Kitchen Tables

Our closing chapters invite us into small groups to watch over one another in love by “asking each other if we are practicing our faith … [and whether] we are moving closer to God or farther away” (108).

We’ll be calling our small groups Kitchen Tables. Our first Kitchen Tables will begin on the first Sunday evening of Lent, February 21.

We’ve felt for some time that the image of a kitchen table captures the kind of relationships we hope to cultivate through our small groups.  It isn’t a dining room table. It isn’t a coffee table. It isn’t a work room table.

Kitchen Tables.

What’s your take on the name?

Tying the Pieces of Wesleyan Discipleship Together

We’ll explore the final two chapter in A Blueprint for Discipleship during this final week of our study at The Epiphany Table. These chapters outline how to use John Wesley’s General Rules to grow in faith and where the method leads. A short quotation from the reading to begin:

Small-group accountability is the thread that ties all the pieces of Wesleyan discipleship together. Without the practice of meeting together in small groups, Methodists have tended to decrease in their zeal and determination to grow in holiness. In his lifetime, [John] Wesley found that when Methodists joined together and talked about their spiritual lives, they consistently grew in their ability to love God and neighbor (107).

Finding the Balance

Short video based on this evening’s gathering at The Epiphany Table:

Balanced Faith

Kevin Watson writes,

…the most faithful articulation of the gospel is one that highlights who Jesus is and what he has done in order to free us from slavery to sin and death, while simultaneously affirming that Jesus invites us into a new way of living.  Jesus is not asking us simply to accept a ticket to heaven.  Rather, Jesus is inviting us to receive the gift of new life (94).

Love of God and Love of Neighbor

A third way to think about finding balance in Christian life comes from the questions at the end of this week’s chapter:

Why is it important to find balance between love of God and love of neighbor?  Do you tend to overemphasize one or the other?  Which one?  How so?

Personal Piety and Social Action

Our question for reflection today is taken from the questions for discussion at the end of this week’s chapter:

Why is it important to find balance between personal piety and social action?  Do you tend to overemphasize one or the other?  Which one?  How so?

Faith and Works

“In the General Rules, [John] Wesley provides a powerful solution to the tension between faith and works.  Much as a pitcher needs to find his or her balance point in order to be able to throw strikes consistently, the General Rules help us to find a balance that enables us to affirm both the scriptural emphasis on salvation by grace through faith and the reality that faith without works is dead” (A Blueprint for Discipleship, 94).

Do you tend to overemphasize one or the other?  Which one?  How so?

Balance in Christian Life

This week’s chapter invites us to reflect on finding balance in our faith lives.  Kevin Watson does NOT mean balance in the sense of finding equilibrium between church and various other obligations (i.e. work, play, school, family, friends, etc.).  Instead, he writes,

What balance, then, are we trying to find? We are trying to find balance within the Christian life, not balance between the Christian life and something else.  Throughout the centuries, Christians have tended to move back and forth between different extremes.  One extreme lifts up faith to the exclusion of works, while the other extreme views works as a means of earning salvation.  Emphasizing either faith or works, to the exclusion of the other, oversimplifies the Christian message (93-4).

Where have you noticed extreme expressions of Christianity?

Balance

Our study continues this week with an exploration of how John Wesley’s three General Rules might help us to find balance in our faith lives.

Our opening question for reflection this week:  What are you trying to balance in your life?

Practice the Christian Disciplines

Short video reflection based on tonight’s gathering at The Epiphany Table: