Salad Night on Friday!!!

Let's meet at Chuparosa this Friday night at 5:45! We already have the Duplissi bringing a Bowtie Pasta Salad, the Bergers bringing a green salad with strawberries, and the Harts bringing a fruit salad. You can either email the whole group or leave a comment here on this blog to let us know if you can join us and what you can bring.

It finally feels like fall, so you might need to bundle up the kiddos! We are looking forward to seeing you all!

Family Potluck Night this Friday!!!!

This Friday we will be meeting at the Weber house at 5:45pm, so that we can be starting dinner by 6:00. It is Hot Dish Night! Bring anything that fits into the category of Hot Dish! Please make a comment to this blog entry when you know what kind of hot dish you will be bringing. And someone could always volunteer for a dessert. We are looking forward to seeing all of your families!!!

9/30/08 Meeting - Beatitudes (pt2) at the Diemerts

Last Study, we had some great discussion on the Beatitudes, but ran out of time. After going back over the study, 2 concepts stood out to me as deserving of more study – Poor In Spirit and Blessed. So those topics will be the focus of our home group meeting this tuesday (9/30)

From the study, here are the questions that we'll be discussing this week at our home group meeting:

Poor In Spirit
1) (not a question in the study) After reading the excerpt beginning after question 16:

How would you define Poor In Spirit?

What are some examples given?
2) Q11 – How could receiving the kingdom of God make one blessed?
3) Q24 (2nd #24) - Do you see yourself as ‘poor in spirit’? Explain.
4) Q13 – How do the eight beatitudes relate to each other – especially ‘poor in spirit’?

Blessed
5) Q9 – Based on the above reading, what did Christ mean by ‘blessed’?
6) Q22 – How does this passage teach that something is wrong if a Christian is not happy?
7) Q24 (1st #24)- What advice would you give to someone who asked:

How can I experience the happiness that comes through each of these beatitudes?

Do I try to tackle them all at once?

Can I do one and not the others?

How do I practice beatitudes in a world of ‘badatitudes’?

Is really living out these beatitudes possible?

Also, since several families, including the Stubers will be out of town on Tuesday, the study will be at the Diemerts. (7:00 on 9/30/08)

Friday Night Potluck

This Friday is our family potluck night! We will meet at the Bergers’ house around 5:45, and hopefully start dinner by 6:00. We will have a Mexican-themed potluck, so, when you know what you will be bringing, please leave a comment on this blog post. Feel free to volunteer to bring any good Mexican food or paper products or drinks or dessert - we need those too. As you plan out what your bringing, keep in mind that we will probably have at least 8 families there – which adds up to 16 adults and a bazillion children (or maybe just 22).

We are looking forward to hanging out with you. And our kids can’t wait to be with your kids! These potluck nights are simply hang-out nights – Steve is not planning any organized activity after we eat. We can just keep having fun until the kids are too tired or the Bergers kick us out.

See you Friday!

First Meeting: Aug 19th at 7:00pm

On Tuesday, we'll get caught up with each other in 2 ways:

1. What's been going on?
2. What has God been teaching you?

Please email me 3-5 photos from the summer by Monday night (8/18) so that your photos can be in on the slideshow. Prizes* may be awarded for:

• Craziest photo
• Most creative photo
• Best thematic representation of the Sermon on the Mount message

Remember to send those photos!

* Prizes may include: fruit roll-ups, toys that Tommy has outgrown, coupons, princess stickers, pencils/crayons/chalk, rarely-used business cards, cool drawings, 6 free months at Mountainside fitness, a song, advice on how to run a yard sale, or many other questionably valuable items

Potential Schedule

For the past couple years, we've been doing the Study/Potluck/Study/OffWeek schedule and it has worked fairly well. After the game night last Friday, some of us brainstormed changes to the schedule to see if we could get more informal fellowship. I also wanted to try to incorporate all of the elements of the home-group (previous post)

Here's an idea that we came up with: (see to the right for an example of the 1st 8 weeks)

We still have 2 studies and a potluck per month, but have added in a night which will alternate monthly between a men's and women's night out - mostly just to have fun and build relationships.

It gets the family potluck moved to a Friday so it's not on a school night and each family would still just need 2 babysitting nights/month.

What do you think?

Home Group Elements

It seems like at our stage of life, everyone is busy. But we've all made a commitment to participate in a home group.

Why?

For me, it is to learn more about my God and my Savior - for my own sanctification and to somehow try to glorify Him. But also to experience the joy of fellowship with my friends and to hear and tell how God works in our lives.

I love it when God opens my eyes to a new or deeper truth about Him, but I also love getting together with a brother and working thru a trial or just talking football.

Now that I think about it, I can come up with 6 elements of being in a home-group that are important, at least to me:

1. Study - #1, that's really why we meet
2. Prayer - individual and group
3. Worship - singing praise to Him
4. Intentional fellowship - prayer-requests, accountability, carrying each others burdens, etc
5. Chill-time fellowship - like the awesome game night we had last weekend
6. Family fellowship - allowing kids to observe our home group and see strong Christian families

What about you? What elements are important to you?