'church work' because you are the church. "

By: Henry Libersat,      Source: in Marketplace, Mar/Ap 1995

Acts 18:1-4   Then Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he became acquainted with a Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, who had recently arrived from Italy with his wife, Priscilla. They had left Italy when Claudius Caesar deported all Jews from Rome. Paul lived and worked with them, for they were tentmakers just as he was. Each Sabbath found Paul at the synagogue, trying to convince the Jews and Greeks alike.

Mark 16:15 Then he said, "Go into the world. Go everywhere and announce the Message of God's good news to one and all.

Ephesians 5:15-16 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.