Small Group Materials - Week 2 - Letters / Epistles

Icebreaker

Compare your shopping habits (if husbands and wives are there together get them to comment on each others!) Who ‘window shops’? Who keeps on the move so they aren’t tempted? Who looks before going in? Who goes in and straight to the required section?

Explore

What are people’s favourite New Testament Epistles? Why?

Are there any letters which letters you find difficult, or would like to know more about?

Ask if anyone has a favourite passage. Get 2 or 3 people to read their favourite passage (or a section from it), and say why it is significant to them, what it tells them about God, and how it is relevant for today?

(If no-one offers, try Ephesians 3:14-20 (Prayer to know God’s love) Romans 5:1-5 (Faith and hope in Christ by the power of the Spirit).

Read 1 Peter 1.1–16. This passage is for people who are ‘Christians in exile’ refugees in another land. We are particularly focusing on verses 1–2 and 13–15 but it’s all relevant.

1) Encourage people to share together situations or experiences where they ‘feel out of it’. For some this is in their homes perhaps because of non–believing partners or teenage children viewing unhelpful TV or using violent computer games. For others it is at work – conversations and activities (maybe at Christmas parties) that seem alien. For others it’s all the stuff that bombards us through the advertising industry, the news or the TV.

2) Consider together what it means to be holy today in our alien lands? How can we allow the impact of Jesus’ coming to motivate and sustain us?

Closing activity & prayer

Make a list of challenging situations that you recall the letters addressing and then think about contemporary parallels. Spend time praying for these situations and people involved in them.

Give thanks to God for the shared experience of listening and for the gift of the Bible.

Give people the opportunity to receive prayer for specific challenges or changes that listening is bringing about.

Pray that others will be deeply blessed by the privilege of listening over forty days.

Close by saying together Hebrews 13.20–21