Becoming One With Each Other

Each week’s group meetings during Easter Season point forward to the coming Sunday. For this week, your groups will explore together the meaning being one in ministry as they seek to continue to claim the gifts and calling for ministry given to each one individually.

Suggested Agenda.

1. Brief, informal time of gathering (10 minutes or so) with snacks to share.
   
2. Formal gathering — seated in a circle in chairs or around a table-- with requests for prayer for the coming week (10 minutes)-- and prayer led by the group leader or unison in the group. If the latter, one practice I’ve found useful in leading such groups is immediately after a person shares, the whole group pauses, then says in unison, “Into your hands, O God, we commend our sister/brother/sibling(s) Name(s).” Proceed to the next person and repeat until all who wish to offer requests for prayer have had the opportunity to do so.
   
3. Teaching and Conversation — (35 minutes) — This week is part one of two sessions focused on the most intensive work you will do together as a formation group: identifying one ministry into which each person is willing, gifted, and supported by others in the group to be commissioned on Pentecost (two weeks from today).
   
   This week, you will complete this process with half of your group members. Next week, you’ll complete it with the other half. Use “Session 4” in “DIY Tools for Spiritual Gifts Discernment” as a guide for your discernment process with each person, whether with the whole group as an example, or in smaller groups of two or three. At the end of this session, half of your group members will have identified a specific ministry and concrete next steps for action, and they will have received prayer and a pledge of personal support from other group members for the ministry they will pursue and into which they will be commissioned on Pentecost.
   
4. Gather in a circle or huddle, lay hands on one another, one by one, and pray in unison, “X, may you continue to grow in Christ in the days ahead.”
   
5. Thank all for coming, and send the group out to keep learning and living the baptism they have received.