Our Small Group

“The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.”
― C.S. Lewis

I love this picture. No it's not perfect in its composition or in technical aspects. But  it shows our small group from church in what a small group should be like.

We are here, true Minnesotans in our lawn chairs and relaxed summer wardrobe. We gather not in our Sunday bests but in our comfortable clothes. Because we have moved past the stages of need to impress one another.

I love this picture because we are not all together in conversation or in teaching. We are here, scattered and connecting. The important talks come at times like these, the words of encouragement and hope to one another.

What this picture doesn't show is the mass of kids running around the grounds. But in the not showing it is good. We trust. We trust our own and those around them. We trust the adults to help in the raising. This is our village.

We've cried, rejoiced and screamed with these people and yet they are still here. Some are new and some we've known for years. But we all still gather for the same purpose. To do this thing we call life together.

We are blessed.

 

~ Cassi

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Baring it all

Fridays I fluctuate between Five Minute Fridays and InstaFriday. But we are all community here, right? They can be combined into one post.
So I write for Five minute, no edits, no re dos and at the end I will see if there are pictures from this week that match the words of this week.

Topic: Bare

Yesterday was the two year mark of the fires. The day our lives and marriage changed forever. The day we laid at God's feet begging for a miracle to bring us out of the suffocating smoke.

The regrowth of this forest hasn't been easy. We've had counseling, books and mentoring. We've done soul searching and baring to others and ourselves.

But its been worth every scream and tear to see where we are now. We are no longer the arrogant self serving people we were when we got married.

This Sunday Steve and I venture on to another path of this restoring process. We are baring are selves to our church family. We've been asked to give our testimony to the congregation. It will be the first time many of them ever hear there has been issues for us. It will be the first time we publicly present our story.

Pray that our story will impact those who are needing to hear God's restoring message.

~ Cassi

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InstaFriday

Have you had one of those weeks that goes by so fast that your are stuck trying to remember what you did? I feel like that has been my week. Maybe that is what makes Instagram so great, that you can take a quick look back over your week and remember the highlights.

One of the highlights was our Pastor's sermon this week. We are working our way through the whole Bible and I am always delighted in how he works each section we are on into his sermon. As good as they are I still need to do something while trying to focus on the sermon. This time I worked more on my handwriting/ typography.

 

Being the Dr Who fans that we are. I love to tease Steve with quotes from the show. This time I left him an instagram one.

"Bowties are Cool"

 

I also had the please of going to a blessing shower a lady at our church. She just had a little boy. It was also a great excuse to try out a new recipe. Hot Chocolate Popovers! I love popovers and marshmallows so I thought this would be great. Everyone seemed to love them. But I thought they were lacking a little bit.

 The last highlight for my week was having a girls night with a good friend. She had never seen The Saint! I know, how do you get through life without seeing Val in all his glory in that movie. So we broke open cheap champagne and settled in for a night movies. It was great. I can't wait to do it more.

Join up or just go check out what the others are sharing.

~ Cassi

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Church group study option

Cassi and I have been small group leaders at our church this year.  Our first class was based on the sermon our pastor was giving.  When that class was complete it was up to us to find topics to continue the small group study.  Cassi wanted to do Go Fish by Andy Stanley.  We all agreed to the study and thought this was great.  Then came time to find the next study theme, well we decided to stick with the Andy Stanley series.

This is a nice study option, there is a video that can last 15 minutes for the sermon highlights or the in depth video that runs about 45 minutes.  The nice option we found is the videos can be used right from Andy's church website for Free (key word there, the DVDs can get spendy)

http://northpoint.org/messages

The link goes to the available messages.  Opening an option shows how many parts, or weeks, the message is and it also provides discussion questions.  This has come in handy with the last study we did titled Text.  It was a short three week study on reading the Bible.   We borrowed the DVD from a church member but it had no study or discussion guide.  We were able to find what we needed for the study right on the Northpoint website.


We will be doing two more studies from Andy Stanley before our small group ends for the summer.  If your small group is stuck and needs something fresh to discuss check out the options available from the Northpoint website.  We are always looking for more study options.  Let us know what you have been studying!