Small groups are a great place to find help and encouragement in sharing Christ with nonbelievers. Here are some tips to keep your group active in the harvest.

Week One

• Read together Mt. 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8. Use a flip chart or poster paper to list as many observations as you can from these verses.
• Discuss how you would define your "Jerusalem." Is it a neighborhood, workplace, your circle of acquaintances, or something else?
• What is the one thing that you never did in high school that you wish you would have done?
• Brainstorm how your small-group members can reach their Jerusalem's'. Write your ideas on a flip chart or poster paper.
• to pray daily for one another to become more evangelistic.
• Ask group members to spend the next week asking the Lord for the names of three people they can reach out to.

Week Two

• Tell each other about the three people you want to share Christ with.
• Divide into prayer partners, and pray for each other and the people on your outreach lists.
• As a group, brainstorm ways you can reach out in kindness to your three people. Refer to the ideas you came up with last week.
• Look over an assortment of gospel presentations: The Bridge to Life (Navigator's), The Four Spiritual Laws (Campus Crusade for Christ), and so on. Your pastor can help you with ideas.
• Role-play sharing the gospel with each other using these presentations.

Following Weeks

• Continue to divide into groups of two or three and pray for each other.
• Plan an outreach event-a picnic, hike, potluck dinner, etc. Invite the three people on your outreach list, plus others who come to mind.
• Continue role-playing your gospel presentations. Discuss together how to answer difficult questions that arise in your conversations with non-Christians.

by Meredith Curtis (Discipleship Journal, March/April 1999)

Often a group spends 45 minutes sharing prayer requests and only 5 minutes in prayer because time runs out. Our group decided to try something different: praying our prayer requests rather than stating them beforehand. After a person prayed his or her request, other members added their prayers for that request. One person was designated to close but could also pray as often as he or she wished throughout the prayer time.

Instead of only praying for 5 minutes, we spent 30 minutes in prayer. Instead of just praying down a list of requests, the prayers became more interactive. The prayer time became more dynamic. I would encourage this for any group. It can unleash the power and potential of prayer in your group.

by Henriet Schapelhouman (Discipleship Journal, May/June 2000)

On Tuesday June 8th, you are invited to join small group leaders, ministry coordinators and pastors for a one day workshop led by Dr. Alan Nelson, author of the book, Spiritual Intelligence - an approach that empowers people to become responsible for their own spiritual growth and to design a dynamic plan for their spiritual development, based on the methods Jesus implemented.

For more info and to register: www.navigators.ca/symposium10

Your small group can learn more about the lives of Christians overseas-and eat some great food-when you make one meeting a month your world-class dinner night. Here's how it works.

• Plan ahead. Find 12 ethnic restaurants within easy driving distance, each serving typical cuisine from a different culture. Call to find out if the restaurant can seat your small group in a separate dining room or an open area set off from the rest of the crowd. Offer to come when the restaurant is normally slow. Schedule a date with one restaurant per month for a year.
• Eat like a native. Explain to the restaurant manager that your group would like to sample the most typical foods of his or her culture. This might mean each person will order a different platter, or you will be served the manager's selections, family style. Don't forget typical beverages, condiments, and staples. Ask for everyday food, not special gourmet items.
• Feed your minds, too. Invite someone from the featured culture to speak to your group during or after the meal. This might be someone on the restaurant's staff or a contact you've made elsewhere. The speaker need not share your faith. Ask this person to educate you about his or her culture: the day-to-day lives of people, the government, trade, education, and so on. Ask about the religions in that country and his or her impressions of the Christian church there. If you can't meet with someone from that culture, you might be able to meet with a missionary or businessperson with extensive knowledge of the country.
• Be gracious guests. Don't make negative comparisons with your own country. Don't criticize. Ask good questions; show genuine interest. Finally, tip generously, and offer a small gift to your speaker. This might be a Bible signed by each member of the group or some other token of your thanks and goodwill.
• Follow up with prayer. At your subsequent meeting, pray for the people whose culture you just learned about, especially for fellow Christians there. Ask God to continue to make you aware of your relationship to His church around the world.

by Kim Hurst (Discipleship Journal, May/June 2000)

When a letter arrives, you read it. You open it; you read the first word, then the second, then the third. You don't stop until every paragraph, every sentence, and every word has been devoured. You take it all in, enjoying it in its entirety. And if friends or family members happen to be somewhere nearby, you'll even let them in on it by reading the letter out loud.

Now consider this. The New Testament is primarily a collection of letters: personal words written by one person to another (or others). In fact, 21 of the 27 New Testament books are officially designated as letters, or epistles. The word epistle comes from the Greek word epistolé meaning a "written message or letter."

So what might happen if we read these New Testament letters like we read any letter?

Seeing the Big Picture

Sometimes in our in-depth Bible studies, we can get bogged down in the details. Certainly word studies, outlines, and careful analysis have their place. However, we must be careful not to dig so deeply that we lose sight of the landscape. Can you imagine visiting the Grand Canyon and only examining individual rocks, never looking up to view the vista? Yet don't we often do that with New Testament letters?

Connecting with the Writer's Emotions

For example, when we read Paul's letters to the Thessalonians one evening, we were all struck by his deep love for the people to whom he wrote. We all walked away with a little more love for the body of Christ that evening.

Hearing the Words of Scripture in a Fresh Way

When we began to read these books out loud, it was almost as if we were hearing them for the first time. Part of this had to do with the particular translations we read. But it was also because hearing Scripture out loud is a different experience from reading silently to ourselves.

Our group used different translations than we normally read, which helped bring the letters to life in a new way. The majority of our Bible study members regularly read the NIV. But for our group readings, we tried others, such as God's Word, the Contemporary English Version, the New Living Translation, and The Message. Reading translations we were less familiar with forced us to hear the same truths in different words and blew a fresh breeze into our studies.

Getting Started

• Pass out pens and paper to all participants, or encourage them to bring their own journals or notebooks.
• Have someone give a brief introduction to the book you're about to read. (You'll want to ask the person a few days ahead of time to allow time to prepare.) It doesn't need to be very extensive, but enough to give an overview of the context in which the letter was written.
• Have a designated reader. Select one person to read the entire book. This creates continuity and eliminates the distractions caused by shifting between multiple readers.
• Read the entire book without a break. Breaks defeat the purpose of this kind of study. Reading the whole letter without stopping is critical to develop an overview of the tone and main points of each letter.
• Discuss what you have just heard. We have found there is only one question we have needed to ask: "As you listened, what stood out to you?" As different people in the group answer that question, you'll find that the discussion moves along naturally, taking the group into some wonderful areas.

(Adapted from Discipleship Journal, March/April 1999)

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