**WELCOME TO THE SERMON DISCUSSION GUIDE HOME PAGE**
We resume our normal weekly rhythm of Sermon Discussion Guides NEXT WEEK MONDAY 9/14/26.
Our goal is to have the SDG posted to our website by noon the following Monday of our weekly Worship Service.
Why the “Sermon Discussion Guide” Matters
We so value the ability for our church family to sit together with the Word of God each week on Sunday morning. We believe this is core to the church gathering and to our weekly rhythm as followers of Christ.
For most of Christian history, Sunday morning was one of – if not the – only times in a week where a Christian might have access to the Word of God. So to return to the pastor’s message through the week was one of the primary ways Christians could keep the Word alive in their hearts through the days that followed.
We seek to engage our church family with this great historical reality and through the practical necessity of talking together about what God brought through the pastor’s sermon. Our Sermon Discussion Guides are created weekly by our groups team – both staff and volunteers – to aid our church’s families and small groups to have deep discussion about the truth of what God’s Word has to say.
We want all of our groups to use this resource to draw us together as a regular conversation as we go about our daily life. Our prayer is that this guide would be a helpful resource to you as you pursue the practical implications of the sermon’s key points and questions.
We host our Sermon Discussion Guides on our website for easy access and to be able to go back to sermons in our church’s past to reflect and remember what God has done.
Below is the standard template of our Sermon Discussion Guide with some descriptors.
*If you have any questions, thoughts, or ideas on how we can improve the SDG, please notify our team! We would love to hear from our groups how the guide is working or how it can get better*
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SERMON DISCUSSION GUIDE TEMPLATE
THIS WEEK’S KEY PASSAGE: [the key text of the last sermon]
REMINDERS
SECTION GOAL: give basic details on events going on in the church.
In this section, we include key reminders that we think are important for our groups and leaders to know about the activity within the church. Some of these will be directly related to groups, others will be other large events we hope everyone in the church knows about.
You can keep up with all our current news and events through our online bulletin.
See the events page on the website for more updates.
TOGETHER IN LIFE
SECTION GOAL: Provide a starter question to get dialogue focused during group time.
In this section, we provide a prompt for a question to consider as an “icebreaker” to deeper dialogue later. Sometimes it’s directly from the sermon. Other times it is related to some current event or the season we find ourselves in.
TOGETHER IN THE WORD
SECTION GOAL: Provide some questions for deeper discussion around the content of the sermon and the key texts included in it.
This section is broken up in a few ways. We like to include a “Key Question” for primary focus. Then we provide a list of 7-12 questions we hope guide further discussion that point back to the main points of the sermon. At times, we will include some commentary or quotes from the sermon. Other times, we will include slides directly from the sermon – especially if there are helpful illustrations or quotes that are good tie-in’s back to the sermon.
Our hope is that this section will provide the “meat” of the conversation. This tool is here to serve your group, rather than your group serving the tool. Meaning: we hope these questions serve as good launch points to deep dialogue for the purpose of the group growing in knowing and loving God and each other better. The goal is not for your group to plow through every single question.
KEY QUESTION: [a key question related to the text and sermon’s main point]
QUESTIONS:
- 7-12 questions and sub-points related to the sermon.
TOGETHER IN PRAYER & ACTION
SECTION GOAL: Provide direction for our whole church family to consider moving from mere talk about the text and content of the sermons into action, implementing the life-giving Word into our lives. Our ultimate prayer is that we would not simply “know” what is being said or be able to recite the key points of a sermon. To be so bold, we would even say we hope it’s not just about knowing each other and being known by each other.
Our main hope is that our groups would take this tool, use it as a means to deep dialogue SO THAT our hearts and lives would be transformed to be more and more like Jesus every day. If we merely talk about the truth and do not live it, we lie to ourselves about God’s hope for us. We fall short of the call of the church when we stop short of working the Bible into our daily life.
THE POINT OF THE PROCLAMATION OF THE WORD OF GOD IS TO HAVE HEARTS INFORMED TO BE TRANSFORMED BY THE GRACE AND POWER OF GOD THE FATHER BY JESUS THROUGH THE SPIRIT.
It is our sincere desire that this section gives “teeth” to the meat of the conversation and allow for the opportunity for us to be known, loved, and encouraged to be transformed into Christlikeness. This includes prayer for and with one another and also means asking “What can we do about this that we might work out our salvation in fear and trembling, doing everything to the glory of God and not ourselves?”
