Community Guides
Part 5: Silence
Community Guide
The Community Guide below is based on Sunday’s teaching for our current series: Future Church. As your whole Community gathers (online or socially distanced), use the Community Guide below to give shape to your night together.
Begin by Practicing the Lord’s Supper Together (5 minutes)
Begin your night by partaking of the bread and the cup together. Have each person bring their own Communion elements. To facilitate your time, you can either ask a member of your Community to come ready with a short prayer, liturgy, or scripture reading, or assign someone to read the scripture we’ve provided below and spend a moment in silence before continuing.
Psalm 139v7–10
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
Emotional Health Check-in (10 Minutes)
As we focus in on this series, we want to continue to create space for checking in on each other, but doing so in a shorter amount of time. Take a few minutes to do an emotional health check-in with your Community, creating space for each person to answer the question below:
What’s something you’re looking forward to about the coming season? What’s something you feel anxiety or uncertainty about?
If the need arises, spend a few minutes praying for one another, asking God to meet needs and help each person carry what feels heavy right now.
Read this Overview (5 Mins)
We live in a world of noise. Throughout the day and night, we are bombarded with messages from advertisers, from friends, and from the phone that has become what feels like an extension to our arms. It feels like all that noise is not just coming from without, but from within, as everything we take in begins to take root in our hearts and minds, constantly pulling at us, needling us to be anxious, outraged, afraid.
In contrast, the way of Jesus is the way of quiet. Of love and compassion. Of deep peace. How can we enter into God’s rest and way of quiet love in a world like ours? Through the practice of silence and solitude, or time alone with God in the quiet, we cultivate within ourselves a refuge to return to God and a deep peace out of which we can live in community with others based on love, not fear.
Jesus himself often withdrew to “lonely places” and prayed. Those lonely places, as they were for Jesus, are for us the places of encounter with our true selves and with God, and the place where God will transform us.
Debrief this Sunday’s Teaching (20 Minutes)
With that in mind, work through the following discussion questions as a Community:
How would you describe the noise level (literal or metaphorical) in your life? Do your days feel overstimulating or “noisy,” or are there pockets of peace and quiet?
Has there been a time in your life when you felt you operated out of peace and confidence? What did it look like? What contributed to that peace and confidence?
What appeals to you about building in time for silence and solitude with God into your week? What, if anything, makes you anxious?
What could get in the way of practicing silence and solitude this week?
Practice For The Week Ahead: Revisiting your Rule of Life for Silence & Solitude (10 Minutes)
This week, continue revising and working on your Rule of Life Chart, keeping in mind that the goal is not to fill in every box, but to come to a good balance and rhythm in each category.
As you work through the Silence & Solitude section, consider what your existing practices are in this area and write them down. Take some time to consider and pray through what your next step in silence & solitude might be, and what God is inviting you into in this season of your life. Remember, aim to start where you are, not where you think you “should” be.
Below are a few ideas to get you started as you brainstorm and pray through your next step in silence and solitude.
Entry-Level Practice: Attempt a short period of silence and solitude once a week. This could be a short, 10 minute time of silence to start a particular day or days of the week.
Baseline Practice: Adopt a rhythm of silence and solitude each day, perhaps in the morning.
Reach Practice: Expand your practice of silence and solitude by planning regular days or trips for silence and solitude. You can spend the day at a local abbey, somewhere in the wilderness, or wherever you can find a quiet place.
If you find yourself having trouble with this practice, please know it’s not just expected but normal. Consider this rhythm for your time in silence and solitude:
Relax: Let your mind and body calm down. Try slowing reading through a psalm, attending to your breath, or repeating a simple prayer.
Detach: Sometimes called yielding or surrender, practice releasing your anxieties, the circumstances of your life, and your will over to God in prayer.
Look: The heart of prayer is looking at God, looking at you in love. Spend time considering, looking at, contemplating God. Look beyond the other thoughts that crop up, redirecting your mind as needed back to the Father.
Listen: It’s been said that the primary posture of a disciple of Jesus is sitting at his feet and listening. God has direct access to your mind—in the stillness, listen to what the Lord might be saying to you.
Love: End your time by resting in God’s love, anchoring yourself in the peace of his presence.
Again, the goal is not to adopt a regimented practice of silence for the sake of checking a box, but for the purpose of being someone who day-by-day is becoming transformed and freed by time alone with God in the quiet.
Prayer (10 Minutes)
Spend a few minutes praying for God’s grace over each other, that we might become a people who seek refuge with the Father in the quiet place, and that there might be a sweeping renewal of the Holy Spirit in our city. Ask that God would stir up within us a desire to be with him in prayer and to serve him, one another, and our neighbor in love.
Part 4: Holiness
Community Guide
The Community Guide below is based on Sunday’s teaching for our current series: Future Church. As your whole Community gathers (online or socially distanced), use the Community Guide below to give shape to your night together.
Begin by Practicing the Lord’s Supper Together (5 minutes)
Begin your night by partaking of the bread and the cup together. Have each person bring their own Communion elements. To facilitate your time, you can either ask a member of your Community to come ready with a short prayer, liturgy, or scripture reading, or assign someone to read the Apostles Creed we’ve provided below and spend a moment in silence before continuing:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
Emotional Health Check-in (10 Minutes)
As we focus in on this series, we want to continue to create space for checking in on each other, but doing so in a shorter amount of time. Take a few minutes to do an emotional health check-in with your Community, creating space for each person to answer the question below:
In 7 words or less, what would be helpful to hear God (or someone close) say to you this week?
If the need arises, spend a few minutes praying for one another, asking God to meet needs and help each person carry what feels heavy right now.
Read this Overview (5 Mins)
As followers of Jesus, we choose to be a community of holiness while living in a culture of moral relativism. Apprenticing to Jesus’ way of life means that we follow his mental maps to reality. He is our transcendent moral authority. And while much of his teachings come to us through the four gospels and the writings of the New Testament, it’s based in the inner life of the Trinity itself, the inner nature of the Creator. The more we align our life to the teachings of Jesus, to his mental maps to reality, the more we flourish and thrive in relationship with God and others. And the reverse is also true: the more incongruent our life is with Jesus, the more we show up to reality in such a way that we struggle and suffer. As the British philosopher H.H. Farmer put it, “If you go against the grain of the universe you get splinters.” That said, it is so important to keep in mind that this all doesn’t put us, as followers of Jesus, at odds withour host culture; it just puts us out of place in our host culture, on both the Left and the Right.
Holiness means to be set apart. It is not just about behavior, but about the inner life. Holiness is about the whole body. It seeks to rescue us from a culture whose view of the body is low, and to put us into a worldview in which our bodies are the very temple of God. What we do and don’t do with them matters because we matter. Fasting, then becomes a practice from the life and teachings of Jesus that sets us up to starve the flesh and feed the spirit, to amplify our prayers, and to stand in solidarity with the poor. Fasting is a way of praying with our bodies as we partner with God to usher in his Kingdom to our world.
Debrief this Sunday’s Teaching (20 Minutes)
With that in mind, work through the following discussion questions as a Community:
What does the word “holiness” bring up in you? Did you have bad experiences with that word in the past? Good? What does it mean to you now?
The world’s definition of love is to follow your heart as long as it doesn’t harm anybody. Jesus’ definition of love is to will the good of another ahead of yourself no matter the cost. Which does your life tend to reflect?
The Scriptures talk of the body as God’s temple, set apart for the use of worship and lasting joy. This is a higher view of the body than the world has, which talks of it as the means to feel something. Was this the view of the body you were raised with? If not, how may your life have been different had you been raised with this view?
Practice For The Week Ahead: Revisiting your Rule of Life for Scripture (10 Minutes)
This week, continue revising and working on your Rule of Life Chart, keeping in mind that the goal is not to fill in every box, but to come to a good balance and rhythm in each category. As you consider the Prayer & Fasting subsection, consider what your existing practices are in this area and write them down. Then take some time to reflect on and pray through what healthy rhythms of reading scripture could be for you, and what your next step might be to move toward greater holiness through fasting and prayer. Remember, aim to start where you are, not where you think you “should” be.
Here are a few ideas to get you started as you brainstorm and pray through your next step in Fasting:
Entry-Level Practice: Try fasting for the first time. If you’re not ready to fast for an entire day, try picking a meal or two to skip. And during your time of fasting, intentionally spend time turning your attention towards God in prayer.
Baseline Practice: Adopt a practice of fasting once a week. (Note: Our COVID Rule of Life invites Bridgetown to pray and fast together on Thursdays.)
Reach Practice: Expand your practice of fasting by taking up the practice of the ancient church, until at least the 1700s, and fast twice a week and/or further focusing your time in fasting with journaling, scripture, or prayer to “break” a particular habit or sin in your life.
Again, the goal is not to adopt a regimented fasting practice for the sake of checking a box, but for the purpose of being someone who day-by-day is becoming transformed and freed by holiness.
Prayer (10 Minutes)
Spend a few minutes praying for God’s grace over each other, that we might become a people who make Jesus our Lord, and that there might be a sweeping renewal of the Holy Spirit in our city. Ask that God would stir up within us a desire to be with him in prayer and to serve him, one another, and our neighbor in love.
Part 3: Orthodoxy
Community Guide
The Community Guide below is based on Sunday’s teaching for our current series: Future Church. As your whole Community gathers (online or socially distanced), use the Community Guide below to give shape to your night together.
Begin by Practicing the Lord’s Supper Together (5 minutes)
Begin your night by partaking of the bread and the cup together. Have each person bring their own Communion elements. To facilitate your time, you can either ask a member of your Community to come ready with a short prayer, liturgy, or scripture reading, or assign someone to read the Apostles Creed we’ve provided below and spend a moment in silence before continuing:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
Emotional Health Check-in (10 Minutes)
As we focus in on this series, we want to continue to create space for checking in on each other, but doing so in a shorter amount of time. Take a few minutes to do an emotional health check-in with your Community, creating space for each person to answer the question below:
What is one thing you’re having to trust Jesus with right now?
If the need arises, spend a few minutes praying for one another, asking God to meet needs and help each person carry what feels heavy right now.
Read this Overview (5 Mins)
We live in the age of ideology. By “ideology” we mean any set of beliefs that 1) takes part of the truth and makes the whole and 2) takes a good thing and makes it ultimate. Whether from the right or the left, the ideologies of our world have become for many a new type of religion, each with its own type of doctrine, dogma, and heresy. While the ideologies of our day are new, the temptation to mix the way of Jesus and what the New Testament calls “the way of the world” is as ancient as time. Further still, we’re living in a time of unprecedented deconstruction.
In the face of this temptation and moment, the invitation of Jesus is to “demolish strongholds” of the mind and to instead take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ, to fight for orthodoxy. And while it must be said that deconstruction can be good, deconstruction is not the end goal. We must push past the impulse to deconstruct orthodoxy, and move into a type of reconstruction that is not based on the ideologies of the day but is informed by the life and teachings of Jesus as they come to us in the scriptures.
Debrief this Sunday’s Teaching (20 Minutes)
With that in mind, work through the following discussion questions as a Community:
What are some of the ideologies you see in our country? Our city?
Are there any ideologies that feel easy for you to fall into? Are there areas of your faith that you feel that you are deconstructing? What are they?
What difficulties do you face when it comes to the Bible? (e.g. fear, confusion, boredom, skepticism, etc.)
What do you think the invitation of Jesus is for you in this area?
Practice For The Week Ahead: Revisiting your Rule of Life for Scripture (10 Minutes)
This week, continue revising and working on your Rule of Life Chart, keeping in mind that the goal is not to fill in every box, but to come to a good balance and rhythm in each category. As you consider the Scripture subsection, consider what your existing practices are in this area and write them down. Then take some time to reflect on and pray through what healthy rhythms of reading scripture could be for you, and what your next step might be to move toward greater orthodoxy and truth in the scriptures. Remember, aim to start where you are, not where you think you “should” be.
Here are a few ideas to get you started as you brainstorm and pray through your next step in Scripture reading:
Entry-Level Practice: Begin reading small portions of scripture a few times a week. You can start with one of the Gospels, the Psalms, or even picking one passage to read a few times over (E.g. John 15, Matthew 5–7, Psalm 23).
Baseline Practice: Adopt a practice of reading scripture daily and set designated limits to screen time in your days or week.
Reach Practice: Expand your practice of daily scripture reading. This can look like adopting a specific reading plan, ending your day with a Psalm, following along with podcasts and videos from BibleProject, or anything else that would take you deeper into scripture.
Again, the goal is not to adopt a regimented Scripture practice for the sake of checking a box, but for the purpose of being someone who day-by-day is becoming transformed and freed by truth.
Prayer (10 Minutes)
Spend a few minutes praying for God’s grace over each other, that we might become a people who make Jesus our Lord, and that there might be a sweeping renewal of the Holy Spirit in our city. Ask that God would stir up within us a desire to be with him in prayer and to serve him, one another, and our neighbor in love.
Part 2: Community
Community Guide
The Community Guide below is based on Sunday’s teaching for our current series: Future Church. As your whole Community gathers (online or socially distanced), use the Community Guide below to give shape to your night together.
Begin by Practicing the Lord’s Supper Together (5 minutes)
Begin your night by partaking of the bread and the cup together. Have each person bring their own Communion elements. To facilitate your time, you can either ask a member of your Community to come ready with a short prayer, liturgy, or scripture reading, or assign someone to read the passage of scripture we’ve provided below and spend a moment in silence before continuing:
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11v23–26)
Emotional Health Check-in (10 Minutes)
As we focus in on this series, we want to continue to create space for checking in on each other, but doing so in a shorter amount of time. Take a few minutes to do an emotional health check-in with your Community, creating space for each person to answer the question below:
What are three words you’d use to describe your week?
If the need arises, spend a few minutes praying for one another, asking God to meet needs and help each person carry what feels heavy right now.
Read this Overview (5 Mins)
The American experience and western culture in general are rooted in radical individualism. We are trained to look out for our own interest above all others, constantly pushing to get what we want or “deserve” and pursue our own desires over those of others. Yet, the way of Jesus and our experience show us that while looking out for our own interests and living in extreme independence—while it may be easier in the short term—leads to unhappiness in the long term. For better or worse, we need each other.
In Romans 12, Paul paints pictures of the people of God as inextricably intertwined: both as a family of brothers and sisters, as well as a body with many parts, all of which need one another. That said, if you keep reading the New Testament, and honestly if you pursue any relationship beyond the surface level, you will discover depth and community to be challenging. To stick with Community for the long haul, it becomes essential to learn to do three things:
Forgive each other for not being God. We bring high expectations to our Community at times, don’t we? We want our wounds healed, to be bound up, to be pursued, to be seen, known, to be loved unconditionally. And these are not bad things to want! But we are all human, and we all fail each other at times. When that happens—when, not if—we have to make the hard choice to love each other anyway.
Listen in love. Give relational space for each others’ stories, joys, and hurts. Share the deep stuff of your person, not just the facts of your life. Rejoice in one another’s successes, and grieve one another’s sorrows.
Stay. This may sound simple, but anyone who has been in relationship with anyone else long term (whether your Bridgetown Community, a best friend, your children, or your spouse) can tell you that sometimes, simply sticking it out is the hardest part.
During this series, we’ll each be crafting (or revisiting) a working Rule of Life to help create structure through which Jesus can grow and shape us to be more like Him. This week, we’ll be focusing on how to live in a community of tightly knit, loving relationships.
Debrief this Sunday’s Teaching (20 Minutes)
With that in mind, work through the following discussion questions as a Community:
In your life, where do you see tendencies toward individualism? (Perhaps at work, in your family life, etc.)
As you consider the three calls to forgive each other, listen in love, and stay, which (if any!) feels the most challenging for you in this season? Which (if any!) feels most natural?
What fruit or blessing have you experienced from choosing to stick with relationships (community or otherwise) for the long haul?
Practice For The Week Ahead: Revisiting your Rule of Life for Community (10 Minutes)
Sometime this week, download our Rule of Life worksheet. This worksheet is meant to help you have an overview of your Rule of Life. Please note that the goal is not to fill in every box, but to come to a good balance and rhythm in each category. Some Practices will have more boxes filled in than others; that’s ok!
This week, as you consider the Community subsection, consider what your existing practices are in this area and write them down. Then take some time to reflect on and pray through what healthy rhythms of relationship could be for you, and what your next step might be to move toward Community and close relationships. Remember, aim to start where you are, not where you think you “should” be.
Here are a few ideas to get you started as you brainstorm and pray through your next step in Community and relationships:
Entry-Level Practice: get together with another follower of Jesus for a regular walk or coffee or in-depth conversation. Move toward a level of communication in which you can share your true self, beyond simply facts or opinions.
Baseline Practice: share a weekly meal with a community of followers of Jesus to eat and drink the Lord’s Supper, do life, pray, and practice the way of Jesus together.
Reach Practice: establish a regular practice of the confession of sin with another follower of Jesus in your Community or Triad and the receiving together of Jesus’ forgiveness that comes to those who ask. (1 John 1v9)
Again, the aim in working toward Community in your life is not to add something new to your schedule every week, but rather to live life alongside others intentionally, vulnerably, and with love.
Prayer (10 Minutes)
Spend a few minutes praying for God’s grace over each other, that we might become a people who make Jesus our Lord, and that there might be a sweeping renewal of the Holy Spirit in our city. Ask that God would stir up within us a desire to be with him in prayer and to serve him, one another, and our neighbor in love.
Part 1: It’s Time To Dream Again
Community Guide
The Community Guide below is based on Sunday’s teaching which began the new series: Future Church. As your whole Community gathers (online or socially distanced), use the Community Guide below to give shape to your night together.
Begin by Practicing the Lord’s Supper Together (5 minutes)
Begin your night by partaking of the bread and the cup together. Have each person bring their own Communion elements. To facilitate your time, you can either ask a member of your Community to come ready with a short prayer, liturgy, or scripture reading, or assign someone to read this prayer we’ve provided below and spend a moment in silence before continuing:
The first thing we read you doing in the Scriptures, O Creator,
Is to bring order to and create life from chaos.
Even now, so many years later, would you do it again?
As we eat and drink, we remember that you are
The God who loves us,
The God who sees us,
The God who will neither leave nor forsake us.
Come now and fill out time together with joy and clarity of mind and heart.
Let us love you. Let us see you. And let us neither leave nor forsake you.
Amen.
Emotional Health Check-in (15 Minutes)
Take a few minutes to do an emotional health check-in with your Community, creating space for each person to answer the question below:
In what areas of your life do you feel like you are bumping up against your limits? Do you sense any invitation from God as you notice these limits?
If the need arises, spend a few minutes praying for one another, asking God to meet needs and help each person carry what feels heavy right now.
Scripture Reading (5 Minutes)
Assign one reader to read Psalm 80 aloud for your Community. After reading, spend 30–60 seconds in silence.
Read this Overview (5 Mins)
While we are still in a season of perseverance—statistics show that we are in the worst phase of the virus with more people dying now than ever—there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Spring is on the horizon; new life is around the corner. The time is now for letting new seeds germinate in the soil of your heart and grow into new life. Over the next two months, we want to stretch the atrophied muscles of our hope and practice dreaming: about our future together in Portland and about the kind of church and followers of Jesus we want to be on the other side of COVID-19.
Many followers of Jesus now believe that the future of the church will be neo-monastic, drawing on the centuries-old convictions of church mothers and fathers. Instead of leaving our lives and joining monasteries, though, it will look more like a robust discipleship to Jesus in a thick web of interdependent relationships, through what the ancients called a rule of life.
Over the next 2 months, we will be looking at the type of community we want to return to the world as. They will involve 8 practices that correlate to 8 challenges that we will face. We want to become:
A community of tight-knit loving relationships in a culture of individualism through the practice of community.
A community of orthodoxy in a culture of ideological idolatry through the practice of scripture.
A community of holiness in a culture of moral relativism through the practice of prayer and fasting.
A community of peace in a culture of fear through the practice of silence and solitude.
A community of peacemakers in a culture of political polarization through the practice of hospitality.
A community of rest in a culture of exhaustion through the practice of sabbath.
A community of contribution in a culture of careerism through the practice of vocation.
A community of justice in a culture of social Darwinism through the practice of simplicity and generosity.
Debrief this Sunday’s Teaching (15 Minutes)
With that in mind, work through the following discussion questions as a Community:
When you think about the future of the church, what do you feel? (Hope? Fear? Uncertainty?) Why do you think you feel that?
Which of the 8 challenges feels the present in your life?
What would you like the church of the future to look like?
Prayer (10 Minutes)
Spend a few minutes praying for God’s grace over each other, that we might become a people who make Jesus our Lord, and that there might be a sweeping renewal of the Holy Spirit in our city. Ask that God would stir up within us a desire to be with him in prayer and to serve him and our neighbor in love.
Practice For The Week Ahead: Reflect on Your Current Rule of Life (5 Minutes)
As we head into this series, take some time this week to think through how the 8 listed Practices (community, scripture, prayer and fasting, silence and solitude, hospitality, sabbath, vocation, and simplicity and generosity) are already a part of your life. Whether you’re doing some of them or all of them, spend time figuring out what your current Rule of Life includes. Each week of this series will be spent looking at one of the eight Practices, so taking time to reflect this week on where you already are will be helpful as we dive into each individually.
For each of the 8 Practices, ask yourself the following questions:
In what ways is this Practice already a part of my life? If not presently, have they been a part of your life in a different season?
Which of the 8 Practices am I more naturally wired towards?
Which of the 8 Practices will be more challenging for me?
Spend some time asking Jesus to be your guide as you start to craft a Rule of Life for returning to the world out of COVID-19, and thank him for his kindness towards you as you remember that he has your good in mind.