Coaching Points For Group Leaders 3: (Life’s Big Questions) Will Religion or Irreligion Help With Life’s Big Questions?

Key Concept: 
Help you avoid the pitfalls of religion and irreligion

Bible Study:
Read Mark 5-8

COACHING POINTS FOR GROUP LEADERS : (Week 3) LIFE’S BIG QUESTIONS: Will Religion or Irreligion Help With Life’s Big Questions?

Looking Back (20 Minutes)

1. Accountability: Love Does
   • What step did you take this week to bring an area of your life more fully under the Lordship of Christ? 
2. Connecting Relationally (Optional)
   • If you know that a group member is going through a major life event, then feel free to ask them about it.
   • Otherwise, on occasion, you may want to also ask the group, “What is one thing you are celebrating that happened last week or one place you saw God show up?”

Looking Up (20 Minutes)

1. Discussion Questions: Prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit to guide you in determining which of the discussion questions you will ask your group members.
2. Note:  You may want to think about asking a particular question to a particular person (or persons) in your group based on what you know of their story or what God is doing in their lives.  Also, remember to include and draw in members of the group who are less talkative than others.

Looking Forward (20 Minutes)

1. Goal-Setting:  Love Does
   • The big picture of Mark 5-8 is to help us avoid the traps of religion and irreligion  What is one thing you can do this week to avoid the trap of religion and irreligion?
2. Prayer
   • Spend time praying.

Coaching Points For Those Who Want to Take Someone Through Life’s Big Questions That Isn’t in Your Mentoring Group

1. Give them time to ask questions from the last week or if anything jumped out from the reading. Often, people don’t have questions at the beginning because it takes a little while for them to get warmed up.
2. I gave an example of when my son tasted mercy and loved it! You may want to think of an experience in your life when you tasted the sweetness of mercy and be ready to share it.
3. Use the discussion questions to make it interactive.

One Page Outline

1. Recap: Who Was Jesus? God.
   • Jesus demonstrated that He was God through the way he taught, healed the sick, raised the dead, had power over nature, and forgave sins
   • Any questions from last week?
2. Religious Approach to Life
   • Rule Keeping
   • Us/Them Mentality
   • Mark 2:13-17
   • Tax collectors
   • Lip Service Mark 7: 1-7, 20-23
   • Solzhenitsyn
   • Can you identify? Do you have religious people in your life? How are you religious?
   • How can we avoid ending up in same place?
     • Thought Experiment to help avoid
     • Result: (1) Don’t villainize, (2) Humility
3. Irreligious Approach to Life
   • • break all the rules
     • Mark 6: 14-29–996 (adulterous, incestuous relationship)
     • Invictus quote
     • In our world today…
       • Unconsciously irreligious: Hedonistic
       • Consciously irreligious: Philosophical (Dawkins)
       • Can you identify? Shaped your journey?