The Group-Time Help will work off of the Winning the Game Curriculum for the next several weeks. It attempts to further the material and help you all as leaders as you lead your group. It won’t make sense without following along with the curriculum, so download it, grab it, open it up…and dig in!
Group-Time Help What is a human being?
Playing the Game…On hindsight, maybe back-to-back thought exercises wasn’t the best choice, but the opening discussion asks you to think about players in games as an analogy for how human beings function in Worldviews. Don’t get too bogged down in the correlation, it’s just meant to be a discussion starter. The questions are meant to draw out some of the main differentiators between how Worldviews see human beings: (1) Why humans are here (2) How humans relate to others (3) How human beings are different from other things in nature. How a Worldview answers these questions answers the big question of “What is a human being?” Important thing is to remember that thinking about players in games is only an analogy! Real people are obviously much more complex than how players function within a game.
Building a Biblical Worldview…The key take away is that people are created by God and therefore have value because they are in relationship with Him. God is Lord over all of His creation and Jesus died on the cross for everyone.
1. Yet this is decidedly not what the popular view of human beings are in our culture. Think about how people are portrayed in your favorite movies and TV shows. What defines them? There is any number of competing views: People are merely animals or machines…products of their environment…pleasure centers…self-defining entities. How do these views of humanity creep into our own understanding?
2. Through our experience of Jesus! The Biblical view is that we are filled in Jesus Christ and through him we have direct access to Ultimate Reality. Think about that! The Gospel redeems and restores people by fulfilling them.
3. There is any number of ways to answer this of course, but it would be good to focus on personal worship of God and loving your neighbor. We’ve heard it so much in church circles that we forget the importance and totality of the Greatest Commandment (Matthew 22:34-40). We are called to love God with all that we are. Read Luke 6:27-45 for an extended teaching on the radical call to love others.
Winning the Game…Let the Game begin! It is my hope that you all will have fun with this part. It is just an attempt to get your groups to take this material with them throughout the week. Most of them are fun, simple and get us deeper into God’s word. Don’t forget to track your progress on the ladder game board on the back of the curriculum.
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