Bethany Community Church

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Pastor Richard Dahlstrom

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Nancy Eckardt

1. In what areas of your life are you in survival mode, and how is it affecting your ability to be fruitful?
2. What does Jesus’ invitation to rest mean to you?
3. What other vines are you tempted to attach yourself to?  What is the fruit of that attachment?
4. Read Galatians 4:19. Who has labored to see Christ formed in you?  For whom have you labored?  What would that look like?
5. When have you felt God’s pruning?  How did you respond?
6. What are you doing to cultivate a relationship with Christ?  How has God revealed Himself to you?
7. How has God’s pruning drawn you more deeply to Christ?  How has it drawn you away?
8. Where does your mind wander to?  What is your mental “homepage”?
9. What would it look like for Christ to be the place you return?
10. Read 2 Corinthians 3:16 – 18. We are exhorted in this passage to “turn & behold” – What does this look to you?
11. What step are you going to take toward abiding?  Who are you going to hold yourself accountable for this next step?

Sunday’s Bulletin

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Pastor Richard Dahlstrom

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Nancy Eckardt

1. When have you observed outer health that was masking inner sickness?
2. What are the four elements of church health that we will focus on? What do we need to turn our attention away from in order to focus on these? Individually? As a church?
3. What does God find at your roots?
4. What are you hiding in your roots?
5. What is your response for Sunday?
6. Who can you ask to hold you accountable to your next step?

Sunday’s Bulletin

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Pastor Joe Springer

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Nancy Eckardt

1. How have you been convicted of your shortcomings in light of the upside-down kingdom described in Matthew 5 – 7?
2. What would it look like to “step it up” in your discipleship?
3. Where do you turn for guidance toward spiritual maturity?
4. Can you think of a time when you focused on certain elements of your faith and missed the full picture that Christ was inviting you to?
5. How does humility inform your relationship to Christ?  To those around you?
6. What does the story in Mark 10:17 and following say to you?  What feelings does it stir in you?
7. Can you think of a time when you have asked Christ for something more?  What did he reveal to you?
8. What might Christ be revealing to you that you must do to inherit eternal life?
9. What is at stake in your life and preferences for you to step into obedience to Christ, to follow Him?
10. Who or what competes for God’s place as Lord of your life?
11. Security, comfort, independence – how do these keep you from stepping into the eternal life God has for you?
12. What do you need to relinquish?  What emotions are stirred when you imagine giving it up?
13. What would it look like to surrender to the all-powerful God?

Sunday’s Bulletin

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Pastor Richard Dahlstrom

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Nancy Eckardt

1. How would you describe your foundation?  What is it made of?
2. What/who do you look to for stability?
3. When have you felt like your foundation was crumbling?  How did you respond?
4. What would it look like for Christ to be your rock, or your foundation?
5. How do you manage your unsatisfied desires?  How easy is it to turn to Christ in your unsatisfied desires?
6. What makes up the lens through which you view the world?  How does Christ’s influence in your life impact your view of life?
7. What keeps you from hearing God?
8. What filters God’s word to you?
9. Who have you dismissed because what they are saying makes you uncomfortable?
10. What is something that you are hesitant to act on?  What makes you reticent?  What do you have to lose? To gain?
11. When has your foundation been tested?  How did your foundation fare and what did you learn from it?
12. What storm in your life is revealing the quality of your foundation right now?  How is it faring?
13. What step can you take to deepen and strengthen your foundation?

Sunday’s Bulletin

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Pastor Richard Dahlstrom

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Nancy Eckardt

1. When have you seen Jesus’ name used in a way that misrepresents him?
2. What does intentional discipleship look like to you?
3. In what areas might you be letting the world conform you to its mold?
4. How is rest a by-product of your commitment to Christ?
5. What steps do you need to take to find the narrow door?
6. When have you been led astray by something shiny?  How did you come to realize it was empty or unfulfilling?
7. Who do you know who reflects Jesus?  What characteristics reflect Christ’s character in them?
8. How important is it to you to reflect Christ’s character?  What distracts you from taking on his character?
9. Why do you follow Christ?  What threatens your commitment to Christ?
10. Who looks to you as one who reflects the character of Christ?  How do you step into this responsibility to them to reflect Christ?
11. What are barriers to your intimacy with Christ?
12. When have you been confronted by someone you love?  How did you respond?
13. In what areas of your life are you capable of so much more?  What can you do to move into the life Christ has for you?

Sunday’s Bulletin

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Pastor Joe Springer

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Nancy Eckardt

1. How have your perspectives of yourself, others, and God been influenced by this sermon series?
2. How would you describe your relationship to judgment? When have you experienced being judged? When have you judged?
3. When have you cast judgment without knowing the whole story?
4. When have you lost sight of the transforming work that God wants to do in your life?
5. What have you asked God for? What does yes look like to you?
6. When has God’s answer of yes been different than expected, yet transformative?

Sunday’s Bulletin

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Pastor Megan Dobrasz

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Nancy Eckardt

1. What have you learned about the gap between who you are and who God desires you to be?
2. When have you experienced anxiety in the last week?  What is the root of your anxiety?
3. How is your life more than food?
4. How does your relationship with God feed you?
5. How has anxiety clouded your view of what God wants to do in and through you?
6. How would your perspective change if you began to seek Jesus’ rule first?
7. Ask these questions as you consider anxiety in your life: Who do you know God to be? How can you live into this? What has He called you to?
8. What did you learn from this?  What is the most difficult question to answer?  The easiest?

Sunday’s Bulletin

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Pastor Richard Dahlstrom

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Joe Springer

1. Where do you see God using you as a blessing to the world?  How do you feel when you are used in this way?
2. Studies reveal that 2/3 of people will “eat the marshmallow” within 15 minutes.  Are you typically a part of the 2/3’s or the 1/3?  Which appetites are hardest for you to resist?
3. What appetites would you like to see, or have you been seeing God transform from “master” to “servant”
4. In considering fasting from something, one of the questions Richard asked was, “what do you run to first for comfort?”  Is there an area of your life that you tend to go to most quickly when seeking comfort?   Is that area satisfying?
5. How might God be challenging you to indulge your spirit as opposed to simply suppressing an appetite?  If you’re not sure, take a few moments to ask God for direction/ revelation.  Still not sure, then consider asking someone in your life whom you trust if they have thoughts.
6. Christian practices (orthopraxy) often serve to open us up to God’s revelation.  It is this revelation that leads to transformation.  Is there a Christian “practice” that you’ve been neglecting?  How could you re-emphasize it this this week?
7. What things in your life might be blocking your perspective of what lies further down the trail?  Is there something that you find yourself thinking of often, or too much.  Frequently, the urgent things in life overshadow those which are really significant; take a few moments to “look further down the trail” and see if God might be revealing a “flag” that helps delineate his path.

Sunday’s Bulletin

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Pastor Richard Dahlstrom

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Nancy Eckardt

1. What have you normalized in your life?
2. How much is giving a part of your life?  What governs your giving habits and/or your attitudes toward giving?
3. What does “holding your resources lightly” look like?  What are the most difficult resources for you to hold lightly?  Why?
4. How easy is it for you to see that all you have is from God?  What influences your view of this?
5. Why do you give?  Who knows how much you give?  How do they know and why?
6. How authentic are you from Sunday to Monday?
7. How different are you on the inside from the outside?  Who are you trying to fool?
8. How hopeful are you that you are being transformed by Christ?
9. What does your understanding of God teach you about fatherhood?
10. How clearly do you see gaps in the way God desires the world to be and the way the world is?
11. What have we accepted as normal in order to not take responsibility?
12. Where have you experienced the free generosity of others?  How did it impact you?
13. How much of your identity is tied to your bank account?
14. When have you had an opportunity to be freely generous?  How did you respond?
15. How easy is it for you to forgive?
16. When have you experienced and received forgiveness?
17. What areas of your life do you need to realign normal to the way of Christ?  What are you going to do to take steps toward that realignment?

Sunday’s Bulletin

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Pastor Joe Springer

Discussion Questions:

Pastor Nancy Eckardt

1. When have you been challenged to hold your form amid great stress?
2. In what ways do your habits and practices reflect your alliance to Christ?  In what ways do you reflect allegiance to your culture?
3. How have you incorporated a habit of not quite speaking honestly?  What is at risk if you were to be completely honest?
4. How do you justify not being honest?
5. In what ways might God desire to transform you?
6. Is there a way that you are using writing when you should be speaking?
7. What conversation do you need to risk?  What is at risk?
8. Is there a conviction that you need to sit in before God?
9. How does your reaction to being wronged reflect mercy vs. vengeance?
10. When have you needed to put into practice the things that you preach?

Sunday’s Bulletin