We Choose Update Year 1

Study Questions

Finishing off our Core Values series, pastors David Delk and Scott Mozingo remind us what God accomplished through our church over the last two years and review our new 2019-2020 ministry plan. Using our Core Values as a framework, We Choose lays out for us what we are doing as a church and our desire to work in obedience alongside what God has put in front of us. Each of our campus pastors then give us a picture of campus-specific ministry initiatives before Matt Williams challenges our body of believers to consider how we respond to what we have been given in Christ.

Application

1. Looking back at the past six weeks, in which Core Value have you seen the most growth and in which do you see the most need for growth? What are one or two specific actions you will take away from our Core Values series?

2. In 1 Chronicles 29:17, David encourages his people that they have been willingly generous and that it has been done with joy. How would you normally characterize your attitude when you are generous with your time, money, or gifts? What can you give willingly and with joy?

3. GROUP: Review the ministry plan booklet together. Discuss items that are new information for you and if there is anything you don’t understand. What ministry do you want to learn more about and how can you get involved?

4. GROUP: Take a look together at the Giving Guide and reflections on pages 21-22 of the ministry plan booklet. Where do each of you think you fall on the guide, and where would you like to be? Has this changed in the two years since we first introduced this guide? Lastly, look at the reflections underneath your category on page 22 and discuss one of those questions or ideas with the group.

Key Points

• In 1 Chronicles 29, David praises God for what he is doing in Israel. It is important and instructive for us to notice that David, Solomon, and Israel are in positions of strength here, yet these are words of praise and humility—words of dependence. He recognizes that even when things are going well, everything comes from God.

• 1 Chronicles 29:14 is a powerful act of allegiance, humility, and dependence on God; it is a rejection of our prideful instinct that we are our own providers. David reminds us that the idea of generosity should come naturally to us because we are only giving what has first been given to us.

• “We are here for only a moment, visitors and strangers in the land as our ancestors were before us. Our days on earth are like a passing shadow, gone so soon without a trace” (1 Chronicles 29:15). Time is the thing we can't get our minds around. Time is what reorients us around our dependence on God—it’s what makes us crave some kind of permanence or transcendence that we can only find when we serve a transcendent God.

• We are all playing a small role in what God is doing at Grace Church. We are small people doing small things together. Like David, we should express joy and gratefulness for what God is doing and that we get to be a part of it.

• What we’re talking about in our ministry plan is not a vision; it is an explanation of what we are already doing as God presents opportunities and generosity allows.

• When people get involved in a local church, life change happens. How do we know when it’s “working”? When lives are being changed through the work of Jesus Christ.