What is a Church Member?

Community Group Questions:

Engage Yourselves:

• What is it about church membership that gives you anxiety or makes you nervous?
• In what ways have you experienced the sort of church life described in Romans 12:9-21? In what ways have you negatively experienced church life? (feel free to not go into details if this is a difficult question for you, and also feel free to reach out to the elders if there are things you want to talk about or bring up).

Engage the Text:

• 18 talks about living peaceably with all. What are some things in our world that make this command difficult, and how can you remove those things from your life?
• 13 talks about “contributing to the needs of the saints”, but on Sunday we talked about how it might be better to translate this as “share in the needs of the saints”. How are these different, and how might that affect how we live out this command?

Engage your Neighbor:

• Who are some people or groups of people that come to mind when you hear the word “enemy”? What might feeding your enemy look like for you?
• Who in your life needs to experience the love of Christ right now? How can you engage that person?

Engage your Kids: Read Romans 12:9-21 in Eugene Peterson’s, The Message (this is available at www.biblegateway.com) with your family and ask your children: What is it about loving the way Jesus loves that is sometimes really hard? Let them share, and maybe provide examples to help some of your younger children understand the question.